Stories of High-Quality Development｜How to unleash the value of data as a production factor

In the age of the digital economy, data has become the new oil.

The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan outline the need to "advance the development and utilization of data resources." Currently, China's digital economy ranks second in the world, with massive data resources and ever-expanding application scenarios.

A profound understanding of the foundational and strategic value of data elements is both a critical support and an inevitable requirement for seizing opportunities presented by scientific and technological revolutions and industrial transformations, as well as for solidly advancing high-quality development, according to Hu Jianbo, director of the National Data Development Research Institute, when hosting an episode of People's Daily's "Stories of High-Quality Development."

"The key to accomplishing this task lies in the following words: availability, smooth flow, effective utilization and security," he said.

Cross-region flow of data enables targeted financial services

Lishui in Zhejiang is known as China's cradle of supermarket entrepreneurship, with Lishui natives running over 60,000 supermarkets across the country. Yet these supermarkets generally face financing difficulties. With high inventory turnover and rented spaces, they have little to offer as collateral. High travel costs and information asymmetry also make it difficult for banks to approve loans, even when they are willing to lend.

Solving this predicament requires tearing down data silos to enable collaborative data development and sharing.

With data support from the Lishui Data Bureau, People's Bank of China Lishui branch integrated and applied multiple data sources — including government services, merchant operations and bank credit — to build the Lijitong platform, which creates precise profiles of Lishui merchants operating across the country. This helps banks gain clearer insights and greater confidence in lending, while allowing merchants to access and utilize loans more efficiently.

As of Jan. 15, 2026, the Lijitong platform had served over 32,900 micro and small businesses from Lishui operating outside the region, with credit extended to merchants totaling 7.95 billion yuan.

According to Hu, ensuring that data is available and flows smoothly is a key breakthrough in moving from zero to one in the process of transforming data into a production factor.

This requires robust property rights and data transaction systems to regulate and protect data, allowing it to break down barriers, flow in compliance with regulations and truly enter the economic cycle to serve the real economy.

Integrating data into scenarios makes rights and interests information more transparent

The biggest pain point in the traditional construction labor market is information asymmetry. Labor management dependent on personal relationships creates significant uncertainty for both project contractors and workers.

The Jianzhugang intelligent scheduling system moves away from the old model of person-based project management. By using data to make the entire process transparent, it established a fast-track system for resolving labor disputes.

In November 2025, construction worker Ye Kun received his payment ahead of schedule through the platform, relieving his family's urgent need to cover renovation expenses.

Since its launch three years ago, the platform has processed more than 1 billion yuan ($145 million) in labor settlements and helped construction companies reduce costs and improve efficiency by more than 15 percent.

It is necessary to accelerate the "Data Elements X" action to make data elements come alive across different industries, gaining value as they flow. By enabling low-cost reuse and delivering increasing returns, it optimizes resource allocation, empowers the real economy, and continuously fuels the development of new quality productive forces.

'Available but invisible' data makes digital life more secure

Six months ago, Ms. Wu, a resident of Harbin in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, received a call from someone claiming to be a customer service representative. The caller accurately recited her personal information and, under the pretext of an "insurance deduction," demanded she download an app. As she began to panic, a fraud alert suddenly appeared on her phone screen, prompting her to calm down and hang up immediately.

The timely alert came from an invisible line of defense, a joint protection mechanism built on China Mobile's IDaaS secure foundation for trusted data circulation and its trusted account risk control platform. When a scam call is made, the caller's behavioral pattern triggers a cloud-based joint defense query. The trusted account risk control platform then conducts real-time analysis based on multi-dimensional risk characteristics, issuing warning instructions to the China Mobile Security Assistant on the user's phone to alert them of suspected fraud.

Throughout this process, call content, caller identities and other raw data are "available but invisible," ensuring the protection of users' data and privacy.

Today, data assets are moving from concept to balance sheet. Data pricing and trading mechanisms continue to improve, and systems for authorized data operations and compliant use are taking shape. Each step ensures more abundant data, smoother flow, and more precise and secure use, Hu said.

When data truly integrates into the economic fabric and becomes infrastructure as fundamental as water and electricity, it will nourish every industry, connect innovation across all domains, and generate powerful momentum for high-quality development.