HONG KONG — China is expected to launch the world’s longest quantum communication network by 2016, media reports said, which would span from Beijing to Shanghai and rely on what is considered to be the industry’s most secure encryption technology.

Scientists leading the project told Xinhua the network would stretch some 2,000km from Beijing to Shanghai and would be extended worldwide by 2030. Under the plan, China would become the first major power to outline its efforts and the time frame for putting the technology into large-scale use, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday.

“China’s quantum information science and technology is developing very fast and China leads in some areas in this field,” Mr Pan Jianwei, professor at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), was quoted saying by the official Xinhua news agency in a report on Sunday. Mr Pan is the lead scientist of the national quantum communication project.

Quantum communication technology is considered to be almost unhackable, with any attempt to intercept the encryption triggering an alteration in the physical forms of the quantum data, alerting the system to the attempt.

The technology has been proposed by IBM scientists since the 1980s but until now, has been limited to only short distances.

Mr Pan told the International Conference on Quantum Communication, Measurement and Computing last weekend that China’s quantum network for Asia to Europe would be ready by 2020 and the global one by 2030, Xinhua reported.

Mr Chen Yuxiang, the chief engineer for the construction of the Beijing-Shanghai link, told the Post that the main infrastructure for the network would be completed between the end of the year and the middle of next year. Xinhua said the network would be used by the central government, military and critical business institutions, such as banks.

China’s leaders have been concerned with developing the next generation of Internet infrastructure, following the United States spying revelations last year by former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who claimed that the US was targeting network backbones, where huge amounts of data were being transmitted.

The Post earlier reported that China also has plans to put up the world’s first quantum communication satellite in 2016. Other governments in Japan, Europe and Canada are also set to launch their quantum communication satellite projects.

In the US, a private company has also sought funding from the federal government for a proposed 10,000km network that would link major cities, the Post said. Agencies.

Today, 2014-11-5, http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindia/china/china-build-longest-quantum-network