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Yesterday, a major science and technology official vowed to speed up the construction of digital cities across China. The director of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Construction, Lai Ming, confirmed at a Beijing press conference that ‘informatisation’ is an essential part of the attempt to make China into a well-off, innovative, harmonious and modern nation. Lai asserted that building digital cities is introducing information technologies to city planning, infrastructure construction, administration and other public service facilities.

"The rapid development of telecommunications, the Internet and other digital technologies has provided very effective solutions to problems in these fields". In the 10th Five-Year Plan (2001–2005), over 120 cities built up information systems for city management and planning, and around 400 built information systems intended for real estate management. Lai confirmed that the government is really committed to creating digital cities and had given enough projects for the improvement of the information technology industry as well as the construction of the city infrastructure in the 11th Five-Year Plan (2006–2010).

With the support from the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Construction will commence a sequence of projects that is expected to guide the technological breakthroughs in creating digital cities, Lai said. A Chinese Academy of Sciences professor, Cui Junzhi, said that the perfect digital city would beautifully blend cyberspace with physical space. "It would result in an expansion of a city's space and improve services", Cui added.


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