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. Many countries have adopted a systems thinking approach to policy development and service delivery, such as those adopting Smart Nation planning and a holistic approach to digital transformation…

Liu Mixia (刘密霞), “Construction of Digital China Requires Systems Thinking” (数字中国建设需要系统思维), Study Times, June 4, 2021. Associate Professor Liu Mixia is affiliated with the Central Party School’s National Academy of Governance and its Research Center on E-Government.

Executive Summary

Digital China requires systems thinking. In a June 2021 Study Times article, Central Party School scholar Liu Mixia argues that China’s national digital transformation must integrate institutions, organizations, people, technology, data, and resources into a coordinated system. Her analysis connects digital government, digital society, and the digital economy with supporting national strategies, New Type Infrastructure, and data governance. It also draws on international Smart Nation planning, an approach associated prominently with Singapore. The larger implication is significant: Digital China’s success depends not simply on developing advanced technologies, but on coordinating the institutions, capabilities, and policies needed to transform the state and society. Systems thinking provides an important methodology for putting that strategy into practice.

Systems Thinking Becomes a Strategic Requirement

When a Central Party School scholar argues in Study Times that Digital China requires systems thinking, she is not offering advice. This is more than an academic discussion of public administration. It explains how the Party’s national digital strategy is expected to work.

In Liu Mixia’s account, building Digital China requires coordinating institutions, organizations, people, technology, data, and resources to achieve the digitalized transformation of the state and society. The emphasis is on the system as a whole, not the isolated development of its parts.

Liu’s article offers an important window into how Digital China is being taught and understood within Party School discourse. The strategy’s concepts are now sufficiently established that her discussion moves directly to their implementation. And her preferred term, “systems thinking” (系统思维), captures the emphasis on interconnected parts, coordinated functions, and system-wide outcomes.

Liu structures her argument around several core elements of the Digital China strategy.

Systems Thinking

Liu uses “systems thinking” to explain the level of coordination the Party expects:

“Systems thinking for the construction of Digital China is to use a holistic approach to view Digital China as a system, attaching importance to the relationship between its parts and their impact on the whole, scientifically and efficiently planning system elements and operating mechanisms so that the government and society as a whole possess innovative thinking…”
数字中国建设的系统思维是利用整体方法把数字中国看成一个系统，重视部分间关系以及对整体的影响，科学有效的规划系统要素和运行机制，使政府和全社会具有创新思维…

She reinforces this point with an explicit comparison:

“Many countries have adopted a systems thinking approach to policy development and service delivery, such as those adopting Smart Nation planning and a holistic approach to digital transformation…”
很多国家在政策制定和服务提供方面提出了系统思维的方法，如有的国家在智慧国家计划和数字化转型方面采用了整体方法…

Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative provides a particularly useful comparison. Although Liu does not identify Singapore by name, her discussion of Smart Nation planning, integrated public services, and whole-of-government digital transformation closely parallels Singapore’s approach. The comparison is revealing: a Central Party School scholar is framing Digital China’s implementation through a systems-thinking methodology also associated with other advanced national digital strategies.

Digital China’s Five-Sphere Integrated Plan

Liu connects Digital China to three major domains of digital transformation: the digital economy, digital society, and digital government. These are not themselves the formal Five-Sphere Integrated Plan, but they provide important mechanisms for advancing its broader objectives.

“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 in a parallel and coordinated manner.”
数字经济、数字社会和数字政府是数字中国的有机组成部分，要以系统思维推进数字中国建设…

Together, these domains are central to Digital China’s implementation. Their coordinated development is intended to improve economic performance, government effectiveness, and social governance. None can be treated as an isolated undertaking if Digital China is to achieve the system-wide transformation envisioned by the Party.

Supporting Strategies

Liu also embeds several supporting national strategies, each considered essential to Digital China’s success:

  • Manufacturing Great Power (制造强国)
  • Quality Great Power (质量强国)
  • Cyber Great Power (网络强国)

In my analytical framework, these are supporting national strategies: distinct undertakings whose capabilities contribute to Digital China’s development. Liu presents the four strategies together as important to strengthening China’s economic system. Their relationship illustrates the broader systems-thinking principle: individual national strategies can perform different functions while contributing to shared modernization objectives.

“Digital China with Manufacturing Great Power, Quality Great Power and Cyber Great Power have become key to promoting the optimization and enhancement of the economic system.”
数字中国与制造强国、质量强国和网络强国成为推动经济体系优化提升的关键。

Major Missions: The Means of Digital China

Finally, Liu highlights two closely connected requirements for implementing Digital China: secure New Type Infrastructure and the governance of data as a foundational strategic resource. Both illustrate the relationship between the systems that make digital transformation possible and the institutional mechanisms needed to coordinate their use.

  • New Type Infrastructure (新型基础设施): the digital foundational layer
  • The Data Element Resource System (数据要素资源体系): the system governing data as a strategic resource

In her words:

“The construction of Digital China [rests] on a secure base of New Type Infrastructure and on data as the foundational strategic resource…”
数字中国建设是在新型基础设施的安全底座和以数据为基础的战略资源之上…

These missions reflect the Party’s conviction that data intelligence offers new tools to maintain Party leadership, modernize governance, and reconstruct the “forces of production” for the digital age.

Why Systems Thinking Matters

Liu’s article offers a valuable window into how Digital China is understood within Party School discourse. It connects the strategy to China’s broader modernization objectives and presents its implementation as a whole-of-system transformation requiring coordination across government, markets, and society.

Systems thinking is not simply a technical method. It is an approach to organizing institutions, governance mechanisms, data, and digital infrastructure so that the individual components of Digital China can function together.

Digital China is intended to be comprehensive, coherent, and coordinated, or it will fail. And in Beijing’s strategic conception, the stakes extend well beyond improving government services or building digital infrastructure. The objective is a transformation of national capabilities that can strengthen China’s competitiveness in the digital age.

Understanding this perspective helps explain not only what Beijing intends to build, but how it believes that transformation can be achieved.

Author’s Note: Read a lightly edited Google Translate machine translation of Construction of Digital China Requires Systems Thinking.

Feedback & Corrections: Your questions, comments, additions, or corrections are always welcome! Please contact me at digitalchinawinsthefuture@gmail.com

AI Transparency: I use AI tools to support my editing, research, and translation process. Learn more on my AI Transparency Page.