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.

When the Central Party School tells officials that Digital China requires systems thinking, it is not offering advice, it is establishing doctrine.

In the Party’s view, building Digital China demands an integrated national approach: coordinating institutions, organizations, people, technology, data, and resources to achieve the full digitalized transformation of state and society. As Associate Professor Liu Mixia writes, this is the same “holistic” (整体) methodology adopted by countries pursuing Smart Nation strategies, most notably Singapore.

Her article in Study Times, the Party’s premier training journal, offers an important window into how the leadership expects Digital China to be implemented: not as a collection of standalone projects, but as a tightly coordinated, whole-of-system effort. Two points stand out immediately. First, Digital China’s concepts are now fully embedded in routine Party School instruction. Just a few years ago, these articles required footnotes to explain the strategy’s elements. Today, cadre are expected to understand them, or at least pretend they do. Second, while “systemic thinking” has sometimes been used as a translation for “系统思维,” the Digital China context makes clear that “systems thinking” is the more accurate interpretation.

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 is one of the few foreign models that PRC commentators consistently cite positively. Liu’s use of it highlights the technocratic legitimacy the Party wants to associate with its own approach.

Digital China’s Five-Sphere Integrated Plan

Liu connects Digital China directly to three of the Party’s Five-Sphere Integrated Plan domains—economy, society, and government—each now undergoing digitalized transformation:

“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…

These three spheres receive the most policy attention because they are the “workhorse spheres” where digitalization directly affects governance, service delivery, and economic performance. Without success across all three, Digital China cannot achieve system-wide transformation or lay the groundwork for a future Smart Society.

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)

These are “supporting” rather than dependent strategies. Digital China requires them, but they do not necessarily require Digital China. As Liu notes:

“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。

This asymmetry underscores Digital China’s role as the integrator of China’s digital transformation.

Major Missions: The Means of Digital China

Finally, Liu highlights two of Digital China’s three major technical missions:

  • 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 This Matters

Liu’s article shows how Digital China has become doctrinally embedded: fully integrated into Party School pedagogy, mapped against long-standing Marxist developmental theory, and framed as a whole-of-system transformation that demands coordination across society. “Systems thinking” is not treated as a technical method, but as a mandate for restructuring institutions, governance mechanisms, and public services around data and digital infrastructure.

Digital China is intended to be comprehensive, coherent, and coordinated, or it will fail. And in Beijing’s view, the stakes are far larger than modernization alone: systems thinking is the methodology through which the Party believes China can lead in a digitalized global order.

Understanding this perspective is essential to understanding where China believes its digital future lies and how it intends to get there.

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