Fiscal policies to help digital economy grow

The Implementation Plan for Accelerating the High-quality Development of the Digital Economy in Qingdao was recently released, highlighting emerging areas such as digital industrialization and data elements to advance the digital economy.

The plan proposes 22 fiscal support policies, with the goal of increasing the added value of the city's core digital economy industry by an average of 13 percent per year by 2025, accounting for more than 12 percent of local GDP.

Since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the country has bolstered the integration of digital technology and the real economy; empowered the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries; and fostered new industries, new business forms and new models.

As a new form of the economy driven by new-generation information technology, the digital economy not only refers to the development of digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence and big data, but covers the value achieved by industries, such as textiles and automobiles, which rely on IT.

Data show that between 2012-22, the scale of China's digital economy grew from 11 trillion yuan ($1.5 trillion) to 50.2 trillion yuan. The proportion of the digital economy to the national GDP has increased from 21.6 percent to 41.5 percent.

In recent years, Qingdao has made efforts to vitalize and develop the real economy, building 24 key industry chains. Of them, industries directly related to digital technology — such as smart home appliances, integrated circuits, AI, virtual reality, software and information services — have been approved as national manufacturing innovation centers.

Qingdao is revving up efforts to boost the development of the industrial internet and iterative evolution of digital transformation. Remarkable achievements have been made in such aspects as industrial internet platforms and the cultivation of new models and formats for the manufacturing sector.

By 2022, the growth rate of the core added value of Qingdao's digital economy reached 25.3 percent. The scale of core industries accounted for nearly 30 percent of the province's total. In the first half of this year, the added value of the city's core digital economy industries surged by more than 20 percent year-on-year.

To strengthen the digital economy in Qingdao means to achieve breakthroughs in industrial scale, industrial structure and new models and formats.

Regarding digital industrialization, Qingdao focuses on electronics and information manufacturing; software and information services; and industrial internet platforms. This covers sectors such as integrated circuits, new displays, smart terminals, industrial software and cloud services.

Qingdao will promote the digital transformation of the manufacturing industry while accelerating the digital transformation of key service industries such as modern finance, modern logistics, trade services, cultural tourism and agriculture.

The city is also improving the capacity of data resource supply and cultivating the ecosystem of data elements. For example, it applies data in fields such as finance, healthcare, transportation, industry, maritime, trade and agriculture.

Qingdao will construct digital economic infrastructure such as 5G networks, computing power centers, internet of things sensing facilities, and unblock the development arteries of the digital economy.

An autonomous tire production line at an information technology-backed manufacturing demonstration base at Qingdao Doublestar Tire Industrial Co Ltd. CHINA DAILY