CCTV News: On February 20, the State Information Office held a regular briefing on the State Council’s policies.

At the meeting, Yao Jun, Director of the Planning Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that expanding opening up to the outside world is an important measure to comprehensively deepen reform and promote institutional reform, and is of positive significance to promoting high-quality development of the industry, integrating into global division of labor and cooperation, and serving to build a new development pattern. In recent years, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has thoroughly implemented the decisions and deployments of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, and insisted on promoting high-quality development of the telecommunications industry through high-level opening up. As of the end of 2024, 2,343 foreign-funded enterprises have been approved to operate telecommunications services in China, bringing more choices and differentiated services to telecom users.

In 2024, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with relevant departments, formulated the "Notice on Carrying out Pilot Work for Expanding Value-Added Telecommunications Services", which clearly stated that the foreign-invested shareholding restrictions on Internet Data Centers (IDCs) and other businesses were lifted in four places including Beijing, Shanghai, Hainan, and Shenzhen. This policy has received widespread attention and positive evaluation. At present, the four places have held many foreign-funded enterprises symposiums, actively carried out policy interpretations, and strengthened communication and docking with foreign-funded enterprises. At present, dozens of foreign-funded enterprises are actively applying for participation.

In the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will continue to thoroughly implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, accelerate the promotion of pilot opening work, strengthen policy interpretation, optimize service management, support foreign-funded enterprises to participate in the pilot, explore more new business forms, and stimulate market vitality. Do a good job in accumulated experience and publicity and promotion, organize summary and evaluation of pilot situations, sort out advanced models, typical cases, etc., and promote the release of demonstration effects. At the same time, we will continue to improve the opening-up policy according to the pilot situation, actively connect with international high-standard economic and trade rules, continuously improve the level of opening-up in the telecommunications field, and help build a new open economy system at a higher level.