China's Telecom Blueprint Pairs 6G Ambitions With AI Infrastructure Push

China's new five-year telecom plan emphasizes the development of 6G technology, a significant expansion of artificial intelligence computing infrastructure, and an increased focus on utilizing domestic chips.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the 2026–2030 blueprint on Monday, aiming for 9,800 EFLOPS, or 9,800 quintillion floating-point operations per second, intelligent computing by 2030.

Its six priorities cover 26 tasks in infrastructure, industrial development, governance, security, applications, and international engagement.

The plan calls for a national network linking central hubs, regional facilities and edge infrastructure, with inference capacity deployed according to application demand.

It also directs greater adaptation to domestically produced computing chips and better matches computing supply with demand.

The blueprint advances 6G research and trials, with commercialization to begin "at an appropriate time," while also expanding 5G-A and optical networks.

A separate initiative addresses networks connecting AI agents, including an identification system for those agents.

Beijing is planning AI hardware, computing resource networks, and user-accessible inference facilities under one framework. Future 6G services are part of that effort.

Domestic-chip provisions make the initiative more than a telecom upgrade for foreign observers. The plan promotes a more integrated Chinese AI ecosystem, but it does not guaranty independence from foreign technology.