BEIJING - China plans to build an integrated national big data center as the country seeks to tap the value of massive data resources in a more efficient and safer way, an official said on Wednesday.

The center aims to promote better sharing of public data for wider application, especially for data in sectors such as credit, transportation, health and employment, said Zhang Feng, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

China will also study the formulation of a development roadmap for industrial data to push the integration of big data and manufacturing.

China will strengthen security protection in the collection, storing, application and sharing of big data.

Zhang shared the information at an MIIT conference to mark World Telecommunication and Information Society Day on May 17, with "Big Data for Big Impact" as this year's theme.

China's data volume is projected to expand at an annualized rate of over 50 percent and account for 21 percent of worldwide data by 2020.