Digitalization campaign progresses apace

Zhang added that the gap between supply and demand for top digital talent means companies need to have a better understanding of today's much-needed skills and qualities and then take appropriate steps.

"Top digital talent must have sharp market insight and forward-thinking states of mind. They should actively embrace changes and be able to handle coordination problems and have better cooperation with all sides. Moreover, they must be very sensitive to data and have the capabilities to analyze data and make decisions," Zhang said. "In the future, most Chinese corporate executives will be required to acquire data capabilities."

After years of development, China has made considerable progress in spurring the development of the digital economy.

With the booming internet, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and other emerging technologies, the digital economy is gradually becoming the integral driving force for economic growth, said a white paper published by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.

According to the paper, the added value of China's digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan ($5.46 trillion) in 2019, accounting for nearly 40 percent of the country's GDP.

The country has pledged to further speed up digitalization to create new strengths for the digital economy, develop the digital industry, transform traditional industries with digital technologies and pursue the Digital China Initiative, according to the outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development and Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035.

By 2025, the added value of China's core industries in the digital economy is set to occupy 10 percent of the total GDP, up from 7.8 percent in 2020, according to the outline.

This year, the first of the current planning period, China has vowed to continue to use the Internet Plus model to promote integrated development of online and offline businesses in more fields and create new forms and models of business, Premier Li Keqiang said in March when delivering the 2021 Government Work Report at the opening of the fourth session of the 13th National People's Congress.

More efforts will also be made to further develop the industrial internet, while the development of 5G networks and 1000M fiber optic networks will be stepped up and their application will be extended to more settings, the report said.