Since 1978, China has experienced enormous economic growth after adopting the market-oriented institutional and economic reform. Industrial sectors gradually transferred from planned economy to market economy in the 1980s. For strategic importance in society, the government had monopolized the nationwide information infrastructure and services until the middle of the 1990s. In 1998, the related information enterprises separated from government services, and a pattern of market competition was

more »

... rmed among telecom operators, such as China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom (Chen, Gao, and Tan 2005). After accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the information and communication technology (ICT) industry has become one of the most dynamic, fastest-growing, and widely radiated industries in China's economy. In 2017, the total output of the ICT industry exceeded 18 trillion CNY, and the ICT output growth rate was 9.1 percent (Atradius 2018). Consequently, the penetrations of telephone and internet gained a soaring increase (Figure 1). The new economy, such as the digital economy, platform economy, and the sharing economy, is widely infiltrating and changing the economic and industrial landscape of China. The support, guidance, and penetration of ICT to other industries are consistently recognized and valued by the society in China; the new economy sector accounted for 14.6 percent of the total