• The action plan published in November 2017 sets IPv6 milestones for the end of 2018, 2020 and 2025; it names no 2030 deadline.
  • Where IPv4 and IPv6 are both available, applications must prefer IPv6, and new network addresses stop using private IPv4 after 2020.
  • The plan’s instruments include a national IPv6 development monitoring platform and the national future network test facility.

On 26 November 2017, Xinhua published the full text of the Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Deployment of Internet Protocol Version Six (IPv6), issued by the general offices of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council. Accounts that turn it into a single-stack network plan for 2030 do not match the document: it sets staged deployment through 2025 and a preference for IPv6 wherever both protocols are available.

Three milestones to 2025

By the end of 2018, the target was 200 million active IPv6 users, at least 20 per cent of internet users, with support required across the 50 most-visited domestic commercial websites and applications, ministry- and province-level government sites, central state-owned enterprise portals, central and provincial news and broadcasting sites, some industrial internet applications, domain-name servers run by hosting providers and registrars, very large data centres, the five largest content delivery networks and half the cloud products of the ten largest cloud platforms.

Backbone, metro and access networks, cable networks, LTE and all newly supplied equipment and terminals were included.

By the end of 2020, the target rose to more than 500 million active users, above 50 per cent of internet users. New network addresses were to stop using private IPv4 addresses. Coverage extended to the top 100 commercial sites and applications, government and media sites at prefecture level and above, large data centres, the ten largest content delivery networks and all cloud products of the ten largest cloud platforms, broadcast networks, 5G, all new mobile and fixed terminals and international gateways.

By the end of 2025, China aimed for its IPv6 network, user and traffic scale to rank first in the world, with networks, applications and terminals all supporting IPv6 and the migration treated as complete.

Dual stack first, retirement later

The plan does not treat coexistence as a ban. Where a connection supports both IPv4 and IPv6, applications must prefer IPv6. Terminals that cannot handle IPv6 are to be guided out of service over time rather than switched off at a stroke. The 2020 instruction on private IPv4 addresses concerns how new addresses are allocated; it is not a withdrawal of existing IPv4 connectivity. The reviewed text sets no IPv4 prohibition, no shutdown order and no national single-stack deadline for 2030.

Monitoring, DNS and testbeds

Two pieces of infrastructure underpin the programme. The plan calls for accelerated construction of the national future network test facility, one of the country’s major research infrastructures, to carry out trials of new network architectures and applications. It also requires a national IPv6 development monitoring platform to measure networks, applications, terminals, users and traffic, with regular published reports.

On naming and addressing, the text mentions introducing root mirror servers, experiments with a new root service architecture, and coordinated management of IPv6 address applications, allocation and filing alongside the network real-name system. Interconnection capacity between backbone networks was set at 1 Tbps for 2018 and 5 Tbps for the 2019–2020 phase.

Xiong’an as the local test case

The clearest example of IPv6-first design sits outside the national plan. BTW’s reporting, drawing on an APNIC blog post, describes Xiong’an New Area, founded in April 2017 about 100 kilometres southwest of Beijing, as an IPv6-only city: a city-level IPv4-to-IPv6 transition system, SRv6 network slicing, a city computing centre with power usage effectiveness below 1.1, IPsec and blockchain-based security, and more than one million IoT terminals per square kilometre. It is a municipal blueprint, not a national mandate.

What operators should take from it

For carriers, data centres and hosting providers, the deadlines translate into procurement and configuration decisions: customer premises router defaults, CDN and cloud upgrades, DNS resolver support, address planning and filing. The preference rule for dual-stack traffic touches routing policy and peering agreements. Independent measurement is published by APNIC Labs, which tracks IPv6 capability for China; treat those numbers as measurement, not policy.

Three claims circulate widely and are not supported by the reviewed text: a national 2030 single-stack deadline, a legal ban on IPv4, and a 2021 “Future Internet” testbed paired with a target of 800 million active IPv6 users by 2023. The 2017 action plan sets out the milestones above, and they stop at 2025.