“To grasp the opportunities of digital economy in the competition among big countries, we must make great efforts in hard conditions and soft technology, respect the creativity of enterprises, activate their sense of mission, make the digital technology serve high-quality development, and help thousands of industries transform and upgrade.” On May 22, nearly 20 experts and scholars, including Yang Weimin, vice president of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, Liu Jingnan, academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering provide suggestions for the digital economy from multiple dimensions such as international competition, scientific and technological innovation, and platform enterprise development.

On that day, the 2023 Digital Economy (East Lake) Forum was held in Wuhan, Hubei. The forum focuses on the theme of New Opportunities and New Achievements in the Digital Economy and sets three major topics including high-quality development of the digital economy and platforms, digital ecology and technological innovation, and the integration of the digital economy and the real economy.

“Digitization has become a key force to change the international competition pattern. Whoever has mastered the initiative of digital development will occupy the commanding height of future development,” said Zhang Pingwen, president of Wuhan University and academician of Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The scale of China’s digital economy has reached 50.2 trillion Chinese yuan, accounting for 41.5% of GDP, ranking second in the world in total, second only to the United States.

Xu Zhengzhong, Deputy Director of the Economics Teaching and Research Department of  Party School of the Central Committee of C.P.C, pointed out that the digital economy is the new track for big countries to compete, and also the main track for Chinese path to modernization.

The pace of China’s digital technology enterprises going abroad is also constantly accelerating while providing rich applications and services at home.

WeChat cross-border payment has covered 69 countries and regions, with over a thousand overseas cooperative institutions and over 4 million overseas merchants. In the past two years, the number of active WeChat mini programs from Southeast Asian merchants has increased tenfold. Well known merchants, including BigC, the largest supermarket in Thailand, and Wantai Conservation Group, which operates Singapore Zoo, have all settled in the WeChat applet. Huawei Cloud has deployed in 29 regions and 75 availability zones worldwide, and has developed over 38,000 partners worldwide, covering various fields such as finance, the Internet of Things, and education. Live streaming, short video streaming, and other e-commerce models with Chinese characteristics are also creating more opportunities for China Unicom worldwide.

Chen Wenling, chief economist of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said that the platform is a flowing entity. Yang Weimin also believes that pure online does not exist, and behind the online is the reality of the offline in all aspects. The rise and development of platforms, especially the digital tools represented by video numbers, enable everyone to be an independent economic entity and create more value. The platform economy has become the core of the digital economy.