A receptionist scans a guest's ID (Photo/People's Daily Overseas Edition)

China’s information consumption volume has grown by 13 percent year on year, reaching around 5 trillion yuan ($729.6 billion) in 2018, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT), Economic Information Daily reported on Jan. 8.

By the year 2020, China’s information consumption will amount to 6 trillion yuan with an average annual growth rate of over 11 percent, as shown in relevant development plans, which also indicated that the output value of related areas driven by the country’s information consumption is expected to hit 15 trillion yuan.

China will continue to upgrade and expand information consumption, and support innovation in products of such fields as wearable devices, consumer drones, virtual reality (VR), and intelligent service robots, according to a national meeting on industrialization and informatization.

Zhang Li, vice director of the industry development department of the Policy and Economics Research Institute of CAICT, noted that as China enforces multiple policies and measures at both central and local levels to boost information consumption, it has had an ever-increasing effect on boosting domestic demand and driving consumption in other fields.

“With the constant emergence of new modes, new forms of business, new technologies, and new products, China’s consumption of information has enormous potential for development,” expressed Zhang, saying that the rapid development of new types of information consumption has created new economic growth points.

Zhang noted that the country’s next step would focus on enhancing the supply capacity of products and services by improving supply quality and promoting innovation in information products and industrial upgrading.

Besides, China will also take measures to expand the coverage of information consumption and speed up the popularization and upgrading of information terminals to benefit more people, according to Zhang.