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 May 17.

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'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.