Officials and experts are calling for greater efforts to build infrastructure for the internet of things industry and to accelerate its application in more sectors, as the IoT is widely seen as a pillar to bolster the development of China’s digital economy.

Their comments follow the value of China’s IoT industry growing to more than 2.4 trillion yuan ($375.8 billion) by the end of 2020, according to a top official at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the nation’s main industry regulator.

Vice-Minister Wang Zhijun said there have been more than 10,000 IoT patent applications in China, basically forming a complete industrial chain covering intelligent perception, information transmission and processing, and application services.