China has made great strides in reshaping its own economy through technology. This is one of the highlights of the 2021 Global Digital Economy Conference which concluded on Tuesday (04.08.2021/XNUMX/XNUMX) in Beijing.
During the two-day event (it opened on Monday), cutting-edge technologies with data-driven innovation were on display, while participants focused on the Digital economy as a new driver of China's economic growth despite the COVID-19 pandemic.
Digitalization in China's economy maintained a high growth rate of 9,7 percent in 2020 amid the pandemic and global economic downturn, according to a release from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT).
The escalation of the country's digital economy reached 39,2 trillion yuan (about 6,1 trillion US dollars) last year, which represents the 38,6 percent of GDP.
“As people are more connected than ever due to increasingly diversified means of communication, we have all benefited from the progress of digitalisation, especially during the most difficult time of the pandemic,” said Guido Giacconi, Vice President of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China.
“The digital economy has become a key to achieving recovery economic and promote sustainable development “with the global economy still in a fragile state of recovery,” said Cai Fang, an expert from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, at the opening.
He added that the digital economy has shown strong resilience in the face of the pandemic, as it gives a major boost to a range of new business models, such as online shopping and education, telemedicine and artificial intelligence.
To this end, “China has built the world’s largest 4G and 5G fiber and mobile broadband networks, with the number of 5G terminal connections exceeding 365 million and 5G application scenarios becoming increasingly richer,” said Xiao Yaqing, Minister of Industry and Information Technology.
With its digital economy ranking second in the world, the Asian country has highlighted this development in its fourteenth five-year plan (2021-2025) to build a Digital China.
Chinese companies will also be encouraged to seize opportunities in the overseas digital market in the next decade, said Lei Jun, Chairman of Xiaomi Corporation, a well-known Chinese smart product maker.
According to a guideline jointly released by Chinese government departments on July 23, more efforts will be made to enable domestic digital economy companies to accelerate the deployment of overseas R&D centers and product design centers and strengthen cooperation with foreign technology companies in fields such as big data, 5G and artificial intelligence.
Beijing also unveiled a Action plan to accelerate the process of becoming a global pioneer in digital economic development.
As noted in the plan, the added value of Beijing's digital economy is expected to account for about 50 percent of its GDP by 2025.
Last year, the added value of the city's digital economy exceeded 1,44 trillion yuan, accounting for about 40 percent of its total economic volume.
The World Trade Organization predicts that digital technologies will boost global trade volume by around 2 percentage points annually by 2030, with the share of global trade in services rising from 21 percent in 2016 to 25 percent by then.
Source: Xinhua
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