How fisheries can seize the era's opportunities brought by Internet Plus

After Premier Li Keqiang mentioned the concept of “Internet Plus” in the government work report, it has stayed at the top of the hot search term rankings. The Premier stressed that an “Internet Plus” action plan must be formulated to make emerging consumption, which uses the Internet as a carrier and involves online-offline interaction, flourish.

From broadband entering villages and information reaching households to the building of comprehensive fisheries services and government information platforms, and then to “smart fisheries” and aquatic product e-commerce, the pace of informatization in China's fisheries has never stopped. To let the aquatic industry board the informatization “high-speed rail train” of “Internet Plus”, it is necessary to accelerate “hardware” configuration and realize “Internet Plus fisheries”. The construction of rural informatization infrastructure, such as projects to bring fiber-optic networks into villages and households, must be sped up, and rural information service stations must have premises, staff and equipment. We must promptly incorporate the supporting facilities for rural e-commerce into the overall planning of new socialist countryside construction for coordinated consideration, design the needed warehousing and public service facilities with foresight, and at the same time use social capital such as e-commerce enterprises to improve the rural logistics distribution system, spurring tens of millions of distinctive “Taobao villages” to bloom everywhere.

⟦NL> We must accelerate “software” upgrades and realize “Internet Plus fisheries”. In response to the situation where “smart fisheries” require high investment and fishery-related enterprises shy away, resulting in weak driving effects, special subsidies should be set up to leverage social investment and promote the demonstration application of modern information technologies such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, mobile Internet and 3S, as well as intelligent agricultural equipment, in the field of fisheries production and operation. At the same time, fisheries information systems should be enriched and updated in a targeted way; put plainly, this means adding the content that fishermen most want to know and currently lack, such as “what is right to farm, what sells at a high price, and what means of production are the most cost-effective to buy”.

We must cultivate talent support and realize “Internet Plus fishermen”. Once the network is connected, it still must be used; the “last kilometer” problem of fishermen sharing the dividends of informatization is ultimately determined by fishermen's ability to master and apply technology. College student village officials, rural young people who lead others to prosperity, people returning home to start businesses and some self-employed households should be encouraged to become leaders in rural e-commerce entrepreneurship, driving new-type professional fishermen, family farm owners and cooperative members to broadly become market entities with Internet thinking and informatization technology, so they can taste the fruits borne by informatization.

In this way, “Internet Plus” will not only avoid becoming a new manifestation of the urban-rural gap, but will also become a new driving force that forces reform of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers”, giving fisheries wings of informatization as they advance toward modernization and pulling the broad ranks of fishermen to increase income on broadband and move toward a moderately prosperous life at the keyboard.