On 23 July 2021, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) released the Notice on Accelerating the Large-scale Deployment and Application of Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). The biggest problem with IPv4 is the lack of network address resources, which seriously restricts the application and development of the Internet. The use of IPv6 will not only solve the problem of the network address resources, but also solve the obstacles encountered when a variety of devices are connected to the Internet.

The Notice puts forward specific goals for both 2023 and 2025:

By 2023:

  • Number of active IPv6 users to reach 700 million;
  • Number of IPv6 connections to the Internet of Things to reach 200 million;
  • IPv6 traffic to account for 50% of mobile network traffic;
  • IPv6 traffic to account for 15% of Metropolitan Area Network traffic.

By 2025:

  • China’s IPv6 network scale, user scale, and traffic scale to rank first in the world;
  • IPv6 to be supported across networks, platforms, applications, terminals, and industries;
  • Number of active IPv6 users to reach 800 million;
  • Number of IPv6 connections to the Internet of Things to reach 400 million;
  • Mobile network IPv6 traffic to account for 70%,
  • Proportion of IPv6 traffic on Metropolitan Area Network to reach 20%.

In addition to various measures to support the application of IPv6, China will promote standardization of innovations in the large-scale deployment and application of IPv6, and strengthen research and development of IPv6 standards. At the same time, China will also promote the development of national, sector, and association standards to establish an IPv6 standard system.

China will strengthen co-operation with international standardization organizations such as the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), and actively participate in the development of international standards related to IPv6.