Chinese government predicts cloud computing explosion

The cloud computing industry in China, worth about 150 billion yuan in 2015, is expected to skyrocket to 430 billion yuan by 2019, with a few key Chinese firms becoming players in the global market, the government said on Monday. The industry grew by 30% in 2015, and leading companies nearly doubled their revenue last year. But major obstacles, including redundant data centers, and the lack of a legal framework ensuring data security, present challenges for the sector, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Caixin reports that in a three-year plan issued by the ministry, authorities forecast strong growth for the industry as a whole and said it would offer support for cloud services provided to manufacturing enterprises and government offices. The new but rapidly growing market has lured domestic and foreign tech giants to invest billions of dollars.