Media workers experience Buy+, the world's first virtual reality (VR) shopping store on Alibaba's online marketplace Tmall, in Shenzhen, south China's Guangdong Province, Nov. 11, 2016. (Xinhua/Shen Bohan)
By Lu Hui
BEIJING Dec. 20 (Xinhuanet) -- With the rapid development of Internet and information technology, digital economy is experiencing high growth in China. Several experts and scholars shed light on this new type of economy and its role in driving China's economic development.
In the digital economy era, data will be the most important means of production following land and energy, said Chen Xinhe, deputy secretary general of Zhongguancun Big Data Industry Alliance.
Different from natural resources, such as water and arable lands which are limited, data as a strategic resource is unlimited, said Hu Angang, an economist with Tsinghua University.
Hu said that digital economy has become a world-recognized new economy, new industry and new dynamics.
DIGITAL ECONOMY IN CHINA SHOWS GOOD MOMENTUM OF DEVELOPMENT
Most Chinese people are used to the “Internet plus” life style as they can do everything on their cellphones from shopping to medical services.
In the first three-quarters of 2016, online retail sales recorded 3.47 trillion yuan, expanding 26.1 percent year on year, according to China’s National Bureau of Statistics.
In the annual Singles' Day buying spree, consumers spent more than 120 billion yuan (17.4 billion dollars) shopping online on leading e-commerce platform Alibaba in the first 24 hours.
The remote rural areas also joined the bandwagon of “internet plus” new economy. There are 1,311 Taobao villages across China, according to latest figures from the Aliresearch Institute.
DIGITAL ECONOMY LEADS UPGRADING OF TRADITIONAL INDUSTRIES
Digital economy is leading the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries.
Intelligent manufacturing merging new generation information technology and manufacturing technology is triggering a new round of manufacturing revolution, in which digitalization, virtuality and artificial intelligence will run through the whole production life cycle.
Wang Yiming, deputy director of the development research center of the State Council, noted that “Internet plus manufacturing” is the main direction of industrial development in the future, adding that whoever grasps the general trend of digitalization, network and intelligence will seize the historical opportunity in global industrial revolution.
Intelligent manufacturing is also the core of China's "Made in China 2025" plan rolled out in May 2015 to shift the country away from low-end manufacturing.
ADVANTAGES AND CHALLENGES
China has a natural advantage in the developing digital economy due to a strong internet infrastructure and wide application of Internet, and a huge number of netizens.
Meanwhile, related policies released by the government also foster the building of a leading internet power.
As of June, China had more than 710 million Internet users, more than one-fifth of the world's total, according to the China Internet Network Information Center.
China's Internet penetration rate is now 51.7 percent, 3.1 percentage points higher than the global average, the center said.
Chi Fulin, president of the China Institute for Reform and Development, predicted that China’s digital economy will keep the momentum of rapid development and will have far-reaching influence on China’s economic growth and transformation.
However, China still faces many challenges in developing digital economy.
Miao Rong, chief researcher of the research department at the China Enterprise Confederation, noted that great difficulties lie in the data sharing between industries, social sectors, regions and even countries.
Besides, the cyberspace is far from safe as personal information online is often exposed to risks of leakage.
Chen Xinhe held that respecting and protecting privacy and personal data should be the premise in developing digital economy.
