Internet Plus Introduction

In the Fifth Mobile Internet Expo held in 2012, Analysis International for the first time put forward the idea of “Internet Plus”. This concept was also agreed by the China National People’s Congress and Tencent founder and CEO Ma Huateng. Furthermore, one of the most important proposals presented by Ma Huateng to the National People’s Congress is to adopt “Internet Plus” as a national strategy. Finally, in 2015 the Prime Minister of China, Li Keqiang, announced for the first time in the Report on the Work of the Government to deploy the implementation of the “Internet Plus” strategy. The report points out that the “Internet Plus” action plan for 2015 will provide more space for the integration of the Internet and various traditional industries including medical, education, logistics and finance, and will cultivate more new industries, creating a new growth engine and promote the transformation and upgrading of the economy. According Premier Li Keqiang “Internet Plus plan promise to integrate mobile Internet, cloud computing, Big data, and the Internet of Things with modern manufacturing, to encourage the healthy development of e-commerce, industrial networks, and Internet banking, and to get Internet-based companies to increase their presence in the international market” (Li Keqiang, 2015).

What does Internet Plus mean? The Internet overall has changed every traditional industry, bringing new opportunities and new business models, having major impacts in education, retailing, manufacturing, advertisement, health care, tourism and other areas. According with The Internet in China White Papers, “The Internet is the crystallization of human wisdom, it is a significant technological invention of the 20th century and a major symbol of contemporary advanced productive force. The Internet has brought about profound impacts on the world economy, politics, culture and social progress, and promoted the transformation of social production, daily life and information dissemination” (State Council News Office, 2010). The Director of the State Council Research Office of China, Ning Jizhe, explained “We are living in the information age, the Internet age. The Internet is a tool that can be applied to many areas, applied to many fields, it has penetrated to economic, social, people’s livelihoods, military, political and cultural fields, that is the meaning of “Plus”, it can be added to any area”. For example, Internet plus advertisement sector created Google, Internet plus education sector created the most popular free encyclopedia Wikipedia, Internet plus retailing sector created Amazon, Internet plus telecommunication sector created Skype and WhatsApp, Internet plus tourism sector created TripAdvisor, the Internet can unstoppable continue to adding to other industries, that’s the power of the Internet Plus. In the next Table 2 shows the different definitions of Internet Plus.

Table 2: Internet Plus Definition

Version Definition

Official (百度百科, 2015) “Internet Plus is aimed to deeply integrate Internet innovation achievements into all economic and social fields, propel technical progress, efficiency enhancement and organizational reform, enhance the innovative power and productivity of the real economy, and forms a more extensive new form of economic and social development with the Internet as infrastructure and innovation element.”

Ma Huateng (马化腾等人，

2015)

“Internet Plus is based on the Internet platform, which enhance the cross-boundary integration of industries through the use of information and communications technology, propel the transformation and upgrading of industries, besides help uninterruptedly on the creation of new products, new business models and build a new ecological connection.”

Alibaba (阿里研究院, 2015) “Internet Plus refers to the proliferation and application process of the Internet-based set of information technology (including mobile Internet, cloud computing, Big data technology, etc.) into all fields of economic and social life.”

Robin Li ( 中 国 新 闻 网 , 2015)

“Internet Plus program, I see it as an integration model of the Internet with other traditional industries. Over the past few years with the increase in the number of China Internet users, internet penetration is now close to 50%. Especially with the rise of mobile Internet, making the Internet able to generate more and more influence in other industries. We are very pleased to see that the Internet in the past couple of years once combined with many industries, it transforms them from rotten industries into something magical. Especially in O2O (online to offline) areas, for example the combination of online and offline.”

Lei Jun (中國日報, 2015) “Premier Li Keqiang in the Report on the Work of the Government mentioned “Internet Plus”, which means how to use the Internet technology and the Internet thinking to combine with the real economy, to boost transformation, value-added and efficiency of the real economy.”

Source: Extracted from  马化腾、张晓峰與杜军 (2015)

2.1.1 Characteristics of the Internet Plus

According to 马化腾等人（2015）, the Internet Plus has six main characteristics:

1. Cross-boundary Integration, “Plus” itself is a cross-boundary, which means transformation, opening, integration;

2. Innovation-oriented, the Internet has the characteristics of innovation-oriented, using the Internet to change, self-revolution, but also to display a more innovative force;

3. Structure Reformation, information revolution, globalization and the Internet has broken the original social, economic, relationship, geographical and cultural structure, being able to reduce the transaction costs of the whole society, enhancing the operational efficiency and weakening the information asymmetry;

4. Respect for humanity, respect for humanity is the most essential culture of the Internet, because its most fundamental power originates from its respect for humanity, the awe of the user experience, and its concern for human creativity. Therefore, because it represents the integration of the Internet and traditional industries, human-centric product design and manufacturing is another feature of Internet Plus;

5. An open ecosystem platform, an open ecosystem platform is a very important feature of the “Internet Plus”, only through an open ecosystem we can reach integration, because in an open and shared innovation-driven ecosystem can dissolve barriers that restrict innovation and help us to find the similarities with other elements of the outside world;

6. Connecting everything, cross-boundary, integration and innovation all need connection, without connection there is no “Internet Plus”, because connection is the goal of “Internet Plus”.

The Internet allows billions of people to interact in P2P social networks, connecting every human being in a global community, this platform turns everyone into a “prosumer”. According to Toffler “prosumers are people who produce some of the goods and services entering their own consumption. They can be found making their own clothes, cooking their own food, rearing their own cars, and hanging their own wallpaper” (Kotler, 1986). Prosumers are eager adopters of Web 2.0 products and services such as blogging, podcasting, video on demand, social networking, mobile communications, virtual realities, and other Internet-based technologies and services (Gerhardt, 2008). Prosumers are influencers; they not only produce and share free information, opinions, entertainment and opened online courses. As a result, their interactions open untapped markets to accelerate adoption of new technologies. Millions of prosumers are employing open-source software to create new learning tools, new forms of entertainment, and new software at a near zero marginal cost (Rifkin, 2014). Such is the case of Wikipedia, “its enormous and ever-expanding entries in a variety of languages could not be created and constantly revised and updated without input from large numbers of unpaid prosumers” (Ritzer, Dean, & Jurgenson, 2012).

The Director of the Cyberspace Administration of China, Lu Wei, highlighted that the Internet is the biggest bright spot of the country’s economic growth, “Because of the sharing of the network, China has more than 700 million Internet users, which is more than twice the number of the entire U.S population, accounting for a quarter of the total number of Internet users. Because of the sharing of the network, China has 1.3 billion mobile phone users, 500 million Weibo users, 500 million WeChat users, more than 20 billion messages per day, the communication is in everywhere at any time. Because of the sharing of the network, China has more than 4 million websites; the Internet has become essential into people’s lives. Because of the sharing of the network, China's e-commerce economy is worth US$581.61 billion in 2015, surging 33.3% from the previous year, the contribution to economic growth rate is more than 10%, and it has already become the largest growth sector of the national economy” (新华网, 2014). McKinsey & Company forecasts “the Internet could add 0.3 to 1.0 percentage points to China’s GDP growth rate from 2013 to 2025. This could fuel some 7 to 22 percent of the incremental GDP growth expected through 2025—and by that point, it could translate into RMB 4 trillion to 14 trillion in annual GDP” (Woetzel et al., 2014).