Chapter 162: Strength is scarier than anything else
In 1992, then Senator Gore, now the Vice President of the United States, proposed the U.S. Information Highway Act. The following year, the U.S. government announced the implementation of a new high-tech plan aimed at building the information age highway - Information Highway, with the Internet as the prototype, so that all Americans can easily share massive information resources.
In the State of the Union address published by the US President, it was proposed that it would spend 20 years to spend $2,000 to $400 billion to build the US national information infrastructure, as the focus of US development policies and the basis of industrial development. The advocates believe that it will forever change people's lives, work and communication methods, and have a deeper impact than the Industrial Revolution.
At the end of last year, U.S. Vice President Gore said that the U.S. government's policy on information highways has been initially formed and will be submitted to Congress for discussion in the form of a draft law soon.
"The so-called information highway refers to the proposed national information network that connects American universities, research institutions, enterprises and ordinary American families. It is an infrastructure for the purpose of information exchange. The name, terminology and design of this information infrastructure are all borrowed from the transportation infrastructure that began to be built in the 1950s and has served as one of the pillars of the US economic development in the past few decades. "Fan Wubing tried to briefly describe the concept of the information highway to Mr. Zhu, and said, "It is also an infrastructure, but the importance of the information highway."
It is no less than, and may even exceed the significance of highways for the national economy. Data, text, sound, images and TV programs can all be sent and received through telephone lines, cable TV transmission lines or wireless telephone networks. In the future, the information highway will integrate existing computer networking services, telephone and cable TV functions, and become the carrier of extremely wide service projects such as education, health, entertainment, commerce, and finance. The biggest difference from existing one-way media such as television is that the information highway will make information consumers an active provider of information in the form of two-way communication."
Boss Zhu listened with relish. He mainly focused on economic work and did not know much about this matter.
In fact, the construction of a national information network was proposed by Clinton and Gore the year before. Shortly after they took office last January, Clinton authorized the establishment of the Information Infrastructure Task Force, led by Commerce Secretary Brown, Vice President Gore, Chairman of the President's Economic Advisory Committee Tyson, and a group of economic, legal, technical experts and representatives from the telecom industry. After months of careful preparation, a mature bill was proposed.
Similar to the situation where the U.S. transportation network can directly reach factories, schools, hospitals, entertainment facilities and almost all homes, the information highway designers hope to build information networks that can reach the same level of popularity, allowing Americans to obtain information extremely conveniently.
With the large-scale popularization of personal computers in the United States and the promotion of intercom, the information circulation between tens of millions of computers mainly depends on the transmission of binary data in telephone lines. However, the channels for information exchange between computers are still only equivalent to many small paths when cars first appeared. The speed, capacity and efficiency cannot be improved, and the path is not very smooth.
The Information Expressway will be an additional thoroughfare outside the existing Yangyan Trail. After compression, data can be quickly transmitted at thousands of times the speed. Through optical cables, the Information Expressway will not only become a data transmission medium, but will also transport various services such as television, telephone, teaching, and finance, becoming the most important communication revolution after the popularization of telephone in the United States.
"The Americans' strength is so terrible." Boss Zhu said helplessly after hearing Fan Wubing's introduction.
Although China wants to claim to be a big country, its overall national strength is much behind. At best, it is a big country, but not a strong country. In some aspects, it can only be considered a weak country. Everyone is very clear about this matter, but no one is willing to stand up and admit it publicly.
In Chinese philosophy, face is very important. You can talk casually when you close the door, but when you come to public occasions, everyone has to wear masks to be a human being. As the saying goes, illness comes from the mouth, disaster comes from the mouth, things can be eaten, and words cannot be said randomly.
Fan Wubing then hit Boss Zhu's confidence, "The investment required to build an information expressway exceeds most large-scale projects in history. From 1959 to 1963, the government investment in the construction of an interstate expressway in the United States was 38 billion US dollars. In the past four years, the total expenditure of the American business community to purchase computers and office equipment on a large scale was 22 billion US dollars. In the next four years, the investment that the American short-distance telephone company alone is expected to be as much as 50 billion US dollars."
Boss Zhu was immediately frightened by this number and said with some embarrassment, "According to what you said, our country cannot afford this project. There are more Chinese than Americans. If you want to build an information highway of the same size, it will take at least 300 billion US dollars to invest in the same year-on-year calculation? Our domestic foreign exchange reserves are only a few hundred billion US dollars, where can we have this spare money?"
Fan Wubing knew that Boss Zhu was telling the truth. At the end of last year, the country's foreign exchange reserves were only 211.1 billion US dollars, but this year it has been rising. By the end of April, the figures were counted, which was the first time that it exceeded 30 billion US dollars. This is a very gratifying progress. However, compared with the 50 billion US dollars mentioned by Fan Wubing, or the 300 billion US dollars that Boss Zhu himself estimated, it is really a drop in the bucket.
Even if the government is trying hard to carry out this information highway project, what is the profit point? Can it really make the Chinese stand tall among the world's powerful countries all at once? These words are unpredictable, and of course, Boss Zhu will not agree to such a thing.
According to general inertial thinking, everyone's consciousness should be like this. Let Americans try it first. If the results are good, it will be not too late for us to take this project! After a few years, we can see the impact of this information highway, our economy has taken off, and we have more money, and the time will be almost ripe.
Fan Wubing also understood this truth, but he also knew the relationship between information technology and time. The earlier this thing is, the better the effect. If you make it later, you will make a lot of money. The inequality in information will cause the Chinese to lose many opportunities.
"I'm not waiting for time--" Fan Wubing sighed, looking very depressed.
Boss Zhu heard that Fan Wubing's voice was completely different from usual. He was obviously very worried and curious. Besides, Americans have just started to do this, so why would Fan Wubing be so anxious? So he said, "If you really want to do it, we can only provide policy support. This money can't be obtained. At most, the local government can cooperate with you."
Fan Wubing was waiting for this sentence, but it was not easy to immediately show his complacent intention to succeed in his plan, so he replied, "I hope to lay optical cables in provincial capitals first and build basic nodes. When I have money to develop this thing in the future, I won't waste much time."
This is like building a highway. Although there are not many Chinese vehicles, once the expressway is built, Chinese people who have tasted the sweetness will find a way to buy cars. The same is true for building an information highway. Once the backbone network is built and the basic services are guaranteed, ordinary users only need to purchase their own computers and equipment, and they will soon be able to enter the international Internet to travel.
Fan Wubing just wanted to build optical cable communication facilities one step ahead of time and take the lead. When others reacted, he had already become the de facto overlord with these networks. If he wanted to surpass himself, it would not be as simple as just talking with his mouth.
"Since you are willing to spend money, I can't help but cooperate, right?" Boss Zhu said with a smile.
In fact, if Fan Wubing really lays optical cables in provincial capitals, it would be a big project. As for how much output benefits and taxes can be, Boss Zhu cannot estimate it for the time being, but roughly estimate that this project will not be less than tens of billions of dollars, right?
This matter is beneficial to solving employment opportunities or driving local economic development. The key is that Fan Wubing is willing to spend money, which is the most important thing. It is like private investment in the construction of a highway. As long as your road is placed there, the country will benefit.
So the two of them talked about this matter and agreed that Fan Wubing sent a special person to negotiate with relevant ministries and commissions of the State Council to discuss the implementation plan of this matter. For specific matters, Boss Zhu still suggested that Fan Wubing set up another special department to operate the matter so that everyone can have a clearer understanding of this.
Fan Wubing naturally agreed with this point. He just wanted to create an additional network operation company under his subordinates, spend money to purchase his own products and then use it to build his own backbone network. It is really interesting to think about it. Perhaps before the network really generates profits, the only thing that benefits from it is the tax department.
Of course, in order to make the network use as soon as possible, Fan Wubing first identified several key industries, namely medical care, education technology, business information exchange, talent exchange and other aspects. These are industries that require timely information exchange. If his information chain plays a role in it, many similar departments will want to join their network system.
Chapter completed!