'China is winning the trillion-dollar 5G War': media

The coronavirus has not slowed China's steady deployment of 5G infrastructure. With tens of thousands of 5G base stations built every week in the country, domestic supply chains will be revived, cementing and advancing the country's position as the factory floor of the world, a Bloomberg article concluded.

Unparalleled 5G supply chains under development

The article pointed out that by the end of 2020, the number of 5G base stations in China will exceed 500,000, a fast climb from around 200,000 already in use. And the ultimate goal is to have five million.

By comparison, South Korea, currently with the highest penetration rate for 5G usage globally – 10 percent, only had 115,000 such stations operating as of April.

Each station costs around 500,000 yuan ($71,361) and has a long value chain that includes electrical components, semiconductors, antenna units and circuit boards.

With such large scale construction of 5G going on, the vast number of companies spawned by the project are all contributing to China's push to get ahead. They will master the production of all things 5G and become the suppliers of 5G parts that most countries will need soon, the author wrote.

A slew of Chinese companies are coming to the fore, manufacturing components from sensors and data clouds, to chips and collaborative robots and computer-controlled machinery.

The author also observed that global dependence on China will not come down, as other countries and telecom operators, ravaged by COVID-19, will struggle to match China's spending.

Goldman Sachs estimates that China's capital expenditure on 5G could peak at $30 billion this year, up from $5 billion last year. And the spending by 2025 will reach $1.4 trillion.

5G to strengthen China's advantage in manufacturing

5G stands for the 5th generation of wireless network technology. It's an important part of China's "New Infrastructure" campaign, which aimed at furthering "the deep integration of the Internet of Things" and the real economy.

It will lead to a more automated industrial landscape, giving China a renewed advantage where it already dominates: manufacturing.

How so? For the industrial complex, 5G will enable greater connectivity between machines and much more data transfer and collection, which is expected to have a big impact through increasingly efficient and automated factory equipment, and tracking the movement of inventory and progress of production lines and assets.

Manufacturing will take up nearly 40 percent of 5G-enabled industry output, according to Bernstein Research analysts.