“Although the National Data Administration is a newly established department, its government functions and responsibilities are [already] quite heavy and arduous.”
Li Guangqian (Development Research Center of the State Council), “Injecting New Momentum Into Digital China Construction,” Legal Daily, March 15, 2023
Digital China is not just an aspirational vision. It is a technically demanding, institutionally complex project whose success depends on whether the National Data Administration can rise to its mission.
The newly established National Data Administration (NDA)1 has been handed one of the most complex governance tasks in contemporary China: implementing the national digital strategy known as Digital China. In practical terms, this means driving digital transformation at the societal level by 2035. Can it be done? Even China’s own experts are not fully convinced.
That uncertainty comes through clearly in a recent commentary by Li Guangqian, a specialist in national informatization strategy at the Development Research Center of the State Council. Writing in Legal Daily, Li examines the rationale behind creating the NDA, the evolution of data as a factor of production, and most importantly, the hardest challenges the new administration will face.
Li argues that the NDA’s most significant institutional breakthrough lies in its mandate to manage data across its entire life cycle. This includes data generation, transmission, storage, processing, circulation, trading, and development. Because data now sits at the center of economic and social activity, Li notes that the NDA will, in effect, be responsible for guiding the future trajectory of China’s digital economy itself.
He traces this logic back to the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee in October 2019, which formally recognized data as a factor of production. That decision placed data alongside labor, capital, land, knowledge, technology, and management, each to be evaluated by the market and rewarded according to contribution. The creation of the NDA is the institutional response to that conceptual shift.
Against this backdrop, Li describes the NDA’s task list as “heavy and arduous.” Beyond managing government data sharing, the administration must oversee national data infrastructure, regulate data trading and circulation, manage cross-border data flows, and ensure data security, all while coordinating the broader construction of Digital China across the economy, government, society, ecology, and a modern industrial system. He notes the National Data Administration “has a long way to go.”
Li distills these challenges into five areas where the NDA will face its “toughest battles” (攻坚战):
- Sharing and development of data resources
This includes not only government and public-institution data, but also data held by large internet platforms and the problem of interconnection across systems. - Accelerating construction of a National Unified System of Big Data Centers2
In particular, advancing the Eastern Data, Western Computing initiative to meet surging demand for computing power driven by AI development. - Resolving the tension between data protection and the development and use of data itself
Balancing privacy, security, and sovereign control with the need to unlock data value. - Advancing data elementization and data markets
Developing mechanisms for data trading, circulation, and valuation. - Establishing workable cross-border data flow mechanisms
Ensuring international data exchange while safeguarding data sovereignty.
Li emphasizes that the fifth challenge may be the most politically sensitive. Amid rising global data localization and anti-globalization pressures, China must find a way to support the transnational development of its platform economy without undermining data sovereignty, a contradiction that remains unresolved.
Taken together, Li’s analysis is a reminder that Digital China is not just an aspirational vision. It is a technically demanding, institutionally complex project whose success depends on whether the National Data Administration can win these five toughest battles.
Continue reading for a lightly edited Google Translate machine translation of Li Guangqian’s Injecting New Momentum into Digital China Construction ->
Footnotes
- As of March 2023, the PRC has not yet announced the official English-language title of the “国家数据局.” It has been translated as both “National Data Bureau” (mostly PRC English-language media) and “National Data Administration” (expert predictions both inside and outside China). One Beijing law firm recently published its prediction of “National Data Administration” along with the acronym “NDA” based on the precedent of the NDRC’s “National Energy Administration,” and even predicted the NDA’s future web address as http://www.nda.gov.cn or http://www.data.gov.cn. It seems like a good guess. I generally stick with the PRC state-run media translation until the official announcement/revealing of a new title. [November 2023 update: The State Council Information Office and major PRC state-run media outlets now appear to be regularizing use of the English-language translation “National Data Administration,” although “National Data Bureau” still makes appearances in PRC English-language media in decreasing frequency.] ↩︎
- “国家统一大数据中心体系” is a New Type Infrastructure (NTI) Tier 3 sub-category and has been translated by PRC state-run English-language media as both “National Integrated System of Big Data Centers” (more frequent at the time it was announced) and “National Unified System of Big Data Centers” (more frequent now). ↩︎