“Digital China is the New Strategy for National Informatized Development in the New Era”

The registration form for the 2021 iteration of the annual Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, jointly sponsored by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), and Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), included the following description of Digital China:

Introduced at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Digital China is the New Strategy for National Informatized Development in the New Era.

数字中国是十九大提出的新时代国家信息化发展的新战略。

Interestingly, the registration form was slow to be updated.

CAC first described Digital China as the “New Strategy for National Informatized Development in the New Era” in 2018, and then elevated the term to the “Overall Strategy for National Informatized Development in the New Era” in its 2020 Digital China Development Report, published in July 2021. According to after-the-fact PRC state-run media reporting, in line with later use of the descriptor “overall,” the concept of Digital China was expanded at the 19th Party Congress in October 2017 to encompass multiple categories of national informatization ranging from national-level technology efforts like Broadband China, Internet Plus, Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Artificial Intelligence to national-level societal and economic efforts like Digital Economy, E-Commerce, Smart Cities, and Digital Villages.