China has initiated a plan to integrate the country's e-commerce and social services sector with the World Wide Web in order to promote modern practices and speed up development.
According to local sourcesChinese microblogging website Weibo, as well as e-commerce stores Taobao and Alipay, have partnered to launch a City Service application in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.
The City Service app, which is the first in the country, will give citizens access to a database of pertinent laws and other information such as immigration, traffic, marriage and other issues.
This City Service app is an offshoot of the Internet Plus policy that was put forward by Prime Minister Li Keqiang in March.
The move is not only expected to open up new industries, but also support business development. Experts say that, in a decade, the Internet is expected to create about 46 million jobs in China.
The partnership between Weibo, Taobao and Alipay has been described as progressive. Experts have highlighted on the importance of collaboration between the Chinese government and large corporations in the county to implement the Internet Plus policy.
Although the City Service app is only available in Hangzhou at the moment, reports indicate that it will be launched in about 10 cities (including Guangzhou, Shanghai, Xiamen, Ningbo, Datong, Changzhi, Linfen, Taiyuan, Datong, Yuncheng and Nanchang) later in the month. A majority of the cities (from first-tier to third-tier) set to benefit from the new City Service app are in the northern part of the country.