Helen Deng

    deng.hneng@gmail.com

    NEXT-GENERATION Internet and its related industries will grow at an annual rate of 25 percent and achieve an output of 160 billion yuan (US$26 billion) in Shenzhen by 2015, a senior government official said Saturday.

    Qiu Xuan, vice director of the Science and Technology Innovation Commission of Shenzhen, made the remarks at the International Forum on Constructing World-Class High-Tech Industrial Parks, held at Kempinski Hotel.

    The annual forum, sponsored by the Torch High Technology Industry Development Center of the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Administration Committee of Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park, helps industrial parks share experiences and explore new ways of development.

    This year’s theme was “industrial clusters and innovation ecology,” as the Chinese Government is encouraging the formation of innovative industrial clusters. Last year, the Ministry of Science and Technology selected 41 trial projects of industrial clusters across the country. Shenzhen High-Tech Industrial Park was designated as a pilot area for a next-generation Internet industry cluster.

    According to research by CCID Consulting, Shenzhen has many advantages in developing next-generation Internet, Qiu said.

    More than 200 people, including representatives from more than 30 national industrial parks and government officials and industrial representatives from South Korea, Belgium, Israel, Italy and the United States, took part in Saturday’s forum.

    Next-generation Internet mainly refers to Internet based on IPv6, which provides faster speed, higher security, and more IP addresses than the current IPv4 system.

    At present, most of the IP addresses worldwide are based on the IPv4 system, which was developed in 1977 and allows for a total of only 4.3 billion addresses. The last five blocks of IPv4 addresses were allocated Feb. 3, 2011, increasing the urgency of IPv6 deployment.