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In 2023, China's economy has maintained a steady development momentum by comprehensively deepening reforms, expanding opening-up, intensifying macroeconomic regulation and control, focusing on expanding domestic demand, optimizing structure, boosting confidence, and preventing and defusing risks. From December 11 to 12, 2023, the Central Economic Work Conference was held, which deployed nine key tasks for economic work in 2024, including "leading the construction of a modern industrial system with scientific and technological innovation" and "focusing on expanding domestic demand", which pointed out the direction for economic work in 2024 from the perspective of balanced development of supply and demand. Three years after the implementation of the data element market, China's factor market has been continuously integrated with data elements under the promotion of new quality productivity, which is reshaping the rule system of industrial development and governance.
In February 2023, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China", proposing that by 2025, an integrated promotion pattern of horizontal and vertical integration and strong coordination should be basically formed, and important progress has been made in the construction of digital China. "Horizontal and vertical integration" fully reflects the requirements of the development of the digital economy for an integrated operating environment, and is the country's strategic layout for the transformation of the basic production relations of the digital economy from the macro level. 2024 is a critical year to achieve the 2025 construction goal, under the guidance of the five-in-one construction ideology, it is necessary to fully think about how to establish a digital production relationship that matches the advanced digital productivity, and use the transformation of production relations to release the potential of digital consumption and improve the ability of digital innovation, so as to "seek progress in stability, promote stability with progress, and establish first and then break down" in the field of digital economy, and comprehensively build a modern industrial system in the digital era.
On December 31, 2023, the "Data Element X" Three-Year Action Plan (2024-2026) was officially released, from which it can be seen that 2024 will be a year for China's social and economic system to comprehensively strengthen data elements, a year for all industries to carry out comprehensive digital transformation, and a year for mainland society to begin to move towards digital governance in an all-round way. China will begin to systematically create a new social and economic operation environment based on the data resource ownership confirmation and circulation system and the digital credit system of all social entities, and use this to lead various industries to systematically think about the new data-driven development model and complete the digital transformation of industries.
In the face of a large number of new opportunities for the development of China's digital economy, the Internet Industry Research Institute of Tsinghua University, the Internet Governance Research Center of Tsinghua University, and Fuxi Think Tank, on the basis of the research results of the digital economy in the past years, jointly summarized and judged the ten trends of China's digital economy development in 2024, hoping to discuss with you from several aspects such as digital economy infrastructure, digital demand, digital supply, and digital governance, and take this as the focus of our research and practice work in 2024.
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Ten trends in the development of China's digital economy in 2024
Text/Zhu Yan, Li Xiaodong
DIGITAL ECONOMY
01
"In 2024, the construction of digital infrastructure and the industrial digital ecology will be further integrated, and the construction of cloud computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence infrastructure for the data element market and enterprise digital scenarios will be accelerated. 」
After three years of new infrastructure construction, China has begun to take shape in the construction of 5G and other network infrastructure, the Internet of Things and satellite Internet have also begun to enter the application stage, and the computing infrastructure has also formed a preliminary layout in the country. In 2024, the integration of these infrastructures will accelerate with various industries, and the digital transformation plans of various industries will further promote the construction of digital infrastructure. In 2024, the construction of data infrastructure will blossom everywhere across the country, and for application scenarios such as the data element market, enterprise digital transformation, and government digital governance, all localities will actively explore how to deploy infrastructure such as cloud computing, blockchain, and artificial intelligence that support the development of the digital economy and the governance of digital society. Cloud computing and other computing infrastructure have begun to fully support the migration of enterprise assets, industrial chains, and industrial clusters to the cloud, laying the foundation for the collaboration of industrial clusters. Data infrastructure such as blockchain will be fully constructed in some developed cities to support the establishment of local digital credit systems, so as to promote the development of local economies with a highly credible digital business environment. Industrial and commercial registration, real estate management, and financial services for small and medium-sized enterprises will be the key areas of blockchain infrastructure services. Driven by generative artificial intelligence (AIGC), the industrial application scenarios of artificial intelligence will gradually become clear in 2024, and take the lead in forming regional and even national artificial intelligence infrastructure in transportation, health, environmental protection and other fields.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
02
"In 2024, the layout of economic infrastructure for "horizontal and vertical integration" will be accelerated. At the macro level, unified national data market rules are beginning to be established, and at the micro level, leading enterprises will begin to explore new digital production relationships on a large scale. 」
Data can only better reflect its value in the flow, and establishing a wider range of data safe and reliable circulation system is an important prerequisite for the development of the digital economy. To this end, it is necessary to speed up the "horizontal and vertical integration" of the government and industry at all levels through technical solutions and laws and regulations, create a new type of digital production relationship, and lay the foundation for the integrated promotion of the construction of digital China. From a macro perspective, from the Ministry of Finance's Accounting Standards for Enterprise Data Resources to the National Data Bureau's "Data Element X", a unified national data element market rule has begun to be established, and governments at all levels will actively explore these new market rules in 2024 to further consolidate China's advantages in the layout of macro digital production relations. In 2024, some leading enterprises will work with the government to start substantial changes in production relations in accordance with the overall requirements of "horizontal and vertical integration", so that data elements can generate new value and create new models in the production and operation of enterprises.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
03
"2024 is the first year for data resources to enter the financial statements of enterprises, and around the capitalization of data, the relevant technical systems, service systems and regulatory systems will gradually be formed this year, and the scale of data resources entering the financial statements of enterprises is expected to reach tens of billions. 」
On August 21, 2023, the Ministry of Finance formulated and issued the Interim Provisions on Accounting Treatment Related to Enterprise Data Resources (Cai Kuai [2023] No. 11), which will come into force on January 1, 2024. On December 31, 2023, the Ministry of Finance issued the Guiding Opinions on Strengthening Data Asset Management. 2024 will also be the first year for data resources to be included in enterprise financial statements. However, there are still many unresolved issues in the financial statements of data resources, such as the determination of the uniqueness of data resources, pricing methods, registration methods, and supervision methods. Data is different from other assets, in order to avoid asset bubbles, it is necessary to establish a technical service system for enterprise data assets to solve the problems of data asset packaging, right confirmation, tracking, etc., establish a market service system to solve the problems of data product design, registration, circulation, and trading, and establish a regulatory system to ensure the effectiveness, fairness, and efficiency of the data market. These systems will be piloted nationwide in 2024, and typical application scenarios will be generated around public data, enterprise data, and personal data. Enterprises of all kinds will actively explore the path of data resources into financial statements, and the scale of enterprise data resources in various pilot projects is expected to reach 10 billion yuan in 2024.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
04
"Unleashing digital demand has become an important part of expanding domestic demand in 2024, and digital demand at the government and industrial levels will become a new driving force for the development of the digital economy. 」
The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference pointed out that it is necessary to "vigorously develop digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption". From the perspective of social consumers, there are a large number of consumption growth points in the fields of smart home, digital cultural tourism, digital events, and domestic "trendy products", and these fields will be hot spots for the development of the digital economy in 2024. From the perspective of economic development, the release of digital demand at the government and enterprise level is more worth looking forward to, and its role in promoting the total scale of the digital economy is stronger. As the rule-maker, the government can formulate digital transaction rules within the industry according to the characteristics of each industry, so as to promote the digital transformation of industry enterprises and expand the scale of digital transactions between enterprises. At the same time, the government can also further promote the scale of the digital demand market and drive the related industrial chain to digitalization by expanding government digital procurement. At the enterprise level, the degree of digitalization of the industrial cluster to which it belongs will steadily increase, and data will become an important part of enterprise products, and even a large number of data products will be generated. New product features will generate a large amount of digital demand within the production ecosystem and form a new driving force to promote the development of the industry. In 2024, there will be great differences in the understanding of digital needs in various fields, and in some industries with relatively clear definitions of data products, such as construction, healthcare, education, science and technology, etc., through the decoupling of data and applications, it is expected that a number of first-to-pilot models and new business models will emerge, and gradually form a standardized industrial-level digital demand market.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
05
"For the primary industry, digital agriculture will become an important starting point and driving force for comprehensive rural revitalization. In 2024, the data element market will be deeply integrated with agriculture, and begin to change the traditional mode of agricultural production and circulation, and a new paradigm of standardized, credible and high-value digital agriculture will be explored across the country. 」
The Central Rural Work Conference held on December 19, 2023, pointed out that "to promote Chinese-style modernization, we must unremittingly consolidate the foundation of agriculture and promote the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas". The development of agricultural industry is an important part of the construction of Chinese-style modernization and digital China, and agricultural digitalization is also one of the important contents of agricultural supply-side reform. The development of digital agriculture needs to deeply integrate the data element market with agriculture, so that the data elements can penetrate into the rural areas, and create a new development paradigm of digital agriculture and improve the digital value of the agricultural industry through the resource allocation capacity of the factor market. To develop digital agriculture, it is necessary to introduce data elements into the whole life cycle of agricultural production, and redefine agricultural products, farmers, and agriculture: agricultural products become material products + data, farmers are not only agricultural product producers but also agricultural data producers, and agriculture also includes the agricultural data industry. After the data elements are available, the way of agricultural production, circulation, and governance will change accordingly, so as to embark on a new path of Chinese-style digital agricultural modernization. In 2024, there will be a new paradigm of digital agriculture construction across the country, especially in regions with special agricultural products and relatively good economic foundations.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
06
"For the secondary industry, the construction of the industrial Internet will accelerate in 2024, and the industrial Internet platform will become an important way for the digital transformation of traditional industries. 」
In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the mainland's emphasis on scientific and technological innovation, the competitiveness of the secondary industry has also been continuously enhanced, especially the establishment of the data element market, which has brought new opportunities for the development of the secondary industry. The industrial Internet is different from the consumer Internet, it must be built with credit as the core, to support the data circulation, automatic trading, product innovation, and business model innovation of the industrial chain and industrial ecology. The 2023 Central Economic Work Conference emphasized: "We must vigorously promote new industrialization, develop the digital economy, and accelerate the development of artificial intelligence", and an important part of new industrialization is to use tools such as the industrial Internet to develop the digital economy and realize the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry. The digital transformation of the manufacturing industry must activate the data elements, and the activation of the data elements must be oriented to the industrial chain and industrial ecology to realize the data link of the whole industrial chain, which is the basic function of the industrial Internet. In 2024, China's new energy vehicles, photovoltaic and other manufacturing industry chains are facing the opportunity to build a globally competitive industrial Internet platform, and some leading enterprises will build a number of unique industrial Internet platforms under the unified layout of the country.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
07
"For the tertiary industry, the tertiary industry around the data element market will rise rapidly in 2024, and the digital transformation of the traditional tertiary industry will also accelerate, especially in digital finance, digital health, digital cultural tourism, digital science and technology innovation and other industries, and a large number of new models will emerge in 2024. 」
Focusing on the data element market, it will bring a lot of development opportunities for the tertiary industry. With the sharing and development of public data resources, the inclusion of enterprise data resources in financial statements, and the standardized management of personal data resources, the value of these data resources will accelerate in 2024. From the perspective of establishing a standardized data element market, on the one hand, it is necessary to vigorously develop the data service industry and provide technical, registration, transactional, legal, accounting and other services for the data market; on the other hand, it is necessary to vigorously develop the data application industry and encourage the government and enterprises in various industries to develop various data applications to meet diversified data needs. Driven by the data service industry, the digital transformation of the traditional tertiary industries will accelerate, especially in the financial industry, because with credible data sources, the ways and means of financial asset penetration will change, resulting in a new model of digital financial services based on digital technology. In 2024, more financial companies will find a digital path to integrate with the industrial ecosystem and provide more Chinese-style digital financial services to the market. In addition, in the field of medical and health care, the data market will further promote the transparency of the medical and health field, develop new models of health data application and enhance the value of health data resources under the premise of complying with relevant laws and regulations, so as to further improve the health level of the whole people. In the fields of cultural tourism, home furnishing, and leisure, with the encouragement of relevant policies, new digital models will also emerge in 2024, creating a new path of high-quality digital consumption for the people. The digitalization of the field of scientific and technological innovation, which condenses the main functions of data aggregation and knowledge creation, will be gradually strengthened, and will be connected with industrial development through the circulation of data elements, creating a new impetus for knowledge exchange for regional scientific and technological innovation.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
08
"As an important component of trade in services, cross-border data trade will have an important breakthrough in 2024, and the relevant technical and regulatory systems will be initially established. China will become an advocate and pioneer in establishing trade rules that are interconnected and mutually beneficial. 」
The contribution of cross-border data to global economic growth is increasing year by year, and is reshaping the new form of international trade and giving birth to a new industrial chain based on the value of data. In 2021, the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of Trade in Services issued by 24 departments including the Ministry of Commerce proposed to accelerate the digitalization of trade in services, and included "digital trade" in the development plan for trade in services, clearly proposing four types of digital trade: digital products, digital services, digital technology and data. In the just-released "Data Element ×" Three-Year Action Plan (2024-2026), it is also proposed to "promote the orderly cross-border flow of data, benchmark against international high-standard economic and trade rules, continue to optimize the regulatory measures for cross-border data flow, and support the exploration of pilot free trade zones". In 2023, many countries will optimize their cross-border data regulatory systems, such as China's Provisions on Regulating and Facilitating Cross-border Data Flows (Draft for Comments), and the United States, following the Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield, reached a consensus with the EU for the third time on the legal flow of personal data through the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, and established the UK-US Data Bridge. In order to meet the strong demand for the sustainable development of the global digital economy, bilateral and multilateral cooperation to promote cross-border data interconnection will continue in 2024, and China will also actively explore feasible institutional models, technical solutions and industrial practices. It is worth noting that under the framework of the World Trade Organization, negotiations on digital trade rules among 90 WTO members, including China, the United States and Europe, will also continue. In 2024, the "China Initiative and International Platform", including the Data Working Group established by the International Organization of the World Internet Conference, will make breakthroughs in the field of cross-border data trade based on the basic principles of interconnection, mutual benefit and reciprocity, and create more opportunities for Chinese enterprises to participate in global data service trade.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
09
"Digital" and "green" are the two key words of China's economic development in 2024, and digitalization and greening will be further integrated in 2024 through the establishment of a carbon data system and other measures. 」
The words "digital" and "green" are high-frequency words in the just-held Central Economic Work Conference, such as "widely applying digital intelligence technology and green technology to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries", "vigorously developing digital consumption, green consumption, and healthy consumption", "guiding financial institutions to increase support for scientific and technological innovation, green transformation, inclusive small and micro enterprises, and digital economy", etc. Digitalization and greening are two complementary concepts, digitalization provides accurate and reliable basic data for ecological environmental protection, thus helping to achieve a higher level of greening, and greening enables digitalization to have greater application scenarios in the field of ecological environmental protection, so as to obtain higher value digital results. An important bridge between digitalization and greening is data, such as ecological and environmental protection data, carbon data, and so on. In 2024, typical cases of coordinated development of digitalization and greening will emerge in specific industries and regions, and a business model and governance model for the integrated development of the two will gradually be formed. Some mature enterprises will also fully consider the integration of digitalization and greening in their own business development, and leverage policy dividends to accelerate their own digital and green transformation and development.
DIGITAL ECONOMY
10
"The geopolitical situation in 2024 will trigger a further transformation of the cyberspace governance model, new platforms for global digital cooperation and governance will emerge, China will play a greater role in the establishment of the global digital governance order, and Chinese enterprises will usher in new opportunities for globalization in the digital field. 」
In 2023, the geopolitical situation has changed dramatically, and mapping to cyberspace has caused a series of ripple effects. On the one hand, the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict continue to ferment, exacerbating global geopolitical tensions, and cyberspace wars have become an important combat field. On the other hand, other countries outside the war conflict have also seen the impact of digital technology and cyberspace warfare on traditional governance principles, and many countries have begun to seek a more independent and conservative Internet governance model to reduce their dependence on the global Internet. The U.S. Department of Defense released the 2023 U.S. Department of Defense Cyber Strategy Summary, emphasizing the importance of the United States maintaining its superiority in cyberspace, and proposing a strategy to protect the cyber domain with global allies and partners, reflecting the trend of the global cyber governance system being blocized. In 2023, China's state leader delivered a video message at the Wuzhen Summit of the World Internet Conference, continuing to emphasize the importance of building a community with a shared future in cyberspace. In the field of digital economy, it is urgent to strengthen international digital cooperation and build a stronger and more flexible international digital governance framework. Since 2023, the United Nations has accelerated the formulation of the "Global Digital Compact" to actively address the current global digital divide, data divide, innovation divide, and governance capacity gaps, and is committed to seeking global consensus on Internet access, data governance, avoiding Internet fragmentation, artificial intelligence governance, building digital public goods, and information content governance. In addition, emerging international organizations such as the World Internet Conference have successively set up working groups on cross-border e-commerce, artificial intelligence and data, bringing together domestic and foreign institutions and experts to build consensus in the field and actively explore new platforms and mechanisms for global digital cooperation and governance. In 2024, more emerging platforms for global digital cooperation and governance will emerge, especially the "Global Digital Compact", which is expected to open up a new platform mechanism in the digital field at the United Nations level and create a more open and inclusive ecosystem for global digital cooperation. In 2024, China will also play a more important role in international cyberspace governance, using China's actions to promote the coordinated development of the global digital economy. In this process, Chinese enterprises will also usher in a round of new opportunities for globalization in the digital field.
2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and is also a crucial year for the implementation of the 14th Five-Year Plan and the Digital China Construction Plan. The coming year will be full of opportunities and challenges in all areas of the digital economy. After three years of layout of the data element market, the 2024 annual meeting will be a year for China's social and economic system to fully activate data elements, a year for all industries to carry out digital transformation, a year for mainland society to begin to move towards digital governance in an all-round way, and a year for the international community to start a digital contract. The Central Economic Work Conference emphasized five musts: "We must take high-quality development as the last word in the new era", "We must persist in deepening supply-side structural reform and focus on expanding effective demand", "We must insist on relying on reform and opening up to enhance the endogenous driving force of development", "We must adhere to high-quality development and high-level security and benign interaction", "We must adhere to high-quality development and high-level security and benign interaction", " We must take the promotion of Chinese-style modernization as the most important politics." In 2024, as long as we adhere to the five musts, base ourselves on China's reality, and solve China's problems, we will definitely be able to create a new situation in the development of China's digital economy!
Source: Tsinghua University Internet Industry Research Institute
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