Promoting digital evolution of urban areas

Visitors watch a robot making coffee during the Global Digital Economy Conference 2025, which kicked off on Wednesday in Beijing. (ZHANG ZHENGYE/FOR CHINA DAILY)

China will ratchet up efforts to accelerate technological innovation, share its original technologies and innovative scenarios, and promote the digital transformation of urban areas, as part of a broader push to foster new quality productive forces, officials and experts said.

Zhuang Rongwen, head of the Cyberspace Administration of China, highlighted the significance of strengthening the deep integration of sci-tech innovation with industrial innovation, developing new quality productive forces in accordance with local conditions, and leveraging new technologies such as artificial intelligence to promote the innovation in urban management.

Zhuang made the remarks at the opening ceremony of the Global Digital Economy Conference 2025, which kicked off on Wednesday in Beijing. Themed "Building a Digital-Friendly City", the event has attracted over 300 international guests from more than 50 countries and important international organizations.

Zhuang called for efforts to boost the in-depth integration of digital technologies with public services, accelerate the interconnectivity and sharing of information and data, promote exchanges and cooperation in the digital economy domain among different cities, and carry out international cooperation in fields such as AI.

More work is needed to promote urban digital transformation, build an intensive and unified digital foundation and data platform, and bolster cross-field and cross-department data sharing, said Liu Liehong, head of the National Data Administration.

Liu stressed the need to give full play to the important role of data elements and digital technologies in urban emergency and safety management, as well as deepen the reforms related to the circulation and utilization of data resources and the market-oriented allocation of data elements, to facilitate the innovative development of the digital economy.

The added value of core industries of China's digital economy accounted for about 10 percent of GDP in 2024, while the total data output reached 41.06 zettabytes, marking a robust 25 percent year-on-year increase, according to the "Digital China Development Report 2024" released by the NDA.

The country has unveiled a guideline on promoting the development of smart cities and urban digital transformation to make urban management smarter. By 2027, China expects to see significant progress in the digital transformation of urban areas and to have built a number of livable, resilient and smart cities, according to the document released by the NDA and several other government departments.

"Digital technologies are reshaping how we live, we work and we connect. They have the potential to be strategic accelerators for sustainable development," said Beate Trankmann, the United Nations Development Programme's resident representative in China.

Trankmann said that given China's position as a global pioneer in emerging technologies and innovation, "China's knowledge, experience and commitment to efficient governance and regulation of digital tech will be critical to inform how we as an international community move forward."

Jiang Xiaojuan, a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that data has permeated all aspects of society, and has an impact on the allocation of social resources and the logic of economic and social operations, adding digital technologies represented by the internet, big data and AI have significantly enhanced the capabilities of data generation, transmission and processing.

Citing that China, as the world's largest data producer, has unique advantages in facilitating the development of its digital economy, Jiang called for efforts to give full play to the multiplier effects of data elements, create more abundant applications in a wider range of sectors, and promote the sharing, development and utilization of public data.

Wu Jianping, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said the emergence of state-of-the-art digital technologies has laid a solid foundation for unleashing the value of massive data elements, which underscores the significance of safeguarding data security, a prerequisite to ensuring the orderly development of the data industry.