Whoever can better recognize and seize the general trend of digitalization, and better adapt to and lead the developmental direction of new forces of production, will be able to win the new omnidirectional competition for comprehensive national power.
谁能更好认识和把握数字化大势，更好适应和引领新生产力发展方向，谁就能赢得新的全方位综合国力竞争。
“Digital China Wins the Future 数字中国赢在未来,” Outlook Weekly 瞭望, Governance Events Column 治国理政纪事, Issue 2022-08, February 21, 2022
The name of this site, “Digital China Wins The Future,” is drawn from the opening section of the Cyberspace Administration of China’s 2017 “Digital China Development Report,” but the phrase found its origins in the 2016 “Outline of the National Informatization Development Strategy,” which found its origins in a 2013 speech by Xi Jinping. Since 2016, the phrase (as it relates to Digital China) has continued to repeat itself including as recently as February 21, 2022 when it served as the cover story, “Digital China Wins the Future,” for Xinhua’s Outlook Weekly magazine.
All of this reflects that “Winning the Future” is an idiomatic phrase that appears widely in China, both in speaking and writing. Alastair Iain Johnston published an excellent contextual analysis of the phrase’s use in official PRC writing and statements.
When it comes to Digital China, the context is informatization. As the 2016 Outline of the National Informatization Development Strategy stated:
With further developments in world multi-polarization, economic globalization, cultural diversification, and social informatization; and profound change in the global governance system; whoever occupies the high ground of informatization will be able to seize the first opportunity, win the advantage, win security, and win the future.
随着世界多极化、经济全球化、文化多样化、社会信息化深入发展，全球治理体系深刻变革，谁在信息化上占据制高点，谁就能够掌握先机、赢得优势、赢得安全、赢得未来。
Mixed slightly differently with added Xi Jinping metaphors, the 2017 Digital China Development Report stated:
In today’s world, innovation in information technology changes with every passing day. Whoever occupies the high ground of informatization will be able to seize the first opportunity, win the advantage, win security, and win the future. Without informatization there is no modernization.
当今世界，信息技术创新日新月异，谁在信息化上占据制高点，谁就能够掌握先机、赢得优势、赢得安全、赢得未来。没有信息化就没有现代化。
Digging even deeper, in this context “winning the future” points to the central role that Digital China (as the national strategy for digitalized/informatized reform and development) is expected to play in the Marxist reconstruction of the “forces of production” (combined human productive powers), updating an idea central to historical materialism and tagging a new source for revolutionary change to the current stage of human development. The new Marxist theorem is attributed to Xi Jinping himself. The theorem drives party policy and it is predictive.
For instance, the February 21, 2022 self-described “authoritative” Governance Events column in Xinhua’s Outlook Weekly magazine cleanly summarized the new Chinese-style Marxist thinking on historical materialism:
Whoever can better recognize and seize the general trend of digitalization, and better adapt to and lead the developmental direction of new forces of production, will be able to win the new omnidirectional competition for comprehensive national power.
谁能更好认识和把握数字化大势，更好适应和引领新生产力发展方向，谁就能赢得新的全方位综合国力竞争。
Digital China is, in fact, about winning. Winning the digital age. Not surprising, others are trying to win it too. But Xi Jinping says Chinese style modernization, which rides on the digitalized transformation of socialist modernization, gives China the edge both domestically (by improving societal efficiency and social equity) and globally (by offering a superior alternative to capitalism). As both of these ends, domestic and global, hold the promise of raising living standards to a higher level, they form the bedrock of both an internal and external propaganda narrative that is today quite prominent.
But “winning” is not definitive. The nation must rally behind the Marxist vision of a digital future designed by the party. And the party has set high goals for this vision worthy of a “great power.” One of these is to overcome what Beijing perceives as a hegemonic system of global rules and institutions that are anchored to a previous age. The digital age has opened a door to revise those rules and Digital China seeks to pass through the doorway first.
In short, Digital China is not simply a slogan. Digital China has been tagged as one of the Party’s key strategic initiatives since 2012, and a key national-level strategy since 2017. Perhaps most important, few policies are tied so directly to Xi himself. The strategy has been under development for nearly a quarter century and has been under execution for more than a decade.
Somehow, we missed Digital China. We shouldn’t have.
We need to better understand the Digital China strategy, its goals, its successes and challenges, and the theory and narratives driving it. A better informed understanding will save us time and dispel misunderstanding across and within borders. Most important, it will also move us closer to a focused, unified, and one hopes, effective response to the real challenges we face.