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n recent years, China’s digital economy has made remarkable progress, with new business forms and models emerging one after another. The digital economy has become a new engine for high-quality economic development in China. On the scale of the digital economy, China has ranked second globally for many years. Especially since the outbreak of COVID-19, the digital economy and digital technologies have played a key role in fighting the pandemic and restoring production and life. China’s digital economy scale will reach RMB 50.2 trillion in 2022, with a year-on-year growth of 10.32%, according to the 2022 China Digital Economy Policy and Development Research Report  released by the Research Center of E-commerce of 100ec.
Supporting measures have been deepened and implemented
Since the “National big data strategy” was put forward in 2015, China has deepened and unveiled relevant policies to promote digital economy development. Since 2019, top-level designs for the digita l
economy have been promulgated at the national level, including the Impl ementation Pl an for the National Digital Economy Innovation and Devel opment Pil ot Zones  and the Opinions on Buil ding a Better System and Mechanism for Factor Al l ocation. The Outline of the National Plan for the 14th Five-Year Plan in 2021 c lea rly stated t hat “de veloping t he d i g it a l e c onomy, b o o s t i n g industrial digitization and digital industrialization, and promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy”, which has provided policy support for the development of the digital economy in various fields and across multiple dimensions.
According to the 14th Five-Year Pl an for the Devel opment of the Digital Economy , during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China deeply implemented a development strategy for the digital economy, constantly improved digital infrastructure, accelerated the cultivation of new forms and models of business, and achieved positive results in promoting digital industrialization and industrial digitalization. In 2020, the value added of core industries in the digital economy accounted for 7.8% of
China’s GDP, and the digital economy has provided a strong driving force for sustained and sound economic and social development.
According to the  White Paper on the Devel opment of China’s Digital Economy (2021), during the 13th Five-Year Plan period, the digital transformation of China’s agriculture s t e a d i l y a d v a n c e d , t h e d i g it a l transformation of the manufacturing industry continued to deepen, and the digital development of the service industry entered the fast lane. In 2020,
newdivide歌词industrial enterprises above a designated size had a digitization rate of 49.4% for production equipment, while more than 470,000 new enterprises were added to the cloud and online retail sales reached RMB 11.76 trillion, ranking first globally for eight consecutive years. Meanwhile, international cooperation in the digital economy is currently deepening. The G20 Digital Economy Development and Cooperation Initiative  has won broad praise from around the world, while remarkable progress has been made in information infrastructure connectivity, and “Silk Road E-commerce” cooperation has yielded fruitful results. Chinese digital economy platform companies have accelerated their efforts to go global, by increasing their inf luence and competitiveness.
However, the development of China’s digital economy also faces some problems and challenges. For
example, the innovation capability in key areas still remains insufficient, and the industry chains and supply chains controlled by other countries have not fundamentally changed. The digital divide between different industries, regions and groups has not been effectively bridged and is even widening. The scale of data resources is huge, but the potential value has not yet been fully released. The digital economy governance system also needs to be further improved.
Local governments are
promoting the development of the digital economy
With the continuous improvement of the status of the “digital economy” across the country, “digital economy” has also become a buzzword in many loca l government work repor ts. During the 14th Five-Year Plan, local
The Digital Economy  Has Become A New Engine  for High-Quality  Economic Development in China
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governments are speeding up the development of the digital economy. A series of plans have been made for the development of the digital economy in light of actual local conditions, so as to accelerate building the basis for the development of the digital economy.
Zhejiang has put forward the Overall Plan of Digital Reform, taking the digital economy as the “No. 1 project” to focus on. Shanghai issued the Opinions on Comprehensively Promoting the Digital Transformation of Shanghai City , which fully released the value of data elements and insists on holistic transformation, all-round empowerment and revolutionar y r e s h a p i n g. T h e R e g u l a t i o
n s o f Guangdong Province on Promoting the Digital Economy  were adopted on July 30th and came into force on September 1st. Sichuan has proposed that its digital economy scale will exceed RMB 2 trillion by 2022.
According to the 14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development  recently issued by the State Council, the value added of core industries in the digital economy will account for 10% of GDP by 2025.
Local governments have set core industrial targets for the digital economy by 2022 and have identified key industrial sectors according to local conditions. Zhejiang has proposed to deep en t he “No. 1 project ” of the digita l economy, expand and strengthen industries such as digital security, integrated circuits, intelligent computing and intelligent photovoltaics, promote the development of future industries such as brain-like intelligence and quantum information, and strive to increase the added value of core industries of the digital economy by 12%. Hunan has put forward the promotion of digital industrialization, expanding such advantageous industries as advanced computing, Beidou application, ultra-high-def inition videos and intelligent connected vehicles, and has laid out future industries such a s opto elec t ron ic i n for mat ion, quantum information and artificial intelligence.
In addition, many provinces are
speeding up the deployment of new infrastructure construction. In 2022, Jiangsu will focus on building digital-intelligent integrated infrastructure, promoting the smart transformation of traditional infrastructure, and encou ra g i ng qua l i f ied a rea s to build the ubiquitous interconnected intelligent sensing city-level Internet of Things to create an urban digital t w i n. S h a n d o n g h a s p r o p o s e d implementing a “double gigabit” 5G and fixed network project, building and opening 160,000 5G base stations, carrying out actions to improve the quality and quantity of data centers, accelerating the construction of a national backbone of Internet direct connection points, and promoting the establishment of the International Communications Import and Export Bureau in Shandong.
Four trends for the future development of the digital economy
For the f irst time, the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 2035 Vision Outline put forward the important position of digitalization in China’s overall modernization drive, set out 13 overall goals for accelerating the building of a digital economy, a d i g it a l s o c ie t y a n d a d i g it a l government, and mapped out a grand blueprint for building a digital China. The digital economy is becoming a new driving force for China to realize the long-range goals of 2035 and its second centenary goals.
The report shows that in the future, the country’s digital economy w i l l fol l o w fo u r m aj or t r e nd s:
strengthening core technologies, integrating and unif ying digital economic governance, accelerating the training of digital economy talents, and speeding up the construction of digital economy infrastructure.
F i r s t , s t r e n g t h e n i n g c o r e technologies. This is still an important trend in China’s digital economy development, and will help to solve the problem that the digital economy is large but not strong. The future d e v e lopme nt t r e nd show s t h at China’s digital economy still needs to intensify research and development in
many aspects, such as basic network technology, high-end chips, big data technology and cloud computing, so as to strengthen core technologies.
Second, integrating and unifying digital economic governance. It is necessary to coordinate the governance behaviors among various subjects, such as the government, netizens, platforms and various virtual organizations, to promote the integration and interaction of “technology governance, rule of law and autonomy” in the digital economy. The new generation of information technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, cloud computing and 5G, will continue to deepen integration with the governance systems, optimize and upgrade governance structures and processes.
Third, accelerating the training of digital economy talents. At the level of core talents in the field of the digital economy, China needs to accelerate the training of core talents for the digital economy. The transformation a nd development of t he d ig ita l economy has promoted significant changes in the demand structure for digital talents and has put forward higher requirements for digital talents. The national and local governments should strengthen top-level design and planning, lead the cultivation of digital talents, and build a digital talent training mechanism. Enterprises, universities and research institutes should give full play to their respective subject advantages to promote the training of relevant talents in the field of the digital economy.
F o u r t h , s p e e d i n g u p t h e construction of digital economy in f rast r uc t u re. Recent ly, ma ny departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission, have made it clear that the deployment of 5G, data centers and other new infrastructure construction will be appropriately advanced, and various parties are speeding up the drawing of a new round of “new infrastructure” planning. China needs to accelerate the deployment of new infrastructure that will determine the development of the digital economy in the future.