How Xi engineered the world’s first digital grand strategy, transformed China path to national rejuvenation, and redefined the future of great power competition.
As the world was distracted by the long, drawn out economic and social disruptions caused by the coronavirus, Beijing seized the “opportunity” offered by the crisis to accelerate its national digital strategy, titled unassumingly “Digital China.” With a decades-long personal tie to General Secretary Xi Jinping, the strategy is designed to lift China’s core competitiveness and societal efficiency through comprehensive digital transformation at the national level. Mostly unknown in the West, Digital China has profound implications for China’s developmental path, great power competition, and for the norms that will undergird the international system for decades to come.
David Dorman and John Hemmings, “Digital China: The Strategy and its Geopolitical Implications“, Issues and Insights, February 20, 2023.