“…the overall planning and promotion of Digital China construction which includes the construction of a digital economy, digital society, digital government, digital ecology, and a modern industrial system, are all major issues in current national economic and social development.”
Li Guangqian, “Injecting New Momentum Into Digital China Construction,” Legal Daily, March 15, 2023
The new National Data Administration has been given the enormously complex task of implementing China’s national digital strategy, Digital China. Can it be done? Even China’s own experts have doubts.
Li Guangqian, an expert on China’s National Informatization Development Strategy at the Development Research Center of the State Council, published a commentary titled “Injecting New Momentum Into Digital China Construction” on March 15, 2023 in Legal Daily.
The article discusses Digital China and the creation of the new National Data Administration. Li provides a fascinating perspective on the decision to create the administration, the history of data as a factor of production, and the five greatest challenges the new administration will face.
A lightly edited Google Translate machine translation of Li Guangqian’s “Injecting New Momentum Into Digital China Construction” follows below:
Recently, the 14th National People’s Congress held its Third Plenary and voted to adopt the State Council Institutional Reform Plan. The plan calls for the establishment of the National Data Administration, which is responsible for [things like] coordinating and promoting the construction of Basic Systems for Data, overall planning for data resource integration & sharing and for development & use, as well as overall planning and promotion of Digital China, digital economy, and digital society construction. These responsibilities are mainly transferred from the Office of the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and the National Development and Reform Commission. The National Data Administration is managed by the National Development and Reform Commission.
Unlike other government institutional reforms, the National Data Administration is a newly established functional management department of the State Council, which not only involves the reform and optimization of the work functions of several current government agencies, but also will operate and manage the future development of our country’s digital economy. As a result, as soon as it was launched, the administration received wide attention and lively discussion from the whole society.
The establishment of the National Data Administration is an inevitable requirement for the deepening development of our country’s informatization and digital economy. As early as the late 1990s, our country began to establish specialized organizations to promote informatized development. Although it has been adjusted many times since then, mechanisms and agencies to promote informatized applications have always existed, right up until the Central Cyberspace Affairs Commission and its Office after the 18th Party Congress.
In recent years, data has gradually become the core content that is key for development of informatization and the digital economy, and data resource management has increasingly become an independent issue. To this end, as early as 2015, the State Council published the “Action Outline for Promoting the Development of Big Data.” In October 2019, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee proposed for the first time that data is a factor of production and explicitly called for a robust mechanism whereby factors of production such as labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, management and data are evaluated by the market for their contribution, and then rewarded based on this evaluation. Subsequently, the Central Committee and the State Council also published the “Opinion on Improving the Systems and Mechanisms for Market-based Allocation of Factors of Production” and the “Opinion on Building Basic Systems for Data to Better Unleash the Role of Data Elements,” both of these aimed at strengthening the foundation of the data governance system.
Therefore, the specialized management of data elements and data resources has increasingly become an independent government function. In fact, for a period of time, many places in China have begun to establish their own big data bureaus to explore ways to effectively manage big data resources. For example, as early as 2015, Guizhou Province established a Big Data Development Management Bureau; in 2018, Zhejiang, Shandong, Fujian and other provinces also established big data bureaus. In this sense, the formation of the National Data Administration can also be seen as a matter of course.
From the functional arrangement of the State Council Institutional Reform Plan, the biggest breakthrough of the National Data Administration is realizing the management of data based on its entire life cycle, including processes like the generation, transmission, storage, processing and handling, circulation and trading, and development and use, will all be included within the scope of its overall planning and management. This will fundamentally overcome the long-standing drawbacks of scattered management, duplicative construction, and inefficient use of national data resources.
Although the National Data Administration is only a newly established department, its government functions and responsibilities are quite heavy and arduous. Judging from the above arrangement of responsibilities, the National Data Administration duties will involve the sharing and use of government data resources, the construction of the Nationally Unified System of Big Data Centers, big data trading and circulation, cross-border data flow, data security management, as well as many others.[And all of these] are closely related to other aspects like e-government affairs, e-commerce, smart cities, Digital China, data elements, and data governance. Among these, the overall planning and promotion of Digital China construction which includes the construction of a digital economy, digital society, digital government, digital ecology, and a modern industrial system, are all major issues in current national economic and social development. Therefore, the National Data Administration has a long way to go.
From the current development trend and requirements, the National Data Administration will carry out a tough battle in the following key issues and areas. The first is the sharing and development of data resources. It includes not only the sharing and development of government data and data of public institutions, but also the issue of data development and interconnection for large Internet platforms. The second is to accelerate the construction of the National System of Integrated Big Data Centers. In particular, this is accelerating the construction of the “Eastern Data Western Computing” project to cope with the increasing demand for massive computing power growing out of AI industry’s major development and output. The third is to deal with and weigh the contradiction between protection of private data and data development and use. The fourth is to promote data elements processes and to explore the data trading and circulation system (制度). The fifth is to explore an effective mechanism for cross-border data flow. In the face of the current anti-globalization trend and data localization requirements, how to ensure the transnational development of the platform economy while ensuring data sovereignty is a major issue facing the current development of China’s digital economy that must be solved.
Of course, the difficulties and problems faced by the National Data Administration in the future are far more than these. In general, there are both old and persistent diseases and new challenges. It is precisely because of this that the National Data Administration setting sail is so promising.
