On the afternoon of March 30, 2023, State Information Center(SIC) and China Telecom jointly held the signing ceremony for a strategic cooperation agreement. SIC President Liu Yunan and Chairman of China Telecom Ke Ruiwen attended. On behalf of both sides, SIC Vice President Zhou Min and Deputy General Manager of China Telecom Xia Bing signed on the cooperation agreement. 

Liu Yunan emphasized the positioning and key orientations of strategic cooperation. He pointed out that the role of innovation in digital technologies is increasingly prominent at the new stage of fully launching Chinese path to modernization. Since the last year, China has introduced a series of key policies and plannings including Digital Economy Development Plan in the 14^th FYP, Guiding Opinions on Promoting Digital Government Development, the 20 opinions on building data underlying system to help data factors play a greater role and the Overall Planning for Digital China Development, which will boost the digital transformation of economy and society in a new round of rapid development. Under the guidance of Xi Jinping’s thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era, the strategic cooperation based on friendly consultation will fulfill missions and responsibilities in building China into a cyberpower and digital power while maintaining cyber security. Both sides will give full play to comparative advantages and carry out cooperation in G-cloud cooperative operation and digital government consultation and planning in the aim of promoting high-quality development of digital economy and e-government and achiving business development and cooperation value in building China into a digital and cyber power.

Ke Ruiwen said that as the “national team” and main force in building China into a cyber and digital power and maintaining network security, China Telecom has been vigorously developing modern information infrastructure such as 5G, gigabit optical fiber and cloud computing, building a big data service system, improving capacities in data governance and strengthening application and innovation of digital platforms. In recent years, China Telecom and SIC have made progress in a joint effort to promote research in technology architecture of dataSHIELD, data governance and operational service platform. In the next step, China Telecom will deepen the cooperation with SIC by giving full play to its integrated advantage in cloud computing, network infrastructure, network coverage, application, data, AI and security and following the development trend of digital government to help governments at all levels access to cloud-based big data and AI initiatives by empowering digital government for a high-levle governance. According to the strategic cooperation agreement, both sides will, based on the principles of complementation, sharing, cooperation and win-win, give full play to their respective resources in policy, industry, technology, market, human resources and research to carry out cooperation in G-cloud operation and digital government consultation and planning for the purpose of jointly promoting high-quality development of digital economy and digital government.