MIIT Official Says China’s Slow Internet Puts Government, Telecoms Under Intense Pressure

Chinese government officials, take note of Shang Bing's open eyes and mouth. This is called 'answering a question,' and it's something you might want to consider trying every once in a while!

It’s no secret that China’s internet is pretty slow. Looking at the numbers makes it clear, and the message is struck home every time I leave China. When I went to Hong Kong last year, I was shocked at the speed of the internet. When I went to Singapore for our most recent Startup Asia conference, the internet in our hotel was way faster than the internet I have at home. It’s a little bit depressing.

But the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s Shang Bing wants us all to know that the government feels bad about it too. At a press event yesterday, Mr. Shang did something Chinese officials almost never do: directly answer a difficult question from the media. When asked about the disparity between broadband speeds in China and elsewhere in Asia, Shang responded:

We have always paid attention to the internet speed rankings published by many different organizations within China and abroad. The communications industry is clearly aware of the fact that there is a definite difference between the internet speed in China and in leading countries abroad, and there is a mood of urgency [about this in China]. To use some internet slang to describe it, we feel ‘pressure like a great mountain’ is upon us.

‘Pressure like a great mountain’ is a kind of pun; it sounds like the name “Alexander” in Chinese but it also evokes the idea of the sort of pressure one might feel when being crushed by a large mountain. In using it, Mr. Shang was making a kind of joke — another thing Chinese officials don’t do very often — but he was also acknowledging that MIIT and the telecom companies feel pressure to catch up with China’s neighbors on broadband speed.

Shang cited high infrastructure costs as a reason China has been slow to lay fiber-optic cables, which allow for faster connection speeds than typical phone lines. Those costs have been dropping, but Shang also pointed out that China’s vast and varied geography, as well as it’s massiv population, make implementing any new infrastructure expensive and difficult.

Still, with the weight of a figurative mountain on top of them, here’s hoping they get cracking on solving the problem anyway.

[Via Sina Tech]