China has revealed more details about its “Internet Plus” initiative that aims to help foster the growth of e-commerce and Web companies in the country as part of a wider effort aimed at stimulating the economy.

That plan, which was launched in March by China’s Premier of the State Council Li Keqiang, officially aims to “further deepen the integration of the Internet with the economic and social sectors, making new industrial modes a main driving force of growth by 2018,” the Xinhua news agency quoted Li as saying.

According to Li, the Internet Plus plan maps various development targets and supportive measures for key sectors of the country’s economy, and the government’s great hope is this will lead to “new industrial modes, including mass entrepreneurship and innovation, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, finance, public services, logistics, e-commerce, traffic, biology and artificial intelligence.”

To make this happen, Li says the government will encourage and assist more Chinese firms to boost their presence in international markets, while training and making better use of both local and foreign talents. In addition, the plan calls for financial support and tax references to be provided to key projects related to it, and encourages local governments to participate in this, and at the same time will also try to secure backing from private investors.

Going forward, China is also hoping to “launch more pilot zones and encourage innovation demonstration zones such as Zhongguancun, the Chinese version of Silicon Valley”.

Alongside Internet Plus, China has also conceived a new “national Big Data strategy” aimed at improving public administration. According to the State Council, China’s government agencies are suffering from that familiar bugbear of “siloed data”, which would be much better off being crunched and analyzed to deliver better insights.

One final tidbit from the announcement. Xinhua says that www.humanrights.cn, the official Chinese government site devoted to human rights, has gotten a refresh, its third since the site was first launched in 1998. The newly revamped site remains, according to Xinhua, “the only authoritative website on the issue [of human rights]” where among other things, interested netizens can read up on China’s progress in human rights protection and international research on human rights.

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