Accenture is very optimistic about the construction of Digital China and will assist China’s digital innovation with professional services. 埃森哲非常看好数字中国建设，将以专业服务助力中国数字创新。
“‘Helping Digital China Innovate with Professional Services’ (Testimony – Opportunities in China),” People’s Daily, Page 3, April 5, 2022
Some experts still dismiss Digital China as little more than a slogan or, worse, a meme. I’ve heard that argument directly. It’s wrong. And misunderstanding it carries real consequences, especially for Western companies operating in China.
This “Get the Word Out” post exists for one reason: to help Western businesses recognize that Digital China is a national-level strategy, not casual branding and that public statements about it can be politically meaningful, whether intended or not.
Three realities shape this view. First, doing business in China, especially in the digital domain, is genuinely difficult right now, and many firms are trying to navigate it responsibly. Second, China’s digital ecosystems are intentionally deeply integrated, creating security and governance risks that Western firms are still struggling to assess. Third, there has been remarkably little serious discussion in the West about Digital China itself. Until recently, I didn’t fully grasp its scope either, and I’ve been studying China for decades.
Against that backdrop, an April 5 article in People’s Daily stood out. In the Testimony – Opportunities in China column on Page 3, prime placement in a newspaper where order matters, the paper ran a feature quoting Accenture under the headline “Helping Digital China Innovate With Professional Services.”
The article is routine in form. Anyone who reads Chinese business media will recognize the genre. But two things deserve attention. First, the title explicitly endorses Digital China as a strategic object. Second, an Accenture spokesperson is quoted as saying:
Accenture is very optimistic about the construction of Digital China and will assist China’s digital innovation with professional services.
That sentence matters, not because Accenture did anything unusual, but because it publicly aligns a Western firm with a Party-state strategy most Western audiences barely recognize. We never hear U.S. companies say they want to help China become a Cyber Great Power or a Maritime Great Power. Digital China falls into the same class of strategic plans, but because the term sounds vague or benign in English, it is often treated casually.
That ambiguity is useful to Beijing.
None of this implies ill intent. The Accenture interview reflects a solid understanding of Chinese technology policy and its official narrative, exactly what you would expect from a firm operating in China. But it also shows how easily Western companies can become unwitting validators of the Party’s strategic objectives simply by adopting its language.
So this is the reminder. Digital China is not a meme. It is a long-running national strategy with ideological, governance, and geopolitical dimensions. Western firms should understand what they are endorsing publicly, before they do so.
A few years ago, I might have made the same mistake.