IT to play a bigger role: Minister

China will further integrate traditional industries with information technology to lift their productivity and foster more demand in the IT sector, according to a half-year work conference held by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Thursday.

Minister Miao Wei vowed to make the most of IT's role in upgrading traditional industries and cultivating emerging strategic sectors. He said he would strive to realize "significant progress" within the next five years.

"Information technology is the most vibrant, most penetrating filled with the largest spillover effect," Miao told more than 100 officials in Beijing and many others in charge of industries and IT across China, who attended the conference via a cable connection.

The efforts echoed a meeting held on July 12 by the State Council in which Premier Li Keqiang called for an upgrading of the nation's economic structure by boosting demand in the IT industry.

China aims to boost spending on the sector by more than 20 percent annually through 2015, according to the State Council.

"We face a complicated and severe economic situation now, with problems in industrial sectors becoming more salient. The downside pressure is growing. Overcapacity is intensifying and small companies' difficulties are rising," Miao said.

He said the West's informatization came after industrialization, for which they paid a high cost in terms of resource depletion and environmental degradation. China, he warned, should not follow the old path and should pursue industrialization and informatization simultaneously.

As China's industrial economy cools and enterprises struggle with rising costs and chronic overcapacity, the ministry's campaign is being seen as a message that the government intends to rely on IT as a way out. It would therefore pour considerable resources into the sector.

China on Monday approved another 103 pilot cities as "smart cities", a project that would allow local governments to ramp up spending on information infrastructure.

According to Miao, although the near-term target is to boost governmental, corporate and household consumption of IT, the longer goal is to upgrade traditional industries and revamp the country's growth model.

The specific measures to boost IT consumption, drafted by the ministry, have been approved by the State Council and will be announced soon, Miao said.

The ministry is also drawing up a plan to integrate industries with information technology. The aim is to significantly strengthen enterprises' competitiveness in the information age by 2018.

Already, China's corporate sector has adopted many initiatives in utilizing IT to save costs and improve efficiency.

Huang Hua, secretary of the board of directors at Tongda Refractory Technologies Co Ltd, said information systems have been applied in various sectors of the manufacturing company's workflow management, logistics and finances.

"But this is far from enough. In many other industrial sectors, IT has enabled the integration of design and processing. The future trend is, as we always described, 'get rid of design papers and reconciliation statements', " he said.