The digital economy will enable the Chinese nation to once again become the center of the world economy… 数字经济将会让中华民族再次成为世界经济的中心…
New Ideas Lead a New Journey: Digital China Paints a New Picture of High Quality Development, CCTV-13, June 12, 2024 【新思想引领新征程】数字中国绘就高质量发展新图景
For Beijing, Digital China is more than a technology strategy. It is also a competitive strategy seeking China’s return to the central position in the world economy.
On June 12, 2024, China Central Television (CCTV) aired a report summarizing one of the Party’s core messages behind the Digital China strategy, referred to in the segment by its full formal title, “Building Digital China.” In the report, CCTV stated that building a data-driven digital economy, one of Digital China’s five “ways,” would enable China “to once again become the center of the world economy.”
The line was aimed at a domestic Chinese audience. It framed Digital China not simply as a technology policy, but as a historic opening through which data-driven development could reshape global competitiveness, advance National Rejuvenation, and return China to the central position in the world economy. In this formulation, success would mean not only industrial upgrading or digital transformation, but also the reduction of domestic inequality and the restoration of China’s global economic standing.
But there is one big problem: this is the part of the report viewers of the official CCTV version no longer see.
A business website in China, which I will not identify here, posted a short clip on November 13, 2025 taken from a longer CCTV broadcast originally aired in June 2024. The clip appears to come from the same CCTV report: it uses the same program framing, visual style, and topic sequence, but includes a passage that is absent from the official version now available online.
If you watch the full official CCTV broadcast linked above, the segment containing the line “the digital economy will enable the Chinese nation to once again become the center of the world economy” does not appear. The official version now available from CCTV does not include it.
I do not know with certainty why CCTV removed it. But there is a likely reason.
Why the Phrase May Have Become Sensitive
Around the same time the full broadcast aired in 2024, a number of posts on Chinese social media, apparently from non-official accounts, began circulating a line that merged historical pride with digital ambition:
“The atomic bomb enabled the Chinese people to stand up, and the digital economy will enable the Chinese nation to once again become the center of the world economy.”
原子弹是让中国人站起来，而数字经济将会让中华民族再次成为世界经济的中心。
The origin of this line is unclear. But its spread, and its striking similarity to the wording in the CCTV clip, may have made the phrase politically sensitive. CCTV may have judged it unwise to allow even the latter half of the line to remain in its official broadcast.
What the missing passage may reveal is how expansive the Party’s Digital China narrative can become when stated in its most ambitious form. Digital China is not merely about building networks, platforms, data systems, or smart infrastructure. It is also part of a larger historical claim: that data-driven development can help China overcome domestic developmental inequality, transform its economy, and return to the center of global economic life.
Below is the archived clip and transcript of the segment that no longer appears in the official CCTV version.
Archived Video
Video Transcript and Translation
We must accelerate Building Digital China, build a digital economy with data as the key factor, and promote the fused development of the real economy and the digital economy. We must clearly explain to everyone the significance of developing the digital economy. The digital economy will enable the Chinese nation to once again become the center of the world economy, and in the future, 1.4 billion people will be able to completely eliminate the gap between rich and poor, thus ushering in a new era of unprecedented opportunity.
要加快建设数字中国，构建以数据为关键要素的数字经济，推动实体经济和数字经济融合发展。明确告诉大家国家搞数字经济的意义。数字经济将会让中华民族再次成为世界经济的中心，未来十四亿人也能够彻底消除贫富差距，由此开启一个百年不遇的时代新风口。