China's digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan ($5.5 trillion) in 2019, or 36.2 percent of its total GDP, a report published by the Chinese Academy of Cyberspace Studies (CACS) said. 

The report was unveiled at the World Internet Conference – Internet Development Forum, which opened Monday in Wuzhen, in east China's Zhejiang Province.

It said the raging COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of the internet, and the digital economy has become a consequential force in mitigating the impact of the virus, reshaping economies and improving governance capability. 

By the end of May 2020, China's fiber-optic network had reached all urban and rural areas, with fiber-optic subscribers accounting for 93.1 percent of the country's fixed broadband users, the highest in the world, said the report.

In 2019, there were 5.44 million 4G base stations in China, and the consumption of mobile-data traffic settled at 122 billion GB, another global first. As of September this year, China had built some 480,000 5G base stations. 

According to Xia Xueping, dean of the CACS, China's e-commerce transactions reached 34.81 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.7 percent. New business forms such as livestreaming and rural e-commerce have risen rapidly.

(With input from Xinhua)

(Cover via CFP)