The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) is the sixth-ranked executive department of the State Council of the People's Republic of China. It is responsible for regulation and development of the postal service, Internet, wireless, broadcasting, communications, production of electronic and information goods, software industry and the promotion of the national knowledge economy.

History

In 2004, the MIIT began the Connecting Every Village Project to promote universal access to telecommunication and internet services in rural China. The MIIT required that six state-owned companies, including the main telecommunications and internet providers China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom, build the communications infrastructure and assist in financing the project. Beginning in late 2009, the program began building rural telecenters each of which had at least one telephone, computer, and internet connectivity. Approximately 90,000 rural telecenters were built by 2011. As of December 2019, 135 million rural households had used broadband internet. The program successfully extended internet infrastructure throughout rural China and promoted development of the internet. The** State Council announced during the 1st session of the 11th National People's Congress that the MIIT would supersede the Ministry of Information Industry (MII). ** In 2013, the ministry's Made in China 2025 plan was approved by the State Council. It took over two years to draft by a working group of one hundred and fifty people. The plan's aim was to improve production efficiency and quality. In summer 2021, MIIT began a six-month long regulatory campaign to address a variety of consumer protection and unfair competition issues, including interoperability concerns, in the consumer internet sector. It held meetings with executives from major Chinese tech companies and instructed them that their companies could no longer block external links to competitors.

Functions

The ministry is responsible for industrial development, policy, and standards. It also oversees industry operations monitoring, innovation, and information technology and approves fixed-asset investment projects in industry, communications, and information technology. It is the government body primarily responsible for supervising product standards. MIIT delegates much of its legislative and standard setting work to the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology. In 2006, Human Rights Watch said that the ministry is responsible for overseeing technical implementation of the censorship in China. The ministry is responsible for the current iteration of the Thousand Talents Plan called Qiming. MIIT has some regulatory overlap with the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Although MIIT does not have authority to enforce the Anti-Monopoly Law like SAMR does, it uses its departmental guidelines to address unfair competition issues.

Duties

According to the Regulations on the Main Responsibilities, Internal Organization and Staffing of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology assumes the following responsibilities:

Structure

According to the "Regulations on the Main Responsibilities of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, its Internal Organization and Staffing" and to the "Reply of the Office of the Central Institutional Establishment Committee on Matters Related to Further Clarifying the Main Responsibilities of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in Local Communications Administration Bureaus" (reply of the Central Organization Office [2012] No. 17), the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has the following internal organization. Names in parentheses are alternative nameplates or subunits

Internal Functional Offices

National Bureaus managed by MIIT

Retained external nameplates (use of the names reserved by MIIT)

Regional Units

Directly Subordinate Units

Directly Subordinate High-level Academic Institutions

Directly subordinate SOEs

Attached Civil Society Associations

Subordinate Units

The ministry administers the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, and the State Tobacco Monopoly Bureau. The MIIT was historically responsible for the regulation and control of tobacco consumption, including the implementation of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a rather obvious case of conflict of interest. This task has since been reassigned to the National Health Commission as part of a large-scale government reform in 2018. Under the arrangement one institution with two names, the MIIT reserves the external brands of the China National Space Administration and the China Atomic Energy Authority, although the level of control the ministry have over these two organizations is unclear. The MIIT oversees the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank that focuses on telecommunications and the digital economy. It also oversees seven universities, including top universities such as the Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Beijing Institute of Technology, the Harbin Institute of Technology, and the Northwestern Polytechnical University. The MIIT also co-manages the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, used by the government to invest in semiconductor companies, together with the Ministry of Finance.

List of ministers

List of party secretaries