互联网+
What Does 互联网+ Mean?
Born from Premier Li Keqiang's 2015 Government Work Report, 'Internet Plus' was Beijing's grand plan to bolt the internet onto every industry imaginable — farming, finance, healthcare, you name it. It quickly became both a genuine policy buzzword and a joke: slap '互联网+' in front of anything and suddenly your business plan sounds cutting-edge. Think of it as China's version of adding 'AI-powered' to a product pitch to make investors swoon.
Origin Story
互联网+ (Internet Plus) was elevated to national policy status by Premier Li Keqiang in his 2015 Government Work Report, describing the strategy of integrating internet technologies with traditional industries to drive economic upgrading. The term instantly became ubiquitous in Chinese business and media discourse — every industry from agriculture to manufacturing to education announced its '互联网+' strategy. The phrase's rapid descent from policy innovation to corporate buzzword to internet meme reflected the Chinese internet's capacity to absorb and satirize even the most official of language.
Cultural Context
In March 2015, Premier Li Keqiang formally introduced 'Internet Plus' as a national strategy to integrate mobile internet, cloud computing, big data, and IoT with traditional industries. It unleashed a startup boom and mountains of government funding. Entrepreneurs rushed to brand everything as '互联网+农业' or '互联网+医疗,' spawning both genuine innovation and spectacular failures, making the phrase a symbol of both techno-optimism and hype culture in mid-2010s China. The term originated and spread primarily on Zhihu.
Similar Expressions in English
福报996直播带货
How Is It Used?
Chinese Explanation (中文解释)
政府提出的将互联网与传统行业深度融合的发展战略，也被网友戏称为万能公式。