The connotation, evolution and development significance of new infrastructure construction

I. Connotation of new infrastructure

According to the spirit of the documents of relevant state departments and expert interpretation, the new infrastructure includes seven areas, such as 5G base station construction, ultra-high voltage, intercity high-speed railway and urban rail transit, new energy vehicle charging piles, big data centers, artificial intelligence, and industrial Internet.

New infrastructure, defined by the relevant state departments, is guided by the new development concept, driven by technological innovation, based on information networks, the use of new scientific and technological revolution achievements, for high-quality development needs, to provide digital transformation, intelligent upgrading, integrated innovation and other services infrastructure construction, is the national, local and relevant departments investment growth in recent years. That is, new infrastructure is the national infrastructure construction or infrastructure construction to establish a modern economic system, and is an important way for economic development to be high-quality, ecological, digital, intelligent, and the transformation of old and new growth drivers.

With the technological revolution and industrial change, the connotation and extension of new infrastructure are advancing with The Times, rather than unchanged, and need to be continuously tracked and studied. On April 20, 2020, the relevant personnel of the National Development and Reform Commission gave three main aspects of the new infrastructure:

The first is information infrastructure, which mainly refers to the infrastructure evolved based on the new generation of information technology, such as the communication network infrastructure represented by 5G, the Internet of Things, the industrial Internet, and the satellite Internet, the new technology infrastructure represented by artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and blockchain, and the computing power infrastructure represented by data centers and intelligent computing centers.

The second is integrated infrastructure, which mainly refers to the in-depth application of Internet, big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to support the transformation and upgrading of traditional infrastructure, such as intelligent transportation infrastructure and smart energy infrastructure.

The third is innovation infrastructure, which mainly refers to the infrastructure that supports scientific research, technological development, and product development with public benefit properties, such as major scientific and technological infrastructure, science and education infrastructure, and industrial technological innovation infrastructure.

These are the three aspects of what people often call new infrastructure.

Some have expanded the seven areas of new infrastructure to include, Green disaster prevention and public health service efficiency system construction, 5G-Internet - cloud computing - blockchain - Internet of Things infrastructure construction, artificial intelligence big data center infrastructure construction, industrial Internet infrastructure construction centered on the big health industry, new urbanization infrastructure construction, emerging technology industry incubation and upgrading infrastructure construction, etc. It is innovative, integrated, comprehensive, systematic, basic and dynamic.

Second, the proposal of new infrastructure and its evolution

Overall, the new infrastructure has not been proposed for a long time, a total of less than five years. In other words, new infrastructure is still a relatively new concept. By referring to the existing literature, we can find the context of the proposal and evolution of the new infrastructure.

1. At the national level

From December 19 to 21, 2018, the Central Economic Work Conference put forward the requirements for new infrastructure construction, defining 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and the Internet of Things as "new infrastructure construction". It can be said that this is the first time that the "new infrastructure" has been mentioned at the central level.

"Strengthening the construction of a new generation of information infrastructure" was included in the 2019 Government Work report.

On July 30, 2019, the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee held a meeting and put forward the requirement of "accelerating the construction of new infrastructure such as information networks".

On January 3, 2020, when the executive meeting of The State Council determined measures to promote the steady growth of the manufacturing industry, it proposed to "vigorously develop advanced manufacturing, introduce new infrastructure investment support policies such as information networks, and promote intelligent and green manufacturing." New infrastructures related to information networks are highlighted here.

On February 14, 2020, the 12th meeting of the Commission for Deepening Overall Reform of the CPC Central Committee pointed out that "infrastructure is an important support for economic and social development, and it is necessary to take overall optimization and coordinated integration as the guidance, balance the development of stock and increase, traditional and new infrastructure, and build an intensive, efficient, affordable, smart, green, safe and reliable modern infrastructure system." The characteristics and general requirements of the new infrastructure are defined here.