APD Review | China and the world enters new era of digital economy

The 4th World Internet Conference (WIC) will be held in Wuzhen, east China’s Zhejiang Province from December 3 to 5. This year’s theme is “Developing Digital Economy for Openness and Shared Benefits -- Building a Community of Common Future in Cyberspace”.

What is “digital economy”? It means that in an economic system, digital technologies are widely used that have brought about fundamental changes in the entire economic environment and economic activities. The digital economy is also a brand new socio-political and economic system for the mass digitization of information and business.

Transactions across the network between businesses, consumers and governments are rapidly growing. The digital economy focuses on the production, distribution and sale of goods and services that rely on digital technology. The digital economy’s business model itself works well because it creates a win-win environment for business and consumers.

The digital economy heralds the direction of world economic development in the future and represents the requirements for the development of advanced productivity when the mankind enters the information era is.

In addition, the great development of digital economy is also conducive to the well-being of the people. It may increase interests of the broad masses of people to a large extent. It seems to be too high to reach for the ordinary people, but in fact, it serves every one of us every day. For example, now nearly all of Chinese consumers get used to Alipay or WeChat Payment in their daily life. This is just a master hand's first small display by digital economy.

Needless to say China’s four first-tier cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen), or the city of Hangzhou, the capital of E-commerce; we just take Jiangxi, an inland Chinese province intermediate in economy, as an example to illustrate how digital economy has changed the local landscape.

In the case of Jiangxi Province, we can see that the digital economy is promoting local development and benefiting local people dramatically. The authoritative sources from the International Poverty Reduction Center in China (IPRCC) show that in the past three years, Jiangxi Province has responded positively to the great call and policy deployment of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “targeted poverty reduction”.

With the digital economy as the guide, Jiangxi Province has repeatedly won the battle against poverty. For example, in view of the fact that the information of poor households was unknown and the information of poverty alleviation in the province was scarcity of rolling updates, the province has improved the “targeted” identifying system, tracing the development of poor areas through institutional reforms and cooperation with social forces in digital economy.

At the same time, they also invited industries with great potential from the southeastern coastal provinces and welcomed a large number of small and medium-sized technology enterprises to set up their new bases in Jiangxi. Thus, these conducts not only promote the local economic development and employment at present, but also lay a solid foundation for the future. In this regard, Jiangxi has accumulated its own technical development and prepared a growing talent pool for its further great-leap-forward development in the next decade.

In fact, there are many more inland and mid-western provinces like Jiangxi Province that are making their every effort to catch up with their eastern- coastal peers in the ‘new era’ of digital economy. Both their successful practical experience and lessons from failure are valuable landmarks and textbooks to record their brave exploration for the Chinese mode of digital economy development, as well as to inspire other followers.

Looking around China and the world, there are many developing countries that also face the vital problem of “digital poverty” or “digital gap”. Therefore, if the Chinese people share their experiences of Jiangxi and other similar provinces with them, China can benefit far more than just the people in these countries. Now China and the world have entered a new era of “digital economy” together and are jointly building a Community of Common Future in Cyberspace.

Wang Peng is the Research Fellow at the Chahar Institute and China Institute of Fudan University.

(ASIA PACIFIC DAILY)