China's path to 6G

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(Source: Dominic Kurniawan Suryaputra on Unsplash)

China does not hide its 6G ambitions, but that doesn't mean it is keen to share details of its efforts to develop the next-gen tech.

6G is one of the central planks of the five-year tech plan issued a month ago by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). The plan, which also identifies 5G-A, AI, computing power and gigabit broadband as priorities, envisages launching 6G by 2030, although it does not specify a timetable.

To date, China's 6G milestones include the approval of 6GHz as a core spectrum band and the completion of device prototype trials, in one case achieving downlink speed of 10 Gbit/s. The first round of 6G trials was completed at the end of last year, and according to local media the second phase of trials is now underway and will continue until the end of 2027.

No other details about the trials have been disclosed, including the names of the participating organizations, although officials have claimed, without elaboration, that Chinese firms have achieved "breakthroughs" in 300 core 6G technologies.

We learnt a little bit more about China's 6G progress and thinking from some of the telco exhibits at the annual PT Expo in Beijing last month, as reported by local media.

Satellite-to-ground device

China Telecom was the most forthcoming, showcasing what it called a "collaborative architecture" to support ubiquitous coverage, with a single central network supported by multiple distributed subnets. As examples, it proposed an 800MHz cellular passive IoT subnet and a low-altitude subnet using non-cellular connectivity.

It also showed off a prototype terminal, developed jointly with Purple Mountain Laboratories and based on the 3GPP NTN standard, that is capable of satellite-to-ground handover.

China Mobile was also focused on satellite tech, exhibiting on-board distributed edge computing for 6G as part of its vision for space-ground connectivity, but offered few specifics.

From a macro perspective, the other recent milestone has been the formulation of the 'six networks' concept - the idea of building the next generation of national infrastructure in a coordinated way.

China anticipates spending 7 trillion Chinese yuan (US$1 trillion) in the current five-year plan on these core pieces of infrastructure, namely: cloud and data centers, next-gen telecom networks including 6G, a new energy grid, logistics, water networks and urban underground pipe networks.

Of course, this kind of centralized planning works well until it doesn't. While it takes a big-picture view, it is time-consuming, and the cookie-cutter methodology is often unsuitable for local conditions and routinely meets stiff bureaucratic resistance.

A prime example is the 'east-west' computing project, the idea of building AI infrastructure in western China where energy is cheap and abundant to support the economic engines in eastern China.

So far this hasn't been the case. According to 2025 data most of the computing power is still in the eastern seaboard, with the western data centers mostly supporting local inferencing demand.

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