Whole-of-City Digitalized Transformation refers to a new model of urban High Quality Development in which cities, guided by the overarching goal of comprehensively deepening data integration, connectivity, and utilization, make combined use of digital technologies and institutional innovation tools to reshape their technological architecture, transform urban management processes, and achieve deep fusion of industry and city.
“Glossary of Commonly Used Terms in the Data Domain (Batch One)” (数据领域常用名词解释 第一批), National Data Administration, December 30, 2024
Milestone Summary
What happened:
China’s National Data Administration (NDA) formally defined Whole-of-City (All Domain) Digitalized Transformation (城市全域数字化转型) in its first official glossary of data-domain terms, published December 30, 2024.
Why it matters:
This definition elevates the city, not the sector, as the primary unit of digital transformation, reframing Digital China as an integrated, territorially grounded system.
Strategic function:
Serves as the operational bridge between national data systems and the end-state of Smart Society.
Systemic impact:
Shifts Digital China from project-based digitization to system-level urban transformation.
Long-term signal:
China is institutionalizing a whole-of-society transformation model, built through fully digitalized cities.
A Definition That Reframes the Entire System
On December 30, 2024, the NDA released the first batch of official definitions for China’s data domain. The effort appears technical: an attempt to standardize terminology across government, industry, and society. However, it is something far more consequential. By defining the language of the data domain, the Party is defining the architecture of Digital China itself.
Among dozens of terms, one stands out as a true strategy milestone: Whole-of-City (All Domain) Digitalized Transformation. The NDA defines it as a new model of urban High Quality Development driven by comprehensive data integration, combining digital technologies and institutional innovation to reshape technological architecture, transform governance processes, and achieve deep integration between industry and the city.
This is not simply a technical clarification. It is a formal statement of how Beijing now understands the pathway to Smart Society and, more importantly, where that transformation will occur.
From Digitizing Sectors to Transforming Systems
Earlier phases of Digital China were largely understood through the lens of sectors. Industrial digitalization, digital infrastructure, and data resource development were treated as distinct domains, each advancing at its own pace. This approach mirrored much of the global conversation, which continues to focus on individual technologies such as artificial intelligence, cloud computing, or 5G.
The NDA’s definition signals a break from that model. The problem is no longer how to digitize individual sectors. It is how to integrate them into a single, functioning system.
Whole-of-City Digitalized Transformation reframes digitalization as a systems-level challenge, where the objective is not deployment but integration. Data must flow across domains. Governance processes must be restructured around those flows. Industrial systems must be embedded within a unified urban architecture. The city, in this formulation, is no longer a passive environment in which digital technologies are applied. It becomes the active platform through which digital transformation is organized and executed.
This is why earlier policy language emphasized a seemingly simple but strategically decisive point: cities are the “comprehensive carriers” of Digital China. What appears to be a descriptive statement is, in fact, a redefinition of the system’s core unit.
The City as the Core Operating System of Digital China
Once the city is established as the primary unit of transformation, the implications cascade quickly. A city is not a sector. It is a dense convergence of governance, industry, infrastructure, and society. To digitally transform a city means transforming all of these elements simultaneously and integrating them into a coherent whole.
Under this model, urban systems are rebuilt around continuous data circulation. Digital infrastructure is no longer simply connective; it becomes constitutive, shaping how the city functions in real time. Governance shifts from administrative coordination to data-driven orchestration, where decision-making is informed by integrated, cross-domain visibility. At the same time, the boundary between industry and the city dissolves, as production systems, supply chains, and consumption environments become embedded within shared data architectures.
The result is not a “Smart City” in the conventional sense. It is something more ambitious: a fully digitalized urban system, designed to operate as an integrated platform for economic coordination, social governance, and technological deployment.
The Bridge to Smart Society
The importance of this milestone becomes clearer when placed within the broader logic of Digital China. The Party’s digital end state is Smart Society, a system in which digital technologies and data are fully embedded in economic, social, and governance processes. But Smart Society is not built directly. It emerges from the systems that precede it.
Whole-of-City Digitalized Transformation is the missing link in that chain.
National data infrastructure provides the foundation. City-scale integration provides the mechanism. From that integration, system-wide intelligence begins to take shape. Over time, as these systems mature and interconnect, the result is a society that operates on digital-intelligent principles by default.
In this sense, the NDA’s definition does more than describe an urban development model. It formalizes the pathway from Digital China to Smart Society, making clear that the transformation of cities is the mechanism through which that transition will occur.
Standardization as a Tool of Statecraft
There is a second layer to this milestone that is easy to overlook. The NDA’s glossary is not simply a technical reference. It is an instrument of governance.
By establishing “common and authoritative” definitions, the Party is creating a shared conceptual framework that aligns actors across government, industry, and society. This reduces ambiguity, accelerates implementation, and enables coordination at scale. In a system as large and complex as China’s, the ability to standardize meaning is itself a form of power.
As the NDA makes clear, these definitions will continue to evolve through iterative refinement and real-world application. But even in this early stage, the direction is evident. The vocabulary of the data domain is being constructed in parallel with the system it describes. Language and infrastructure are advancing together.
In that sense, defining Whole-of-City Digitalized Transformation is not just a conceptual milestone. It is part of the process of making that transformation governable.
Strategic Implications
This shift toward city-scale integration carries implications that extend well beyond urban policy. It grounds Digital China in physical territory, ensuring that digital transformation is not abstract but embedded in real-world systems. It collapses the distinction between technology and governance, making digitalization a core mechanism of state capacity rather than a supporting tool. It transforms cities into platforms: nodes through which data, capital, and authority are organized and exercised.
Perhaps most importantly, it points toward an emerging model that is inherently exportable. A fully realized Whole-of-City framework offers a replicable template for other countries seeking to modernize through digital systems. In this way, what begins as a domestic governance model has the potential to become part of a broader competition over how digital societies are built and governed.
Bottom Line
The NDA’s formal definition of Whole-of-City Digitalized Transformation marks a clear inflection point in the evolution of Digital China.
The strategy is no longer primarily about building infrastructure or advancing individual technologies. It is about transforming entire cities into integrated, data-driven systems. These are systems capable of coordinating economic activity, reshaping governance, and generating new forms of state capacity.
Through those systems, the Party is building something larger. Not just a digital economy. Not just smart cities. But the foundations of Smart Society.