As a new generation of intelligent comprehensive digital information infrastructure, 6G will break through the traditional scope of mobile communication, achieving deep fusion of communications with intelligence, sensing, computing, and security.

6G作为新一代智能化综合性数字信息基础设施，将突破传统移动通信范畴，实现通信与智能、感知、计算、安全等深度融合。

Zhang Yunming, Vice Minister, Minister of Industry and Information Technology at the 2025 6G Development Conference in Beijing, November 13, 2025.

China’s 6G narrative is no longer abstract. As 2025 closes, Beijing now presents 6G as a concrete, staged, and strategically aligned successor to 5G. It is deeply embedded in the Digital China strategy and fully synchronized with the Party’s broader vision of New Quality Productive Forces and AI-driven modernization.

A great deal of current information on China’s 6G program was released at the recently concluded 2025 6G Development Conference held in Beijing on November 13th. This essay represents a quick summary of that material. My sources are listed below.

Three major themes repeat through the PRC media reporting, in both Chinese and English. These are not the only themes, but the consistency and prominence of these three messages suggests each has been officially sanctioned.

6G is now a national-level R&D program entering its second phase

China has completed first-phase 6G key-technology trials (2022–2024) and has moved into a second phase focused on technical solution testing and prototype building (2025–2026). This is not a laboratory experiment; it is a centrally coordinated, industry-wide engineering effort.

The roadmap is explicit:

Phase 1 (2022–2024): identify key 6G technologies;

Phase 2 (2025–2026): 6G prototype development and technical solution trials;

Phase 3 (2027–2030): 6G system verification and pre-commercial equipment.

This sequencing mirrors the methodical buildout of 5G, but with deeper international standardization ambitions and broader industrial participation.

6G is framed as an evolution of 5G, not a rupture

One noteworthy point consistently made is that PRC officials stress that 6G must “stand on the shoulders of 5G.” This emphasis aligns with Digital China’s long-running principle of “thickening” the digital foundation rather than “chasing” speculative frontier technologies.

The GSMA’s “two-step” framing, fully unlock 5G potential then advance naturally to 6G, is quoted approvingly. The PRC message mirrors this: 5G is not finished and 6G is the long arc of 5G’s evolution.

The political meaning is clear. Digital China is cumulative, iterative, and strategically sequenced. Each layer of New Type Infrastructure (computing power, networks, data, AI) reinforces the next.  This has been the essence of New Type Infrastructure since it was formally defined in 2020.

The real frontier is the fusion of 6G with AI, especially at the terminal layer

Perhaps the most strategically revealing reports concern AI terminals (AI终端). The reports argue that 5G’s promise was constrained less by networks than by the stagnation of terminal innovation.  Instead 6G is now positioned as the enabler of an AI-native device ecosystem consisting of: AI phones, AI PCs, AR/VR intelligent devices, embodied intelligent robots, low-altitude drones, and intelligent connected vehicles.

As a whole, PRC experts described 6G as the network architecture of the intelligent agent era (智能体时代). This matches Digital China’s long-term north star: a society of ubiquitous, interoperable, intelligent terminals embedded in a unified, data-driven national digital infrastructure.

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