China has 2.73m 5G base stations; user base world's largest.

ISLAMABAD -- The number of China's 5G base stations and users are both growing rapidly as the push for digital construction progresses, laying a solid foundation for China's digital economy and high-quality development, Chinese experts said.

"The number of 5G base stations has reached to 2.73 million as of the end of April," China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced, as the construction of 5G networks progressed steadily.

The number of 5G users in China reached 561 million as of the end of 2022, accounting for more than 60 percent of the world's total, according to a report on the development of Digital China 2022, released by Chinese cyberspace authorities.

The number of terminal users of the mobile Internet of Things (IoT) reached 1.845 billion, making China the first major economy to have more IoT users than the whole population.

"The 5G sector is an important base for China's informatization and digital economy," Wang Peng, a research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, was quoted as saying by Global Times.

"The rising number of 5G bases and users is conducive to the development of relevant application scenarios, so we can incubate more enterprises, and achieve more technological innovation and business model innovation, forming a positive cycle," Wang said.

"The digital economy is becoming an important engine driving China's steady growth and transformation," according to the Digital China 2022 report.

In 2022, China's digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan ($7.13 trillion), a nominal increase of 10.3 percent...