“Far more than a commercial or industrial strategy, Digital China is an all-of-nation effort to digitally transform China’s path to national rejuvenation as a Modernized Socialist Great Power.”
David Dorman and John Hemmings, “Digital China: The Strategy and Its Geopolitical Implications,” Issues and Insights, February 20, 2023
Over the past decade, China has been immersed in a comprehensive digital strategy of grand proportions, a strategy known by the Chinese Communist Party term-of-art “Build Digital China” (建设数字中国) or most often just called “Digital China” ( 数字中国). While sounding much like a commercial or industrial strategy, Digital China is not described as such internally. In broadest terms, it is a major strategic decision made by Xi Jinping in the aftermath of the 18th Party Congress in 2012 to digitally transform the nation. For the more technically minded, it is the “overall strategy for national informatized development in the new era.” For Marxist theorists, it is “General Secretary Xi Jinping’s answer to this era’s question on how to further liberate the development of the forces of production with innovation in science and technology as the core.”
As a concept personally tied to Xi, one might also argue that not only has he made Digital China a key to national success, but that Digital China has also contributed to Xi’s individual success, as the concept has tracked his rise for more than two decades. Xi first adopted the precursor concept of “Digital Fujian” from a local academic while serving as deputy party secretary and governor of that province in 2000. This campaign differed from Digital China in that it was conceived as a simple effort to use new and emerging digital technologies to improve local governance and economic performance – in essence, China’s first experiments in e-government. However, over the next twenty years Digital Fujian would evolve and expand to finally reemerge as the party’s vision for a fully informatized Digital China: “a sharp weapon that empowers the nation” (i.e., increased core competitiveness through accelerated innovation in science and technology) and “a spring rain that benefits the people” (i.e., increased societal efficiency and social equity through digital transformation).
Far more than a commercial or industrial strategy, Digital China is an all-of-nation effort to digitally transform China’s path to national rejuvenation as a “Modernized Socialist Great Power.” The Digital China strategy is rooted in Marxism, the theoretical framework that justifies one of its greatest internal successes to date: “combining” Xi Jinping’s personal visions for “national informatization” and for “socialist modernization.” The significance of this synthesis cannot be overstated. Xi has seized the coming of the digital age to engineer a masterful and perhaps final answer to Mao Zedong’s 1938 call for the “Sinicization of Marxism.” This move is designed to bolster Xi’s carefully crafted image as an elite Marxist theoretician for the digital age while it also cements his control over nearly every aspect of the nation’s social and economic development. Inside Xi’s Digital China, socialist modernization and national informatization are nearly indistinguishable.
Stated differently, if you are a studied member of the Chinese Communist Party, you understand that the current global competition over technology is fundamentally about ideology, specifically helping to lift Xi’s vision for socialist modernization, now labelled “Chinese-Style Modernization,” as a global alternative to capitalism. You also understand that the technology holding Xi’s two visions, informatization and modernization, together is the intelligent application of data, or alternatively, “data intelligence” ( 数据智能). As the key strategic resource of the digital age, Beijing’s success in developing this resource is seen as dependent on the comprehensive integration of big data, computing power, and artificial intelligence (through algorithms and application software) as well as constructing the digital infrastructure and governance systems needed to manage it. This key state-level requirement for digital infrastructure drives Beijing’s “New Type Infrastructure ( 新型基础设施)” campaign…