Historical Materialism 历史唯物主义 - Digital China Wins the Future

Tag: Historical Materialism 历史唯物主义

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Cover of Social Sciences in China magazine

Digital China Reflects Digital Socialism in Practice

March 12, 2025

Key One: China has an elite digital triad of national strategies: Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society. Together, they drive the country's digital-intelligent transformation into a Modernized Socialist Great Power. Although this website focuses on Digital China, understanding its full scope requires knowing all three.

Key Two: Digital China is both a strategy and a stack. The strategy—an ends, ways, and means framework—explains how the Party generates and employs digital power. The stack—a layered system architecture—shows how that power is built. Together, they provide an integrated model for understanding China’s national digital strategy.

Cyber Great Power—National cyber strategy: Builds sovereign control, technological strength, and strategic advantage across the networked domain.

Digital China—National digital strategy: Builds the infrastructure, data systems, technologies, and applications for China’s digital-intelligent transformation.

Smart Society—National intelligentization strategy: Extends AI, smart cities, and intelligent governance across society to support socialist modernization.

Digital Triad—Integrated strategic framework: Cyber Great Power, Digital China, and Smart Society seek a unified national digital-intelligent system.

Military-Civil Fusion—Dual-use strategy: Whole-of-nation civil and military integration systematizes dual-use ambiguity.

Analysis—Original analysis of China’s digital strategies, policies, institutions, and strategic development.

Explainer—Comprehensive guides to the strategies, concepts, systems, and terminology shaping Digital China.

Strategy Milestone—Key documents, decisions, and developments that mark the evolution of China’s digital strategies.

Translation—English translations of important Chinese primary sources, with context and explanatory notes.

Update—Shorter reports on new digital policies, speeches, documents, and developments worth watching.

“The struggle between China and the United States in cyberspace is intensifying. The U.S. policy of containment against China has expanded from physical space to cyberspace, aiming to place China in a passive position. Cyber warfare is no longer a matter of whether we want to fight it or not; it has reached a point where we have no choice but to respond."
Zheng Bijian, Face the Challenge with Comprehensive Planning; Strive to Build a World Class Cyber Great Power in Ten Years, State Council Secretariat Second Bureau, April 3, 2013

“The report of the 19th National Party Congress stated that “the principal contradiction in our society has transformed into the contradiction between the people’s ever-growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development.” This shift in contradictions is a change of global and historical significance, posing new demands on many aspects of our Party and country. Developing Digital China is about responding to these new changes and new demands, using digitalized means to resolve and address social contradictions. Against this backdrop, the central government explicitly put forward the new concept of building a “Smart Society” in the report.”
“The Mission of Digital China: Building a Smart Society,” Informatization of China Construction, August 29, 2018