Fuzhou makes strides to become China's highland in digital economy

The fifth Digital China Summit will kick off in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province this year from July 23 to 24, with the aim to demonstrate the latest digital construction achievements, promote communications between experts and enterprises on digital economy theories and practices, and enhance global cooperation in building up a strong digitized nation, according to a press conference held on Tuesday.

Over the past four years, the summit facilitated the signing and launching of more than 1,400 digital projects, with total investment exceeding 1 trillion yuan ($148.8 billion). This year, one main forum, 18 sub-forums and over 30 special events will be held, focusing on new digital technology, 5G application and 6G prospects, digital product trading platform as well as the cloud computing ecology, said Guo Ningning, vice-governor of Fujian province.

Professionals, industrial leaders, business people from private enterprises and multinational corporations will be present, and four guest provinces - Yunnan, Hebei, Hubei and Heilongjiang - are invited to share their experience with digital practices.

As the pilot city of digital renminbi, Fuzhou is to issue 20 million yuan of digital red packets during the summit and officially set up the Fujian Big Data Trading Center, Guo Ningning said.

To further deepen the construction of digital application scenarios, the summit creatively built up three platforms - digitized conference service platform, cloud-based summit and online international digital product expo, according to Lin Baojin, Fuzhou's Party secretary.

"Sub-forums, innovation competition and new product launches will be livestreamed online, and over 550 exhibitors will display their technologies via the cloud platform," Lin shared.

From 2017 to 2021, the scale of China's digital economy has increased from 27 trillion yuan to 45 trillion yuan, ranking second in the world, with the annual compound growth rate reaching 13.6 percent.

In 2021, the added value of Fujian's economy hit 2.3 trillion yuan, up 15 percent from a year earlier, and the digital economy accounted for 47 percent of Fujian's GDP.

To give digital economy the full play to drive the province's high-quality development, Fujian has taken multiple measures on enhancing digital infrastructure construction, accelerating cutting-edge technology R&D, cultivating industrial clusters and improving digital laws and regulations, said Guo.

More than 120,000 5G base stations are expected to be built by 2025 in Fujian, and the overall computing efficiency of its data center plans to reach 71 billion times per second.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), the Fujian government aims to nurture five industrial clusters of digital economy, with scale exceeding 100 billion yuan each.

Besides this, financial tools will also be introduced, such as the government investment fund in the digital industry, to inject impetus for the financing of digital enterprises.

"We are sparing no efforts to build Fujian into a highland of digital economy, a pilot zone in this area of China," according to Guo.