The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee stressed the importance of “unswervingly building a manufacturing, quality, network and digital China” and “accelerating digital development”. The added value of China’s digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan in 2019, according to the White Paper on the Development of China’s Digital Economy (2020) released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Today, remarkable achievements have been made in building Digital China, and the digital economy has provided strong support for high-quality development.
The industrial Internet plays an important role in the development of the digital economy, and is of great significance in promoting the integration of the Internet and the real economy, fostering new drivers, seizing new opportunities and opening up new situations. 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 and cross-field industrial Internet platform has been highly recognized by all parties, characteristics of the industry and regional platform rapid development, professional platforms continue to emerge. 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 to promote 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. Industrial Internet as one of the important content of new infrastructure, on the one hand, the speed of technology iteration and upgrading is fast, the need for sustainable investment, with the traditional infrastructure investment driving role; 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 digital economy, which can leverage a huge consumer market and has significant multiplier effect and driving effect. It is an important means to optimize the overall structure of infrastructure investment.
During COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, the value of the industrial Internet was further highlighted, playing an important role in the production, dispatch, capacity expansion and resumption of work and production of emergency supplies. Industrial Internet solutions with short cycle times and flexible deployment will help enable the digital transformation of manufacturing. Under special circumstances, industrial Internet solutions share the transformation cost of industrial enterprises’ production adjustment, and help the manufacturing industry to improve the elasticity of supply chain, increase the flexibility of production and manufacturing, and improve the speed of rapid response. The capability of the Industrial Internet not only helps to propel China to become a manufacturing power, stabilize the supply chain and improve total factor productivity, but also helps to optimize national governance by using digital technology, and becomes a powerful guarantee to promote the modernization of national governance system and governance capacity.
As of December 2020, China’s Internet users have reached 989 million. 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 grassroots 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, and information technology will better promote development and benefit the people. (The writer is dean of the School of Emergency Management Science and Engineering at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences.)