Recently, the National Development and Reform Commission and the National Data Administration issued the "Key Points of Digital Economy Development in 2025" (hereinafter referred to as the "Key Points"), which clearly put forward seven key tasks, from releasing the value of data elements to improving the construction of systems and mechanisms, and comprehensively deploying the key tasks of the digital economy in 2025, which not only responds to the key needs in the current digital transformation process, but also shows my country's forward-looking layout of accelerating the construction of a digital power.

  In the digital age, data has become a key production factor parallel to labor, land, capital and technology. The "Key Points" put "accelerating the release of the value of data elements" first, emphasizing the reform of market-oriented allocation of data elements as the main line, and accelerating the improvement of basic data systems such as data property rights, national integrated data market, etc., which will help accelerate the development and utilization of public data resources and fully release the potential of public data elements. For example, some places use open government industrial economic data to guide enterprises to develop industrial analysis and prediction models, which not only creates economic benefits for enterprises, but also provides a scientific basis for government industrial planning and policy formulation. Social organizations can use open public data to better understand social needs, formulate accurate public welfare projects and activity plans, and improve the allocation efficiency and use effect of public welfare resources. Individuals can also learn new knowledge and new skills through open public data, improve their own quality and innovation capabilities, and better understand social issues and public affairs.

  The release of the value of data elements cannot be separated from solid digital infrastructure support. Data shows that my country's digital infrastructure has achieved a new leap, with a total of 4.251 million 5G base stations built, the number of mobile Internet of Things terminal users reached 2.656 billion, and various new computing power in the eight major hub node areas accounted for more than 60% of the country's new computing power. The "Key Points" proposes to optimize the layout of computing power resources and create unified data circulation standards and specifications, reflecting the strategic direction of building data infrastructure with the idea of ​​"one game of the whole country". The "East Digital and West Computing" project is a typical practice of this strategy. By laying out large data centers in the western region, the advantages of surplus power and suitable climate are transformed into computing power supply capacity, providing support for data-intensive applications in the eastern region, and greatly improving the overall efficiency of computing power use.

  Against the backdrop of the accelerated evolution of a new round of scientific and technological revolution in the world, cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and quantum communication are becoming key areas leading the development of future science and technology. The key to enhancing the core competitiveness of the digital economy lies in enhancing the original innovation capabilities and industrial transformation capabilities in these technological directions. This requires the creation of an internationally competitive digital industry system. In recent years, generative artificial intelligence has become a strategic highland for global technological competition. Thanks to its rich data resources and application scenario advantages, my country has made significant progress in generative AI research and development and industry implementation. In addition, the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy should be promoted. We can make efforts from the demand side and the supply side to create a new digital consumption scenario through the implementation of the "Digital Consumption Improvement Action" to stimulate the vitality of the demand side of the digital economy. On the supply side, implement the digital transformation strategy of "one chain, one policy" around key industries, and deepen the digital transformation project. These measures will help systematically improve the digital transformation capabilities of my country's traditional industries and provide continuous impetus for the high-quality development of the digital economy.

  The development of the digital economy is inseparable from scientific macro-control and effective government governance. Only an efficient and high-quality governance system can ensure the steady and long-term development of the digital economy. Continuously improving laws, regulations, policies and systems and improving systems and mechanisms is crucial to improving the modernization level of my country's digital economy governance system and governance capabilities. Specifically, by increasing the penalties for infringement, enterprises and innovators can better encourage more resources to invest in technology research and development and creative production; investigate and punish monopoly behaviors in accordance with the law, which will help ensure the opportunity for all types of market entities to participate in competition equally; establishing systems and mechanisms such as data classification and grading protection systems, cross-border data flow security management and other systems and mechanisms can effectively prevent data security risks, etc., which are conducive to promoting the innovation and sustainable development of the digital economy.

  Against the backdrop of increasingly fierce global digital competition and intensified trade protectionism, strengthening international cooperation in the digital economy is also more important. In the future, by continuously making efforts in accelerating the development of digital trade, promoting the construction of overseas smart logistics platforms, and expanding the cooperation space of "Silk Road E-commerce", we will surely help Chinese cross-border e-commerce companies to accelerate their "going overseas", build a broad digital trade and logistics network, and promote Chinese companies to better integrate into the global value chain. I believe that with the promotion of the free cross-border flow of digital factors, the potential vitality of the digital economy will be further released, truly becoming a new engine of global economic growth, and injecting continuous impetus into the recovery and sustainable development of the world economy.

  (Author: Ma Yefeng, associate researcher at the Institute of Quantitative Economics and Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)

[Editor in charge: Zhu Jiaqi]