Almost 72 per cent of Chinese SMEs have resumed work amid push to digitise businesses, ministry says
- For many small factories and service businesses, the process of returning to normal operations after disruptions from the coronavirus pandemic has been harder
- Chinese authorities have been pushing for SMEs to make use of technologies such as remote working and smart manufacturing platforms to resume operations quickly
As of Tuesday, 71.7 per cent of SMEs using cloud-based platforms had resumed production, up from 29.6 per cent a month earlier, said Qin Zhihui, deputy director of MIIT’s SME bureau.
“Others used cloud-based computing to help enterprises move their business operations online, promoting remote working, teleconferencing, online training, co-researching and e-commerce,” he added.
Workers at 60 per cent of Chinese firms still telecommuting under lockdown
The ministry also said in the notice that it had rolled out more than 370 online training courses for SMEs to stay informed about government policies and access opportunities to learn managerial and technological skills. It said the courses had been viewed more than 8 million times.
China’s cloud infrastructure, which enables remote working and online learning among other applications, has grown rapidly over the past few years. The market grew 66.9 per cent to US$3.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to a Canalys report last week, with Alibaba Group Holding’s Alibaba Cloud accounting for 46.6 per cent of the market, followed by Tencent Cloud with 18 per cent and Baidu’s AI Cloud with 8.8 per cent.
Alibaba is the parent company of the South China Morning Post.
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