ZHENGZHOU -- Central China's Henan province has built 36,000 5G base stations, covering all its urban areas above the county level, according to local authorities.

The populous province plans to increase the number of 5G users to 14 million with a total of 40,000 base stations by the end of the year, according to a provincial three-year action plan on stepping up the construction of 5G infrastructure and enhancing its application from 2020 to 2022.

The number of 5G base stations in Henan is expected to reach about 168,000 by 2022 and the industrial scale is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan (about $14.9 billion), said an official with the Department of Industry and Information Technology of Henan province.

Henan has beefed up the use of 5G tech in smart manufacturing, unmanned mining technology, public transport and healthcare over recent years.