The fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee stressed the need to “unswervingly build China into a country of manufacturing, quality, Internet and digital development” and “accelerate digital development”. The added value of China’s digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan in 2019, according to the White Paper on China’s Digital Economy Development (2020) released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Today, remarkable achievements have been made in the construction of digital China, and the digital economy has provided strong support for high-quality development.
In the development of the digital economy, the industrial Internet plays an important role in promoting the integration of the Internet and the real economy, cultivating new driving forces, seizing new opportunities and opening up new prospects. As a new generation of information and communication technology and the product of the industrial economic depth fusion, ecological industrial Internet collection of critical infrastructure, new industry and new application pattern, and embodies the Internet from extending production consumption to the change of strength, is to realize the innovation drive development, promoting industrial transformation and upgrading, development of the digital economy important focus.
Platform is the key to industrial Internet ecology, China’s industrial Internet has formed a “platform +” ecosystem, cross-industry cross-field industrial Internet platform has been highly recognized by all parties, characteristic industry and regional platform rapid development, professional platform constantly emerging. Industrial Internet platform solutions have been deeply applied in more than 30 important industries of the national economy, such as petrochemicals, steel and high-end equipment, and become a new engine for high-quality economic development. It is estimated that the economic added value of China’s industrial Internet industry will be about 3.1 trillion yuan in 2020.
In recent years, the Central government has repeatedly stressed the need to speed up the construction of new infrastructure. As one of the important contents of new infrastructure, industrial Internet, on the one hand, has a fast speed of technological iteration and upgrading, which requires continuous investment, and has the investment driving role of traditional infrastructure. On the other hand, by providing services such as digital transformation, intelligent upgrading and integrated innovation for the economy and society, it has created rich industrial application scenarios for the development of the digital economy and leveraged the huge consumer market. With significant multiplier effect and driving effect, it is an important means to optimize the overall structure of infrastructure investment.
During COVID-19 prevention and control, the value of the industrial Internet has been further highlighted, playing an important role in the production, dispatching, capacity expansion and resumption of work and production of emergency supplies. Short cycles and flexible deployment of industrial Internet solutions will contribute to the digital transformation of enabling manufacturing. In special cases, industrial Internet solutions share the transformation cost of industrial enterprises’ production adjustment, and help the manufacturing industry improve supply chain flexibility, increase manufacturing flexibility, and improve the speed of rapid response. This capability of the industrial Internet not only helps to promote China to become a manufacturing power, stabilize the supply chain and improve total factor productivity, but also helps to use digital technology to optimize national governance and become a strong guarantee to promote the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity.
As of December 2020, the number of Internet users in China had reached 989 million, and digitalization, networking and intelligence have penetrated into all aspects of the economy and society. The strategic significance of the construction of digital China has become more prominent. As the Internet is deeply integrated with government services, economic development, people’s livelihood and community-level governance, an integrated ecosystem represented by the industrial Internet is taking shape at a faster pace. The digital economy will enjoy broader prospects for development, enabling it to better promote development and benefit the people. (This article is from People’s Daily. The author is dean of the School of Emergency Management Science and Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.)