Beijing published the “Plan for the Overall Layout of Building a Digital China.” This is Beijing’s own English translation of the plan’s title. “Overall,” the translation is correct. “Globally,” it’s not.

On February 27th, the Chinese central government released a major update to the Digital China strategy. The document is officially titled (数字中国建设整体布局规划), which is commonly translated into English as the “Plan for the Overall Layout of Building a Digital China.”

It is the literal title translation, the most common English rendering, and Beijing’s own preferred English-language translation.

There’s just one problem: “Overall layout” is no longer an accurate translation of 整体布局 in this context of the 2023 plan. The translation masks, intentionally or not, the important global shift described in the new document and reflected in the Chinese text.

So “overall,” Beijing’s translation of the Plan’s title is correct. But “globally,” it’s not.

What’s the problem with “Overall”? The English translation froze, but the Chinese strategy evolved.

Before February 2023, Digital China was titled the “overall strategy” (总体战略) for national informatization and was likely guided by an unpublished “overall layout” (总体布局) for strategy implementation.

In February 2023, Digital China was publicly retitled the “holistic strategy” (整体战略) for Digital China construction, and a new plan for the “holistic layout” (整体布局) of Digital China construction was published.1

The Chinese-language names of the strategy and layout changed, but the English-language names stayed the same.

Translating both terms (总体 and 整体) as “overall,” as in the current preferred translation of the new Plan’s title, masks the evolution that took place in 2023 for English readers.

What’s wrong with “Holistic”? It also masks the global evolution.

There are a number of ways to translate “整体” in this context, and “holistic” was a tempting choice for me to replace “overall.” In fact, “holistic” was used in one unofficial PRC translation of the new Digital China Plan.

More interesting, as used in the new Plan, “整体” finds its conceptual roots in Xi Jinping’s “important discourses” on “Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Opening” where its official PRC translation in this context is “holistic.”2

So why not use “holistic”? Because there is another, larger language issue.

Prior to 2023, Digital China was mostly about the domestic environment. Digital China was an “overall” (总体) national strategy focused primarily on the “overall” (总体) implementation of the strategy across all provinces and regions in the country.

This process of domestic implementation, beginning with Xi Jinping initiating “Digital Fujian” in 2000 and “Digital Zhejiang” in 2003, was expanded to all provinces and regions following Xi’s elevation to General Secretary in 2012. This two-decade initiative has been nearly invisible in the West (but I’ll eventually cover it on this website).

In 2023, the international environment was formally added to Digital China and the strategy was renamed. Digital China became a “holistic” (整体) national strategy with a new “holistic” (整体), “systemic” (系统), and “coordinated” (协同) guiding ideology.3

By Party design, this “holistic” strategy “coordinates” the domestic and international environments “systemically” across Digital China’s transformative (domestic) and competitive (international) goals.

Stated simply, Digital China now has paired domestic and international strategies that seek a common end state.

We call frameworks like this a global strategy. “Holistic” is just one piece.4

Why is “Global” the most accurate translation? Because context matters in translation.

In this extraordinarily complex case, the most informative translation must be a contextual translation, and “holistic” falls short. The global implications are too significant.

While no translation is perfect, “global” is my preferred translation of “整体” in the titles of the new Plan and new Strategy. It best communicates the strategic shift embedded in the Chinese text.

This choice has potential issues. “Global” is a less common (but acceptable) translation of “整体” when the term has global implications, as it does in this case. However, the choice could be interpreted as a full external orientation rather than a holistic strategy with systemically coordinated domestic and international environments.

In my view, the importance of highlighting the global evolution for English language readers, rather than using a word that masks it, outweighs the risk.

Why is “Plan for the Global Layout of Digital China Construction” the best translation? Because all other translations mask the important evolution that took place.

With this explanation, my preferred contextual translation of “数字中国建设整体布局规划” is the “Plan for the Global Layout of Digital China Construction.” Translating “整体” literally as “overall” or “holistic” (or something similar) would mask the significant evolution that took place. This includes integrating Global Digitalized Development (全球数字化发展) into the top-level design of the Digital China strategy for the first time.

For the same reason, the “Global Strategy for Digital China Construction in the New Era” is my preferred contextual translation of “新时代数字中国建设的整体战略.” There is considerably more to come regarding this newly retitled strategy on this website.

“Global” is a major improvement in translation over the Party’s use of “overall” for its English-language readers worldwide. And it is worth highlighting again that “holistic” is just the first of three terms in the new strategy’s guiding ideology, which also includes coordination across domestic and international environments.

I’ll offer translation notes on “global versus overall” for readers on this website so that everyone can make their own decision (and understand my choice).

One last translation issue: Digital China Construction versus Building Digital China

Finally, on this website I translate “数字中国建设” as Digital China construction, thus the “Plan for the Global Layout of Digital China Construction,” not “Plan for for the Global Layout of Building a Digital China.” There are a number of problems with the latter translation.

First, adding the particle “a” before Digital China masks the formal name of a national strategy.

Second, I translate the Communist Party term-of-art “建设数字中国” as “Build (or Building) Digital China,” which is not used in the new Digital China Plan’s title. It is useful to distinguish between the two different forms. 数字中国建设 (Digital China construction) is a standard phrase. 建设数字中国 (Build Digital China) is a Party term-of-art. For longer-term analysis of Digital China, the distinction between these two phrases is important as each can convey different meanings or emphasis.

Footnotes

  1. The phrase “Strengthen the Global Layout of Digital China Construction” (加强数字中国建设整体布局) appeared nearly a year earlier in Premier Li Keqiang’s 2022 Government Work Report delivered at the Fifth Session of the 13th National People’s Congress on March 5, 2022. The phrase also appeared in higher-order Party commentaries in the months leading up to the release of the work report. This suggests that work to revise the top level design of Digital China was already well underway at that time. ↩︎
  2. The three-term phrase (holistic, systemic, and coordinated) finds its origins in Xi Jinping’s “important discourses” on “Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Opening,” a key element of Xi’s political guidance which dates to his famous trip to Guangdong in December 2012 to commemorate Deng Xiaoping. Xi’s ‘important discourses” on this topic remain active and important in Party guidance to this day. However, as used in these discourses (and related Party documents, narratives, and speeches) the phrase appears in a different order: “systemic, holistic, and coordinated.” Also in this context, the preferred PRC official translation of “整体” was primarily “integrated” through 2013 but has regularized to “holistic” over the past ten years. One interesting research question (on my list) is the reason for reordering the three terms in Digital China’s guiding ideology. ↩︎
  3. Ibid. ↩︎
  4. For an interesting and useful description of what a “holistic” (整体) approach means in terms of a national digital strategy like Digital China (or Singapore’s Smart Nation), see Liu Mixia (刘密霞), “The Construction of Digital China Requires Systems Thinking” (数字中国建设需要系统思维), Study Times, June 4, 2021. ↩︎