At the beginning of 2010, looking back at the achievements and experiences of China’s electronic information industry during the 11th Five-Year Plan period and looking into the opportunities and challenges the industry will face during the 12th Five-Year Plan period is of historical significance to connecting the past and the future.

Information technology is the key driver for today’s economic and social development in the world. Electronic information industry is the mainstay industry playing a strategic, fundamental and pioneering role in the national economy. Currently, the international financial crisis keeps spreading, and its impact on the real economic activities is also deepening. How to maintain a steady economic growth has become a major issue that countries in the world have to address.

This column is to parse the policy on convergence of ICT and traditional industries, keep abreast of what is going on in the convergence, showcase CCID Consulting's theoretical and research results regarding formulation and assessment of the convergence strategy, and summarizes cutting edge practices and experience in eight national pilot areas for convergence and other regions to provide references and lessons learned for local governments in convergence o ICT and traditional industry.

“Stimulating domestic demand” has become the consensus for coping with the global financial crisis, whereas “appliances to countryside” has become an effective weapon for stimulating domestic demand for electronic information products. Today, with a constantly progressing society and an increasingly growing economy, the government attaches increasing importance to the issues of “farmers, countryside and agriculture”; and the government has taken active measures to provide subsidies to consumers in the rural areas, to improve rural spending environment. Since the pilot implementation of the program in the end of 2007, products receiving subsidies within the framework of “appliances to countryside” now have extended from appliances to computers and automobiles etc.