Digital sector flourishing with impressive results

Beijing is continuing momentum in developing the digital economy, with the sector contributing more than 40 percent of the city's GDP.

Government data show that the digital economy generated 426.57 billion yuan ($61.57 billion) in industrial incremental value during the first quarter, representing a 7.6 percent increase from the same period of 2022. That accounted for 42.9 percent of the city's GDP, a year-on-year rise of 1.7 percentage points.

In the digital economy, the core industries' incremental value grew 9.1 percent to 255.65 billion yuan, contributing 25.7 percent of the city's GDP, up 1.8 percentage points compared with the same period of 2022.

In particular, the industrial incremental value of information and communications, software and information technology service sectors jumped 12 percent year-on-year to 213.47 billion yuan during the period, contributing 21.5 percent of the city's GDP.

Rich in scientific and technological resources, Beijing is going all out to build itself into an international sci-tech center. The city is an innovation pacesetter and industrial forerunner in China's digitalization progress, said Pan Feng, deputy head of the Beijing Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, at a think tank forum in Beijing in mid-April.

Back in 1999, the city proposed the concept of "digital Beijing". In 2008 and 2022 when Beijing hosted the Summer and Winter Olympic Games respectively, a batch of digital technologies, which were applied to the events, were showcased. In 2012, Beijing initiated a smart city program, spurring the growth of related industries.

Riding the wave of a new round of technological revolution, Beijing ramped up construction of a global digital economy bench mark city two years ago. It issued an implementation plan for advancing the initiative in July 2021 and released regulations to promote the digital economy in November 2022, setting the global digital economy bench mark city as a strategic goal for the city's future development.

As one of the cities that has the most abundant digital economic resources and the most favorable development conditions in the world, Beijing pioneered the development of the digital economy and has taken the lead in the sector. The digital economy has become a major engine to drive the growth of the local economy, Chinese media reported.

Government data show that its industrial incremental value increased to 1.7 trillion yuan in 2022 from 871.9 billion yuan in 2015. Its proportion in the city's GDP expanded from 35.2 percent to 41.6 percent over the past seven years, registering an average annual growth rate of 10.3 percent.

Beijing can develop its core competitiveness in building a global bench mark city for the digital economy, as its core industries such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, IT application innovations, and the industrial internet all rank first nationally in terms of industrial output value, local officials said.

Of the industries, AI and the industrial internet in Beijing are capable of generating more than 100 billion yuan in industrial output value. When it comes to the integrated circuit equipment industry, the city has developed the largest industrial cluster of its kind in the country. Its monthly production capacity of 12-inch silicon wafers ranks first nationally and fifth globally.

As the city government attaches importance to fostering innovative businesses, the competitiveness of such local enterprises has significantly increased.

The city has the largest number of national-level intelligent manufacturing system solution providers in the country.

Eight Beijing-based companies made the latest list of the top 100 digital companies, released by Forbes, accounting for more than half of the Chinese companies on the list.

As Beijing advances its smart city initiative, its "new infrastructure" network is expanding, promoting the integration of new-generation IT and urban infrastructure facilities. During the first quarter, roughly 11.4 percent of the city's expenditure, or 20.04 billion yuan, went to the new infrastructure sector, up 24.2 percent year-on-year.

A high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone was established in September 2020 in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing ETown. A variety of driverless vehicles are running on public roads to offer taxi, minibus, shuttle bus, truck, cruiser, sanitation truck, delivery and retail services. To date, Beijing has opened 1,544 kilometers of roads for autonomous vehicle testing and given the green light to more than 600 vehicles from 19 companies.

Thanks to digital technologies and services applied to a wide range of sectors, the Sanlitun commercial area in Beijing was included in the first batch of 12 national demonstration intelligent shopping areas recognized by the Ministry of Commerce.

Beijing is allowing full play to data resources in building a global bench mark city for the digital economy, connecting the industry, value and supply chains and integrating them in creating the digital economy industrial ecosystem, Pan said.