Cybersecurity park to fuel innovation

Industrial area to help country better implement its strategy on big data

China aims to build a world-class national cybersecurity industrial park, which will help cultivate a 100 billion yuan ($15 billion) cybersecurity industry in Beijing by 2020 and help the country better implement the big data strategy, officials said on Tuesday.

The industrial park will be jointly built by Beijing municipal government and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Officials expect it to help contribute more than 330 billion yuan to GDP growth by 2020.

Chen Zhaoxiong, vice-minister of industry and information technology, said the booming big data industry is injecting new impetus to China's economic growth and spurring demand for safer information infrastructure.

"More efforts are needed to promote innovation, as well as the research and development of cybersecurity solutions," Chen said.

Currently, half of China's major cybersecurity companies are registered in Beijing and six of them generate over 1 billion yuan in annual revenue. Officials hope by 2020, the new cybersecurity park will host at least three companies whose annual revenue can exceed 10 billion yuan.

Zhang Boxu, director of Beijing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology, said the Beijing municipal government and the ministry will offer financial support such as establishing a special fund and favorable fiscal policies to facilitate the construction of the new industrial park.

In May, a 10 billion yuan fund was launched by CSC Financial Co Ltd and Beijing Daily Group to invest in promising companies in the information security industry.

The official website of the Beijing Municipal Commission of Economy and Information Technology shows that in November, officials visited Beijing's Tongzhou district to review possible locations for the new park.

Liu Duo, head of the government think tank, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said countries all over the world are attaching high importance to cybersecurity, as cyberattacks become more frequent and complicated.

According to her, the ministry has selected 82 pilot cybersecurity projects in the past three years, whose experience can be emulated nationwide to prevent internet attacks and other online crimes.

Official data show that there are 10 listed companies in China that purely focus on cybersecurity. They posted a combined annual revenue of 14.7 billion yuan in 2016, up 34.9 percent year-on-year.