On March 21, the state council joint prevention and control mechanism held a press conference on the resumption of work on major investment projects.

         A reporter from the national business daily asked at the press conference: to speed up the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, Internet of things and big data center is a major strategic deployment of China based on the current situation and focusing on the future. What measures will the NDRC take to support the construction of key new infrastructure projects?

Zheng Jian, deputy director of the foundation department of the national development and reform commission, responded that infrastructure is the cornerstone of economic and social development and plays a strategic, fundamental and leading role. These include both traditional and new infrastructure, such as transportation, energy, water conservancy, municipal and logistics facilities, and 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet and the Internet of things.

He said the party central committee has always attached great importance to the construction and development of infrastructure. Commission for deepening overall reform of the CPC central committee has adopted a proposal to promote high-quality development of infrastructure. The next step is to grasp the law and characteristics of infrastructure development, balance the existing and incremental infrastructure, balance traditional and new infrastructure, and promote overall optimization and synergy.

To be specific, the first step is to speed up the improvement of traditional infrastructure weaknesses. In recent years, the development of traditional infrastructure is relatively fast, with relatively strong capacity and good foundation, but the quality and efficiency still need to be further improved.

"Judging from the acceleration of the construction of transportation and municipal facilities, especially under the current situation, it highlights the realistic need to make up for the shortcomings of traditional infrastructure." For example, he said, people recently heard about the runway expansion project at Shenzhen airport, which started construction soon. The three gorges corporation also started work today on three major Yangtze river conservation projects in Wuhan." So the traditional infrastructure needs are still very large."

"For new types of infrastructure, the next step is to accelerate high-quality development." The first is to further strengthen the planning and guidance of new infrastructure construction, improve the policy environment, innovate relevant institutions and mechanisms, support the construction of diversified demonstration and application scenarios, strengthen forward-looking and guiding technology research, development, and innovation, and lay a solid foundation for development.

        Second, integrated development means to achieve comprehensive balance and coordination, strengthen resource integration and joint contribution and sharing, promote collaborative integration, and improve the efficiency of resource allocation. In the future, we will promote the construction of more smart transportation, smart power grids, smart cities and other projects, and build an infrastructure system that meets the needs of smart economy and smart society.