習文樂見 | 數字中國：當數據成為新生産要素

Digital China: When Data Becomes a New Factor of Production

Amid the wave of digitalization, data has become a key factor of production. From technological innovation to scenario-based application, from infrastructure construction to data element market cultivation, the initiativeto build a digital China is shaping a new industrial ecosystem that drives modern development.

We should make strategic plans and move faster to build a high-speed, ubiquitous and comprehensive digital information infrastructure that is smart and agile, green and low-carbon, and reliable and controllable, that integrates space with earth networks and cloud computing with communications net, and that focuses on the 5G network, the national system of integrated data centers, and the national industrial internet.

——The speech at the 34th group study session of the Political Bureau of the 19th CPC Central Committee, October 18, 2021.

（The Governance of China IV）

In the past three years, the Digital China Development Index maintained a steady annual growth rate of over 10%.

Digital technology innovation reached a new level, with China accounting for 61.5% of the 45,000 newly published generative AI patents newly released that year around the world.

The data element market expanded into new space, with data production reaching 41.06 zettabytes (ZB) in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 25%.

Construction of the digital infrastructure achieved a new leapforward in China, with a total computing power of 280 EFLOPS, a total of 4.251 million 5G base stations, and 2.656 billion mobile IoT end users; The newly added computing power in the eight hubnodes of China's mega data infrastructure project accounted for more than 60% of the national total, with the green electricity utilization rate exceeding 80%.

In line with the vision of “building a community with a shared future in cyberspace,” multilateral and bilateral cooperation in the digital economy was steadily promoted, and the facilitation of cross-border data flow continuously improved. The total import and export volume of cross-border e-commerce reached 2.63 trillion yuan, achieving ayear-on-year increase of 10.8%, accounting for 6% of China's total foreign trade.

Source: Digital China Development Report (2024)

The comprehensive empowerment of digital technology is promoting China's transition from a big country with abundant data resources toone with high data value. While improving economic efficiency, the construction of a digital China has also promoted the deep integration of various sectors of society and laid a solid foundation for high-quality development. This also indicates that the initiative to build a digital China has become akey engine driving the development of the global digital economy.

（監製：蔚力；策劃、文案：曹川川；翻譯：劉海樂；審校：曹川川，丁素雲；剪輯：張豈凡，曾雯）