By Sun Zhiyan, Department of Development Strategy and Regional Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.142, 2021 (Total 6207) 2021-6-1

Abstract: In the course of digitalization transformation driven by data elements, profound changes have taken place in the competition and labor division mechanism between regions. Regions with different development levels gain imbalanced development opportunities and benefits in digitalization transformation, and the problem of “platform” monopoly has become more prominent. Therefore, China needs to promote digital restructuring through coordinated regional development mechanism, in a bid to boost fairer, more inclusive and safer development of digital economy. This paper notes that China needs to accelerate data legislation at the national level, establish a unified data element governance mechanism across the country and incorporate it into the overall framework of coordinated regional development mechanism. Based on the data value chain, it is necessary to establish a mechanism for balancing the digital economy spatial layout and a data-centered mechanism for interests sharing between regions so as to realize fairer and more inclusive digitalization transformation. In view of data as public goods for the maximization of national public interests, China needs to take a positive stance and explore how to make data centers and cloud computing facilities in key fields become State-owned, and enable institutional arrangements to avoid commercial monopoly over key digital infrastructure due to excessive commercialization in order to better safeguard national data security and economic security.

Keywords: data elements, digital data, security zone, coordinated development mechanism