“We must strengthen the construction of information infrastructure, strengthen the in-depth integration of information resources, and open the ‘information aorta’ of economic and social development.”
我们要加强信息基础设施建设，强化信息资源深度整合，打通经济社会发展的信息“大动脉”。
“Xi Jinping: Speech at the Work Conference for Cybersecurity and Informatization” (习近平：在网络安全和信息化工作座谈会上的讲话), Xinhua, April 25, 2016 (The speech itself was delivered on “4.19”)
The language of Digital China is designed to educate Party members and the public efficiently. Figurative language plays a critical role in that effort: it compresses complex systems into intuitive concepts. I find the vocabulary of Digital China especially creative and revealing, if sometimes confusing, much like the narrative architectures that support other major Party programs.
This post highlights one such metaphor: the “information aorta”.
The phrase appears frequently in Party commentaries, educational graphics, and leadership speeches. It is easy to miss. You might encounter it as the “information aorta” (信息大动脉) or simply the “aorta” (大动脉), embedded in discussions of rural governance, education, transportation, or industrial development. But it is never incidental. Party cadre understand exactly what it signifies.
The metaphor was coined by Xi Jinping in 2016 and rapidly became the standard way to describe New Type Infrastructure. It is now a core element of the Party’s historical narrative explaining how Digital China supports national development.
One of the most influential early commentaries on the “information aorta” was written in 2017 by Zheng Bijian, a senior Party advisor and prominent Marxist theoretician. Zheng’s essay performs exactly the role expected of a trusted strategist: it situates the concept firmly within Xi’s intellectual lineage and reinforces its centrality. I mention Zheng not to over-interpret authorship, but because the narrative logic of New Type Infrastructure, systemic, civilizational, and deeply historical, bears the imprint of that generation of Party theory.
All of this said, I had the opportunity to sit in a graduate seminar with Zheng back in the 1980s and saw his talent first hand. I bring this up because, and it is just a hunch, the Party narrative surrounding New Type Infrastructure smacks of Zheng to me, and Zheng had a major role in the development of the Party’s digital/cyber strategies at their start.
But the public face of the “information aorta” actually begins with Xi’s April 19, 2016 address to the Cybersecurity and Informatization Work Conference, now widely referred to inside China as the “4.19 speech.” In that address, Xi offered the Party’s first authoritative explanation of the concept:
“We must strengthen the construction of information infrastructure, deepen the integration of information resources, and open the ‘information aorta’ of economic and social development.”
At the time, the Party was already revising core elements of Marxist political economy to recognize data as a new and decisive factor of production. But data could not generate value on its own. It required a massive, coordinated infrastructure system capable of circulating information at national scale. New Type Infrastructure would become that system, the information aorta through which digital value flows.
Four years later, almost to the day, the National Development and Reform Commission formally designated Information Infrastructure and Integrated Infrastructure as two of the three main pillars of New Type Infrastructure. By then, the metaphor had already done its work. The system was no longer framed as optional investment or industrial policy, but as the circulatory backbone of national life in the digital era.
As the Party might say, the rest is history.