The 6th Digital China Summit held in East China's Fuzhou, Fujian Province on April 27, 2023 Photos: Yin Yeping/GT

Government officials and industry representatives have ramped up efforts to showcase the country's achievements while offering a window into China's digital transformation at the annual Digital China Summit held on Thursday and Friday in Fuzhou, East China's Fujian Province, the nation's major base for digital economy.

The two-day event, one of the most prestigious in the nation's digital area, is marking its 6th year. As the first industry event since China optimized its COVID-19 response, it has drawn historic number of participants, with representatives from up to 320 government departments, enterprises and institutions from 28 provinces, cities and regions nationwide participating in the exhibition.

Hot fields related to the digital economy, such as 5G, blockchain, and artificial intelligence were presented at the event.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the summit, Li Shulei, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, said that China's digital economy has maintained a strong development momentum, and its scale has been ranked second in the world for many years.

The new economic sector has created more than 20 million flexible jobs, and the quality and efficiency of the construction of a digital China have continued to improve, Li said.

In extending expectations for China's digital development, Li said it is necessary to focus on key fields such as artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information, integrated circuits, and blockchain, while improving the transformation and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements.

More importantly, letting the results of digital development benefit all people more equitably, he noted.

Backed up by government support, China's transformation and upgrading of a digitally-driven manufacturing industry has achieved remarkable results in 2022, reflected in the Digital China Development Report (2022) released at the summit.

By the end of 2022, China had opened 2.312 million 5G base stations, and had 561 million 5G users, accounting for more than 60 percent of the technology's global user base , the report said. 

Moreover, the number of Chinese netizens has reached 1.067 billion, and the country's internet penetration rate has reached 75.6 percent of the total population.

Also in the same year, the scale of China's digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan ($7.25 trillion), ranking second in the world, according to the report.

Against the background of the vigorous development of the digital industry, Fujian, as an important base for the digital economy, has been able to showcase its achievements. 

The 6th Digital China Summit held in East China's Fuzhou, Fujian Province on April 27, 2023 Photos: Yin Yeping/GT

In 2022, the scale of the province's digital economy reached 2.6 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 49 percent of local GDP. The output value of the integrated circuit and optoelectronic industry, computer and network communication industry all exceeded 200 billion yuan, and industries such as big data have entered the first echelon on a nationwide basis, according to a Fujian provincial government official at the event.

At the exhibition, Huawei displayed a panoramic model of Digital China involving digital empowerment in multiple sectors ranging from transportation, water conservancy to mines, and power stations.

An employee of the company said that with digitalization,  corresponding operations will be conducted more efficiently, more safely, and at lower cost.

Tencent, China's another technology giant, displayed its digitalized AI model, a computer generated person, which enables basic communication and has already been applied to certain scenarios such as livestreaming, allowing for 24-hour service online.

Digitalization has also been widely adopted at the daily operation of the country's largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam, which serves as the world's largest hydropower project.

At present, 1,500 weather stations and more than 20,000 regional automatic stations have been established in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, which can cover 80 percent of the upper reaches, effectively reduce the costs and time for the dam management and power production, the Global Times learned from the company.

Private startups have also picked up the baton in driving digital innovation by providing customized services to meet niche markets demand.

Nuowei Tech, a private company headquartered in Hangzhou, another digital industry hub located on China's east coast, has achieved a foothold in the booming market four years after its establishment in 2019.

Through industry data analysis, the company provides hospitals and pharmaceutical companies and other related industry organizations with a digital solution to reduce costs and increase output.

"The digital economy is inseparable from technical support, and privacy computing is one of the underlying technologies...because in the process of data flow, it is necessary to use data reasonably and ensure data security. Companies like ours have assumed such a role," Xue Juanjuan, the company's vice president, told the Global Times.