China's digital economy reaches a turning point from big to strong

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On April 25, the Cyberspace Administration of China released the Digital China Development Report (2020) at the main forum of the Fourth Digital China Summit. The report pointed out that my country's digital economy has jumped to second place in the world, and the added value of the core industries of the digital economy accounts for 7.8% of GDP. The average tariff level of fixed broadband and mobile data has dropped by more than 95% compared with 2015, and the average network speed has increased by more than 7 times.

In the era of big data, the rapid development of China's digital economy has injected new impetus into the Chinese economic giant. As of December 2020, the number of Internet users in my country reached 989 million, and the Internet penetration rate reached 70.4%. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, telemedicine, online education, sharing platforms, and collaborative office have developed rapidly. The Internet industry has played a positive role in promoting economic recovery and ensuring social operations, helping my country become the only major economy in the world to achieve positive economic growth in 2020. In the post-epidemic era, China's economy achieved an impressive year-on-year growth of 18.3% in the first quarter.

The digital economy includes both the stock transfer of the traditional economy through digitalization relying on information technology and technology upgrades, such as the new economic model derived from the upgrade of Internet technology (artificial intelligence, etc.) supported by 5G. More importantly, the era of big data is also a profound new technological revolution, which will give rise to new productivity and create new economic results.

Competition in the digital economy is quite fierce, and various economies are still running on a tight track with no end in sight. According to the blue book "Global Digital Economy Competitiveness Development Report" recently released by the Information Institute of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, the United States has ranked first in the world in digital economy competitiveness for four consecutive years, while Singapore and China ranked second and third. Although the gap between China and the United States in digital economy competitiveness is narrowing year by year, China's digital economy is still large but not strong. China's digital economy faces the dual tasks of high-speed growth (expanding scale) and high-quality development (enhancing connotation).

It is worth noting that the Chinese people also urgently need to carry out the digital economy enlightenment, and to reverse the bias in the understanding of the Chinese people, market entities and Internet practitioners. First, we must calm down from the carnival of e-commerce online shopping. The excitement of platform sales is in the early stage of the digital economy. Second, we must change the profit-seeking behavior of platform economic entities blindly pursuing business models and innovations to pursue traffic to create a trend, and encourage them to invest more capital in technological innovation, especially in strengthening the core and supplementing the supply chain. Third, we must upgrade end users from basic lifestyles such as mobile payments, social entertainment, live streaming and simple commercial transactions to the track of high-quality development of the digital economy.

The country should not only have a systematic digital economy development strategy, but also enhance the sustainable development momentum of the digital economy by making up for its shortcomings and strengthening its foundation. When the world, especially developed economies such as the United States, realize that 5G technology has become the core productivity of national competition, China should master the advantages of new Internet technologies and let the information flow in the big data era serve the digital economy. If China has laid a good foundation for the digital economy in the IT era, China will improve the big data system in the AI ​​era supported by 5G technology or higher generation technology, and realize the transformation, upgrading and high-quality development of the digital economy.

The 14th Five-Year Plan and the Outline of the Long-Term Goals for 2035 propose to give full play to the advantages of massive data and rich application scenarios, promote the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, enable the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, give birth to new industries, new formats and new models, and strengthen new engines of economic development. Specifically, it is necessary to accelerate the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G, artificial intelligence, and big data centers, promote the coordinated and integrated development of traditional industries and new infrastructure, and strive to create an intensive, efficient, economical, intelligent, green, safe and reliable modern infrastructure system.

In China, the digital economy has penetrated into the national lifestyle and all areas of the market, so China has the advantage of writing a digital economic legend. To create a digital economic legend, we must always pay attention to data security and build a safety net. Of course, it is also necessary to give full play to the first-mover advantage of the digital RMB.