Digital economy driving force in China's growth

A child interacts with an intelligent robot during the 2019 Smart China Expo in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality on Aug 27, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua]

The economic value added of China's digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan ($5.11 trillion) in 2019, accounting for 36.2 percent of gross domestic product according to the White Paper on the Development of China's Digital Economy (2020), Economic Information Daily reported on Thursday.

Experts say the digital economy has become a new development mode for economic society, after the agricultural and industrial economies. It reduces barriers for information flow and accelerates transmission of resources across industries and regions. Digitalizing the country's economy not only creates huge investment opportunities and boosts domestic demand, but also promotes technology innovation and industrial revolution.

"The scale of digital economy in 2019 increased 15.6 percent in China, a relatively high growth. It reflected that real economy sectors in China are accelerating their digital transformation," said Yu Xiaohui, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, the institution that composed the white paper.

The digital economy, with its sustained high-speed growth, has become pivotal in countering economic downward pressure for China. The white paper showed China's digital economy growth in 2019 was about 7.85 percent higher than the GDP growth rate over the same period, 6.8 percent higher than primary industries, 9.79 percent higher than secondary industries and 6.54 percent higher than the tertiary industries.

Economic Information Daily said the digital economy has become a driving force for sustained and stable growth. According to the white paper, China's digital economic scale in 2019 expanded 12.7 times compared 2005, while GDP over the same period increased 4.3 times. From 2014 to 2019, the contribution to GDP growth rate from digital economy was kept above 50 percent. In 2019, the contribution rate stood at 67.7 percent.