[8] In the 2011 Two Sessions Work Report, Premier Wen Jiabao announced support for e-commerce in China, describing it as a mechanism to expand domestic consumption.
[9]: 75 Chinese entrepreneurs in the IT industry such as Ma Huateng, the founder of Tencent and Yu Yang, CEO of Analysys International, first put forward the idea in 2013[10] in a bid to extend their businesses into some service sectors.
With the help of mobile Internet technology, traditional manufacturers can install hardware and software on cars, household appliances, accessories, and other industrial products to achieve functions of remote control, automatic data acquisition and analysis, etc.
Apart from Chinese government’s goal of upgrading China into a "powerful industrial country", the "Internet Plus" strategy will, most importantly, produce new economic forms and create suitable environment for the general public to make innovations or start their own business.
Moreover, according to the official statement, the plan exerts a profound influence on adapting to information economy, rebuilding innovation system, intriguing creativity, cultivating emerging industry and public service pattern.
Another argument from the South China Morning Post edited in Hong Kong writes that "Beijing needs to address censorship before any new strategy can be expected to have an impact", adding that "we all know the key thing about the internet is freedom.
If Beijing misses the point and continues to censor access to information, Premier Li’s new Internet Plus strategy will probably just get more Chinese to shop online rather than have any significant and long-term impact on the country’s long-awaited economic transformation.