China has launched a new drive to help its local Internet companies gain more impetus in international markets, and it’s putting its money where its mouth is by funneling more government cash into its emerging tech industry, according to reports.

The initiative, called “Internet Plus” was announced by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at the country’s annual parliamentary session last week. He said the plan is designed to bolster China’s mobile Internet, e-commerce and cloud computing sectors as part of a greater effort to support emerging industries in the country.

“The country has already established a 40 billion yuan (US$6.5 billion) emerging industry innovation investment fund, and more capital will be brought in and integrated,” said Li.

Some Chinese companies are already doing quite well, such as e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, which held the world’s biggest ever IPO last year; search giant Baidu Inc., which is considered the “Google” of China; and Tencent Holdings Ltd, the Internet gaming company. That’s not to say these companies have established the same kind of international presence as Amazon.com, Google or Facebook, but it’s still early.

For example, last Wednesday Alibaba subsidiary Aliyu announced the opening of its first foreign data center, in Silicon Valley, which will target Chinese companies based in the U.S. Meanwhile, Tencent has been pushing its popular messaging app WeChat in emerging markets across Southeast Asia.

Observers note that China often makes grand statements like this, but doesn’t always follow through. Nevertheless in this case, the statement seems significant considering China’s less-than-friendly attitude towards U.S. technology firms of late. China has stepped up its scrutiny of U.S. technology firms ever since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked the news of the agency’s mass surveillance programs. Since then, there have been multiple reports of U.S. firms being blacklisted by China’s government, including Microsoft and Cisco Systems, Inc. .

The report reiterates China’s desire to modernize its tech industry, noting a commitment to “press ahead with a nationwide project to deliver telecoms, radio, television and Internet service over a single broadband connection and accelerate the development of fiber-optic networks, significantly increase broadband speeds, develop logistics and express delivery services and ensure that new forms of Internet-based spending, which combine online-offline activities, come to thrive.”

Li also promised to redouble efforts to transform China from a manufacturer of quantity to one of quality, and said the government would provide subsidies to “accelerate equipment depreciation to push forward technological upgrading of traditional industries.”

“We will promote the extensive application of information technologies in industrialization, develop and utilize networking, digitalization and smart technologies and work to develop certain key areas first and make breakthroughs in these areas,” Li continued.

That statement might sound like little more than nationalist rhetoric, but the report also notes that China counts over 780 million broadband Internet users, a huge number of people on which to build an enterprising industry capable of developing products for the rest of the world.

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