In this year’s government work report delivered by Premier Li Keqiang on March 5, several issues concerning the Internet were mentioned, such as flexible production processes, introduction of e-commerce in rural areas and cross-border e-commerce.

Although many of the issues are not new to the public, they all have new meaning and concepts for guiding this year’s work.

The report encourages enterprises to use flexible and custom-tailored production processes, which means that the Internet will continue to play an important role in balancing the supply and demand of goods.

The Internet will provide customer information to manufacturers, a new business model of C2M (Customer-to-Manufactory), and the craftsmanship spirit was also stressed in the production process.

As agricultural products and services in China are not fully connected to the Internet yet, the report encouraged introducing e-commerce in rural areas. It said that fiber-optic networks will be developed in a number of cities, and 50,000 administrative villages will be connected with fiber-optic networks, thus enabling more urban and rural residents to enjoy a more digital way of life.

The government clearly supports the export of domestic products. It encouraged supporting enterprises in developing overseas warehouses for export products, and promoting the development of enterprises that provide comprehensive foreign trade services.

This concept is in line with Alibaba founder Jack Ma’s idea from eWTO in August 2015, which is to achieve global trade through e-commerce to achieve a “free and equal global trade”.

In addition, proper use of idle resources was also stressed. The document decided to stimulate the second-hand car market, which can be linked with the Premier’s idea of a sharing economy that drives economic growth and innovation by sharing and coordinating.

Development of a sharing economy will promote the efficient use of resources, and more people will take part and benefit. And stimulating the second-hand car market also will help fully use the idle resources and push the upgrades in consumption mode.

As mass entrepreneurship and innovation has been widespread in industries, the government is paying more attention to the national strategy this year.

It said that platforms will be created for crowd innovation, crowd support, crowd-sourcing, and crowd-funding, and mechanisms will be built to encourage new types of business startups and innovation-making through cooperation between enterprises, institutions of higher learning, research institutes, and makers.

Besides implementing the “Internet Plus” action plan, the government decided to carry out the “Internet Plus government services” model and promote better information sharing and streamline government procedures, which means that the government has realized that upgrades of government functions are key for the implementation of this plan.