Great Power Transition – "Digital China Wins the Future"

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"Digital China Wins the Future"

Over two decades, Xi Jinping built a comprehensive digital strategy for China. It has a simple name: Digital China. We should all know more about it.

What is Digital China?
What is Cyber Great Power?
What is New Type Infrastructure?
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“With a decades-long personal tie to General Secretary Xi Jinping, the Digital China 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

“As we characterize the challenge posed by China, I'd highlight that the Communist Party term-of-art "Digital China" is not even part of our conversation. Please remember that in Beijing, it is the conversation. Communist Party references to "digitally transforming the path to National Rejuvenation" are, well, stunning. In the end, it may not be the most important thing, but we need a national/corporate process for evaluating why Xi Jinping himself seems to think it is one of the most important things.”

David Dorman, “What Is America’s China Policy (and Why Isn’t Digital China Part of It)?” Digital China Wins the Future, April 18, 2022

“Xi Jinping’s Digital Fujian would evolve and expand over the next 20 years before finally reemerging as the Communist Party’s vision for a fully informatized Digital China: a sharp weapon that empowers the nation (improved national competitiveness) and a spring rain that benefits the people (improved operating efficiency of society).”

David Dorman, “China's Plan for Digital Dominance,” War on the Rocks, March 28, 2022

“Ever since Xi Jinping’s vision for Digital China emerged following the 18th Party Congress in 2012, and even more so following its elevation to a national strategy following the 19th Party Congress in 2017, Digital China has called for the digitalized transformation of Chinese society in support of socialist modernization. This, in turn, would support a digitalized model of modernization, Chinese Style Modernization, that would provide a competitive, alternative worldwide model to what the party calls “capitalist (i.e., Western-style) modernization.”

David Dorman, “Has Xi Jinping’s New “Digital China” Plan Redefined Great Power Competition?,” Digital China Wins the Future, February 28, 2023

“From Digital Fujian to Digital China, General Secretary Xi Jinping's strategic thinking on building an informatized China has been consistent, in one continuous line, and highly connected to thought and theory.”

“Digital Fujian is the Ideological Source of Digital China,” Guangming Daily, Page 1, April 23, 2018

“Technology is the key, and information is the soul. Not paying attention to informatization work is like a blind man riding a blind horse into a deep pool in the middle of the night...”

Xi Jinping, Party Secretary, Zhengding County, Hebei Province, Circa March 1982. “The Waves Wash Heaven and Earth into the East: A Chronicle of General Secretary Xi Jinping Guiding Our Country’s Informatized Development,” China Cyberspace, June 8, 2022.

“We must…give full play to the driving and leading role of informatization and digitalization in Chinese-Style Modernization; [and] continuously advance the construction of a Cyber Great Power and a Digital China; [all] to provide strong support for the … comprehensive advancement of the Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.”

Cao Shumin, Deputy Director, Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission, “Driving and Leading Chinese-Style Modernization with Informatization and Digitalization,” Red Flag Manuscript, January 26, 2023

“The construction of Digital China is a huge project that is complex, all-encompassing, and systemic (复杂性、全局性、系统性的巨大工程), and requires adherence to the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee…”

Tang Zhiwei, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,“Create a New Landscape for the Construction of Digital China with Chinese Style Modernization,” Guangming Online, December 7, 2022

“In 2017, the 19th Party Congress report clearly proposed to build “Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society,” and Digital China was written into party and state programmatic documents for the first time.”

“Opening Summary,” 2021 Digital China Development Report, Cyberspace Administration of China, July 23, 2022

“In 2021, a number of major strategic plans were successively introduced including the 14th Five-Year Plan… with a special section titled “Accelerate Digitalized Development and Build Digital China,” the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Informatization, and the 14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development, drawing a beautiful blueprint for the construction of Digital China during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.”

“Opening Summary,” 2021 Digital China Development Report, Cyberspace Administration of China, July 23, 2022

The National Cyberspace System upholds… accelerating the construction of Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society; [and] advancing the the modernization of the National Governance System and governance capabilities through informatization…

Zhuang Rongwen, “Follow the Trend of the Information Revolution Era and Strive to Promote the Construction of a Cyber Great Power,” Study Times, Page One, April 20, 2022

“The Eastern Data Western Computing project will surely have a profound impact on cooperation in the One Belt, One Road digital economy. Just as goods need a place to be transshipped, stored, and processed, large amounts of data also need a place to be stored and processed. The Eastern Data Western Computing project can meet this need.”

China Trade News, “A One Belt, One Road Perspective on Eastern Data Western Computing,” April 12, 2022

“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.”

“Digital China Wins the Future,” Outlook Weekly Magazine, “Authoritative” Governance Events Column, February 21, 2022

“Our country…has firmly grasped the historical opportunity of the information revolution and made "Build Digital China" the "Overall Strategy for National Informatized Development in the New Era"…providing a powerful digital impetus in the march to the Second Centenary Goal.”

“Cyberspace Administration of China Publishes 2020 Digital China Development Report,” Cyberspace Administration of China, July 02, 2021

“The digital economy, digital society, and digital government are organic components of Digital China. It is necessary to promote the construction of Digital China with systems thinking, and to promote the digital transformation of the economy, society and government. At the heart of a systems thinking approach to a national digital strategy is the integration of institutions, organizations, people, technology, data, and resources to support the much-needed transformation inside and outside the public sector to generate public value.”

Liu Mixia, Associate Professor, Central Party School, "The Construction of Digital China Requires Systems Thinking," Study Times, June 4, 2021

“Accelerating the construction of Digital China is to adapt to the new historical orientation of our country’s development, to fully implement the New Development Concept, to cultivate new momentum through informatization, promote new development with new momentum, and create new brilliance with new development.”

Xi Jinping, “Congratulatory Letter to the First Digital China Summit,” April 22, 2018

“[We] must build Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society; promote deep fusion of the Internet, big data, and artificial intelligence with the real economy; develop the digital economy and sharing economy; [all to] cultivate new points for growth and build new momentum.”

Xi Jinping, “Congratulatory Letter to the Fourth World Internet Conference,” December 3, 2017

“It is difficult to know why Digital China seems to have escaped widespread notice in the West. Perhaps the daily nature of the US-China technology competition makes for better reading, perhaps the nature of the strategy—theoretical and couched in dry CCP jargon—makes it hard to digest. But this should not stop anyone from trying to understand what it is and informing our government and the public.”

David Dorman and John Hemmings, “China has a Digital Grand Strategy. Does the President Know?” PacNet #18, March 7, 2023

“In the new digital age, construction of Digital China must also focus on and serve the Five-Sphere Integrated Plan, building China into a Modernized Socialist Great Power by coordinating and advancing digital economy, digital society, digital government, digital culture, and digital ecology.”

David Dorman, “Digitalized Transformation of the Five Sphere Integrated Plan,” Digital China Wins the Future, February 23, 2023

“Digital China is, in fact, about winning. Winning the digital age. 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 of China's “overall” (总体) digital strategy 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.”

David Dorman, “What Does "Digital Wins The Future" Really Mean?,” Digital China Wins the Future, January 30, 2023

“New Type Infrastructure is a critical feature of China’s comprehensive digital strategy, Digital China, and has been for years. Outside China, one is hard pressed to find a single mention of New Type Infrastructure. I have no real explanation for this.”

David Dorman, “Most Americans Have Never Heard of New Type Infrastructure. Even Xi Jinping Would Find That Odd, ”Digital China Wins the Future, May 13, 2022

“There are multiple drivers behind the Digital China strategy, but one of them is competition, and in particular, technology competition with the United States. It is always useful when you are competing to know that the race has started. This race started more than 20 years ago, and according to Chinese Communist Party history, Xi Jinping was the one who started it. The contest is personal, and Xi just moved another piece on the board.”

David Dorman and John Hemmings, “China's Digital Challenge: Hidden in Plain Sight, Bigger Than You Thought, and Much Harder to Solve,” May 11, 2022

“Beijing launched its field of dreams for data, New Type Infrastructure's Eastern Data Western Computing project, on February 17. It is still in the headlines in China, but it hardly made the news here. It just does not sound that important. It is."

David Dorman, “How China Will Dominate the Global Competition Over Data,”The National Interest, April 28, 2022

“I don't hear Western businesses saying that they want to help China become a "Cyber Great Power" or a "Maritime Great Power." "Digital China" falls into the same general class of Communist Party initiatives and national-level strategies, but almost no one knows it. It sounds more like a meme of some kind - digital China with a small "d". Pretty useful for Beijing as it turns out. Western businesses offer help, without understanding the connotation.”

David Dorman, “Get the Word Out on Digital China,” Digital China Wins The Future, April 21, 2022

“Smart ecosystems are what Digital China is all about. That means lots of bundled technologies, inside and outside China. If Beijing's Digital China strategy is successful (and that’s a maybe I know, but still enough to make me pause), we will face something much more substantial than we saw with simply Huawei 5G.”

David Dorman, “Just How Integrated is China’s Digital Ecosystem? Take Huawei for example...” Digital China Wins the Future, April 20, 2022

“In 2016, the Communist Party was already moving to revise Marx’s Labor Theory of Value to designate “data” as the newest and most valuable “factor of production” in China’s developing digital economy. But to be successful, data would require a digital infrastructure program of massive proportions to carry it. New Type Infrastructure would become the “information aorta” for China’s economic and social development in the digital era.”

David Dorman, “Everything You Need to Know about Xi Jinping and his Information Aorta,” Digital China Wins the Future, April 19, 2022

“…the military-civil fusion component of Digital China was highlighted in state-run media and official documents up to 2016, since that time the discussion has all but vanished.”

David Dorman, “Military-Civil Fusion Supports China's Industrial Internet,” Digital China Wins the Future, April 13, 2022