At the Jan 10 launch of Mate 10 Pro, a smart phone featuring the world's fastest 4.5G (or pre-5G) technology, Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei's consumer products division, said China wanted to be "the leader, not the follower" in the 5G generation.

"We were late in the 3G development, but we caught up with others in 4G and will be the global leader of the information and communications technology industry in the era of 5G," Yu said.

China has attached great importance to 5G development, said Cheng Lixin, CEO of ZTE mobile devices. Commercializing the 5G network by 2025 has been written into China's 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), and the world's second-largest economy is expected to become the world's largest 5G market before 2025, according to a report jointly released by GSMA Intelligence and the China Information and Communications Technology Academy.