Beijing's Haidian aims to accelerate its digital economy

Beijing's Haidian district, as one of the city's three digital trade pilot zones, will continue to connect global resources, bring together international talents, and build a highland for digital trade, said Lin Jianhua, deputy head of the district.

Lin said during a forum of the ongoing China International Fair for Trade in Services that developing digital trade has become the strategic choice of Haidian in recent years, and the district has been actively cultivating new advantages.

He said currently the core added value of Haidian's digital economy accounts for over 50 percent of its gross domestic product. There are six digital economy industry leaders, 40 digital economy unicorn companies, and 180 digital economy listed companies.

In the future, Haidian will continue to optimize its innovative ecology, cultivate world-class emerging digital industry clusters, and build an opening-up highland and a high-quality digital trade port, Lin said.

During the forum, the China Council for International Investment Promotion issued a list of 2021 key enterprises for service trade, so that enterprises in Haidian district can keep in touch with and expand their overseas business.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that in 2020, China's digital trade reached 1.46 trillion yuan ($226.2 billion), up 20.5 percent on a year-on-year basis. The growth rate was 15.6 percentage points higher than that of China's trade in services during the same period.

Zhong Mingbo, president of the Haidian Association of Trade in Services and Sourcing Service, said: "Although China's digital trade is developing rapidly, there are a lot of fields that have not adopted digital technologies. There is huge development room of digital trade." 

Yvonne Zhou, a partner at Boston Consulting Group, suggested that industry leaders should play their leading roles and put more emphasis in high value-added sectors of digital trade. The government is suggested to launch measures to encourage innovation.

A standard service trade system should be established. Meanwhile, enterprises that have business overseas should pay attention to overseas risks, she added.