(Yicai Global) Feb. 1 -- Local governments in China have been publishing development plans for the digital economy, with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology predicting that at the national level it could be worth more than CNY60 trillion (USD8.9 trillion) by 2025.

Shanghai aims to increase the share of the added value of key industries in the digital economy to its gross domestic product to 18 percent in the next five years, while Beijing expects it to account for about 42 percent of the capital’s GDP this year. Beijing also aims to create a more favorable digital industry cluster and add 20 new digital workshops and smart factories.

China’s digital economy is growing apace, increasing from CNY11 trillion (USD1.6 trillion) in 2012 to more than CNY45 trillion in 2021, and swelling its contribution to national GDP in the same period to 39.8 percent from 21.6 percent, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Other local governments around China also have been setting out growth plans for their digital economies recently, including Shanghai’s neighboring provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu.

Zhejiang will strive to exceed CNY1.6 trillion (UDS237.2 billion) in added value of key industries in the digital economy between this year and 2027, while Jiangsu will focus on actively developing its third-generation semiconductor and metaverse industries, so that the province’s digital economy can swell to over CNY5.5 trillion this year.

Guangdong, China’s southern economic powerhouse whose GDP has surpassed all other provincial-level regions for more than 34 years, plans to promote the digital transformation of 5,000 industrial firms above a designated size and facilitate the construction of the Shaoguan data center cluster in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

Local governments have been also issuing laws to regulate the digital economy and lead it into a new stage of healthy development. Shenzhen took the lead, issuing the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone Data Regulations in June 2021, China’s first in the data field. The Shanghai Data Regulations followed, taking effect on Jan. 1, 2022.

Sixteen national departments, including the MIIT, recently issued a document proposing to significantly enhance the basic capacity and comprehensive strength of the data security industry by 2025 and achieve a scale of over CNY150 billion (USD22.2 billion), with a compound annual growth rate of more than 30 percent.

He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, said the next step will be to accelerate the introduction of a basic data element system and related policies to promote the classification and grading of authorized use of public, corporate, and personal data, as well as set up systems and rules for data property rights, circulation transactions, revenue distribution, and security governance.

Editor: Futura Costaglione