China to give digital economy a new push

China will strengthen its core capability in digital economy development and enhance the quality of digital economy, in a bid to build up the country's new strengths in digital economy, People's Daily reported.

With rapid development of emerging digital technologies, such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence, digital economy has become the most active, influential industrial sector with fastest growth.

The scope and scale of digital economy have also been extended greatly, covering abundant products, services, business modes and industries.

In recent years, the global technology industry is facing increasingly fierce competition. Some major economies are sparing no efforts to strengthen their layouts in digital technological innovation, technical standards and international rulemaking, in order to seize opportunities from the competition.

China, depended on huge domestic market, has speeded up infrastructure construction, strengthened technological innovation, and propelled the digital economy at strong momentum. China has competitive edges in consumption and internet, becoming a major force to promote global digital economy development.

During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020), China built the world's largest optical-fiber and 4G network, with over 99 percent of the villages across the country connected to both technologies. The number of 4G base stations also accounted for over half of the global total.

According to a white paper released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China's digital economy was worth nearly $5.4 trillion last year, ranking second in the world. That represented a year-on-year growth of 9.6 percent, the fastest in the world.

China has taken an active role in innovation of digital economy. In sectors such as mobile payment, Chinese original business modes emerged and led the world. Some startups witnessed rapid development, attracting a large amount of investment.

Meanwhile, China's digital economy also has some problems, such as unbalanced development in different regions, industries and enterprises. Some core technologies, including precision sensors, integrated circuits, operating systems, industrial software, and open source platforms depend heavily on foreign companies.

Faced with strengths and weaknesses, the country should seize opportunities to build its new advantages in digital economy as the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035 have pointed out.

With extensive market space and abundant application scenarios, China's digital economy development should be extended from consumption to the field of production, and enhance total-factor productivity of real economy.

China's digital economy has competitive edges in innovation of business modes. In the future, more efforts should be put in hard technologies, strengthen weakness in core technologies, and ensure stable development and industry safety of digital economy.

At present, China's strengths in digital economy embody more in products and services. In the coming years, more efforts should be put in technical standards and governance rules, and speed up the formulation of domestic digital technical standards, digital trade rules, and digital governance rules.