Editor's note: Wang Ying is the vice president of ChinaEU, a non-profit international association, and the executive chairman of the New Economy Association. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

On December 22 at the 2021 World Digital Economy Forum, China officially released the "Jointly Building a Digital Community with A Shared Future Initiative," which captured worldwide attention. This initiative represents China's response to the complex international situation in the global digital economy. As a responsible power, China now provides a "blueprint" for the development of the digital economy reflecting a willingness to work together with countries around the world to build a healthy digital community and provide constructive solutions for governance of the internet economy.

In recent years, China's digital economy has developed rapidly and has gradually become one of the dominant forces in the national economy.

According to the global digital economy white paper released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China's digital economy in 2020 experienced strong growth, reaching 39.2 trillion yuan ($6.2 trillion), accounting for 38.6 percent of GDP, an increase of 2.4 percentage points from the previous year. The digital economy of China's service industry, manufacturing industry, and agriculture accounted for 40.7 percent, 21.0 percent, and 8.9 percent of the industry's added value, respectively. This also greatly contributed to the effective COVID-19 prevention and control measures as well as to stabilizing economic and social development.

Furthermore, the structure of the digital economy continued to be optimized and upgraded. According to the core digital industry statistical classification by the National Bureau of Statistics of China, China's digital economy is mainly driven by two segments: Firstly, industrialization of digital products and services and secondly, digitization of traditional industries. The scale of the industrialization of digital products and services has reached 7.5 trillion yuan ($1.2 trillion), accounting for 19.1 percent of the digital economy, 7.3 percent of GDP, and a nominal year-on-year increase of 5.3 percentage points.

More importantly, the digital transformation of traditional industry is also accelerating. The white paper shows the size of the economy generated by the digitization of traditional industry has reached 31.7 trillion yuan, accounting for 80.9 percent of the digital economy, 31.2 percent of GDP, and a nominal year-on-year increase of 10.3 percent, which provides strong impetus for the sustainable and healthy development of the digital economy.

The report also pointed out that in 2020, China's digital economy ranked second in the world, with nearly $5.4 trillion, behind the United States. In terms of growth rate, China's digital economy grew by 9.6 percent year-on-year, one of the highest in the world.

China has become an important source of innovation in the global digital economy. This means that the era of China as a "follower" is over, and it will gradually become a "leader."

China then will take the lead in entering the "uncharted waters" in the era of fierce competition in the formulation of international digital rules and accelerated reshaping of the international order in cyberspace. In the past 10 years, the world has seen China's new formats and models in the digital economy, such as e-commerce, mobile payment and bicycles sharing. More recently, in the past three years, China has made further advancements in information aggregation, data sharing and AI analytics, which have been applied to the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, thus making it possible to allocate resources efficiently in the society, improve the normal flow of goods and develop remote office work.

Looking ahead, in the next five to 10 years China will not only inject a steady stream of vitality into the recovery and development of the world economy, but also will provide the world with a "Chinese example" and "Chinese plan" of digital economy innovation. In addition, China, as a major country, will also take on the responsibilities of actively participating in the formulation of international taxation rules and strengthening the formulation of international governance rules for the digital economy.

For China, this is a huge responsibility and challenge. According to the country's future digital economy plan, it will not only be necessary to further increase the scale of the country's digital economy development, but also do a good job in the role of a world leader. These are necessary goals to empower the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, give birth to new industries, new business models, and new models for the world and at the same time enhance the service awareness of global business formats, facilitate win-win cooperation in the global digital economy and promote the solution of problems related to global digital economy governance.

In terms of creating a good environment, China needs to work with other countries on the basis of conscientiously summarizing practical experiences and strive to form a new global rule system that is practical and acceptable to everyone.

From the perspective of global governance, China should join forces with other countries to implement the five sectors mentioned in the "Jointly Building a Digital Community with A Shared Future Initiative": Firstly, global digital economic cooperation; secondly, global digital trade rules; thirdly, global digital economic development opportunities; fourthly, digital technology solutions; and fifthly, win-win digital innovation and development.

As to China's digital economy perspective, it needs to pay special attention to the following three points:

The first is necessary to focus on accelerating the deployment of China's digital economy in the service sector, especially in the IT and Internet service industries such as artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing.

The second is to pay more attention to the development of international cooperation in the development of the digital economy, especially to promote the international development of the service sector of the digital economy.

The third is to closely follow the progress of the international reform of digital taxation, strengthen theoretical research and practical exploration of digital taxation, actively participate in the formulation of international taxation rules, and combine the development of the global digital economy to jointly build a standardized, fair, scientific, and reasonable digital tax system.

The digital economy has increasingly become the leading force to promote economic development. China is discussing with countries around the world and issued the "Jointly Building a Digital Community with A Shared Future Initiative" to create a more harmonious and win-win ecosystem for the development of the digital economy in the post-epidemic era. China will provide useful experience in its leading role for the development of digital industries around the world, join forces with all countries in the world and make active efforts and contributions to the governance of the global digital economy.

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