Digital China Is Going Global: The Top Five Things to Know Right Now

If you work on digital policy in any government, it’s time to get serious about Digital China. Synchronize understanding with your colleagues, sharpen your talking points, and prepare for sustained engagement. Digital China is no longer primarily a domestic transformation project; it is going global. And if your Chinese counterparts are using language like “building an open and win-win pattern of international cooperation in the digital domain,” you are already part of the transition.

Over the past week, a flood of analysis has followed the release of China’s new Digital China Plan. Among the most important signals were two rare commentaries by Zhuang Rongwen, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China and a long-time Xi Jinping ally whose involvement with Digital China dates back more than two decades. Zhuang is widely viewed inside the Party as speaking authoritatively for Xi on Digital China. Two commentaries in such close succession are not routine.

One of Zhuang’s commentaries is in the Party theoretical journal Seeking Truth and looks at Chinese Style Modernization broadly, including Digital China’s role in supporting it.¹ This is a core aspect of the Marxist theory that Digital China stands on. Zhuang other’s commentary is in the Party mouthpiece People’s Daily and looks at the new Digital China Plan itself, and how it supports Chinese Style Modernization.²

The message is consistent and unmistakable: Digital China is now explicitly tied to Chinese Style Modernization and it is entering a new phase.

Below are the five developments that matter most right now.

(1) Digital China Is Now a Global Strategy

Zhuang Rongwen used striking language to explain what the new plan and its “2522” framework are all about, and at the same time likely provided the first public expression of a significant 20th Party Congress outcome. Translating Zhuang’s language literally, this outcome is a new “Holistic Strategy for Digital China Construction in the New Era” (新时代数字中国建设的整体战略). Translating Zhuang’s language contextually, this outcome is best understood as a new “Global Strategy for Digital China Construction in the New Era.”

In short, Zhuang’s language signals something more consequential: Digital China is now being treated as a global strategy.

For more than a decade, Digital China’s emphasis was overwhelmingly domestic and transformative. While an international dimension always existed, it remained secondary. That balance has now shifted. The Party’s concept of Global Digitalized Development has been formally folded into Digital China, placing domestic and international objectives on equal footing within the plan’s new “2522” framework.

This is not rhetorical flourish. It marks a strategic expansion.

(2) Digital China Now Sits Above National Informatization

Xi Jinping’s Digital China has effectively overwritten four decades of Party discourse on national informatization. Based on the evolution in naming conventions for the Digital China strategy itself over the past ten years, Xi’s Digital China is no longer the strategy supervising National Informatization. National Informatization is now the transformative process to build Digital China, globally.

In the past, major accelerations of Digital China (or expansions of its narrative) have been directly connected to (or even driven by) Xi Jinping personally in some way: inspections, letters, speeches, or authoritative statements. We have not seen this yet for the new Digital China plan. Instead, the Party as a whole is lifting the narrative and accelerating the strategy, at the national level and across lower administrative levels.

Xi’s personal intervention is no longer necessary. Notably, the current digital surge is at least as significant as the one personally led by Xi at the onset of the COVID pandemic. But instead we now see coordinated Party-wide narrative elevation, policy guidance, and implementation.

Digital China now behaves like regularized Party policy, not a leader-centric initiative.

(3) Systems Matter More Than Infrastructure

Digital China has always been about systems, but that emphasis is now explicit, especially internationally. Beijing’s global push is not just about exporting infrastructure, but about promoting integrated digital systems and applications: digital government services, e-commerce platforms, health technologies, and industrial solutions.

I’ve been cataloging some Digital China “systems” as they are introduced, tested in provinces and localities, and then implemented nationally. Recently I’ve also wondered why the Party narrative on expanding China’s massive National Smart Education Platform overseas has picked up considerably in past months. Now I know. If you didn’t like Confucius Institutes, you are going to like the Smart Education Platform “going global” even less.

Efforts like these are paired with active engagement in international organizations to shape the rules, norms, and standards that govern digital infrastructure itself. I should also point out (as the Party does) that this sort of international approach also supports Beijing’s dual-circulation model for continued economic development.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Digital China is now being positioned as a governance model, not just a technology stack.

(4) Cadres Will Be Held Accountable

The new plan sharply raises expectations for Party members and government officials. Digital China implementation is now tied more explicitly to performance evaluation and cadre assessment. This has been very much part of the Digital China program from the start, but now it takes on a much more serious tone.

Providing the digitalized/informatized conditions for building talent, innovation, and “New Type Industrialization” are also core components of Digital China. To ensure there is no doubt on what is expected, the “2522” framework has become a teaching and mobilization tool, reinforced through public education campaigns and official training materials.

This is a clear signal: Digital China is no longer optional, experimental, or loosely enforced.

(5) Capital Is Already Moving

As always, financial markets in China are responding quickly. Trying to make money off these accelerations and expansions has long characterized Digital China in PRC financial media. Analysts are identifying which infrastructure, systems, and applications will benefit most from the new expansion phase. While New Type Infrastructure remains important, the international push appears increasingly focused on systems and applications, not just hardware.

The new Digital China plan (and Zhuang’s commentary) makes clear that the focus domestically remains on building a “Data Element Resource System” (体系) and the information “aorta,” Xi’s own metaphor for New Type (digital) Infrastructure. However, one adjustment bears close watching: the replacement of the ICT Industrial Ecosystem with the broader Digital Technology Innovation System that prioritizes the private sector for technology innovation.

The creation of the Digital Technology Innovation System significantly expands the scope of what counts as a strategic Digital China capability and deserves deeper analysis in its own right.

Think About This

Digital China is not new but it is entering a new phase. A new plan, authoritative Party commentary, and explicit global language together point to a strategy that is expanding outward with intent.

And for the most part, it’s happening without much notice outside China.

We need to improve understanding, share knowledge with allies and partners, and decide together whether our current approach serves the common good.