In The Era Of Digital Economy: Experts' Advice On How To Move Forward

The "14th five year plan for digital economy development" recently issued by the State Council defines the guiding ideology, basic principles, development goals, key tasks and safeguard measures for promoting the healthy development of China's digital economy during the "14th five year plan" period. What is the significance of the release of the plan? What challenges do Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, face in the field of industrial digital transformation? In order to accelerate the digital transformation, what else should enterprises do? This newspaper specially invited industry experts to discuss the above issues.

Expert round table

Member of the information and communication economic expert committee of Panhe Ministry of forestry, industry and information technology, executive director of Digital Economy Research Institute of Central South University of finance, economics and law

Yu Jianing, executive director of Yuan universe Industry Committee of China Mobile Communication Federation, CO chairman of blockchain special committee of China Communication Industry Association, and President of HuoDa university education

Liu Xiangdong, deputy director of Economic Research Department of China International Economic Exchange Center

(regardless of rank)

　　1. How to look at the significance of the release of the planning?

Pan Helin: the release of the plan points out the direction for the development of China's digital economy, especially in the construction of supporting infrastructure for digital economy and the construction of supporting systems and mechanisms for digital economy development. The construction of soft and hard environment will open up a new way for China's digital economy to develop in the future and clear the obstacles that may be faced in the development.

Specifically, there are the following aspects of significance: first, the importance of the development of digital economy is clarified. At the beginning of the plan, it is mentioned that "digital economy is the main economic form after agricultural economy and industrial economy", and the digital economy is positioned at an unprecedented height.

The second is to guide the future development of digital economy with rigid indicators. For example, by 2025, the added value of core industries in the digital economy will account for 10% of GDP, which has the enforceability and policy rigidity, and can effectively guide the development of digital economy.

The third is to attach importance to the driving role of data element circulation on digital economy. The plan focuses on the whole chain construction from data collection to data labeling, cleaning, desensitization, declassification, aggregation and analysis, so as to improve the way of data supply channels and data industry chain, smooth data circulation, and practice data security.

The fourth is to emphasize the digitization of industry and the development of digital industry. The plan systematically gives the methods to promote the development of digital industry at the policy level in the future.

Fifth, pay attention to the healthy development of digital economy. The plan points out the direction for the healthy development of digital economy from two aspects of governance system and security system. In the aspect of governance system, it emphasizes the importance of regulatory technology in supervision, the balance between development and supervision, the importance of coordination and regulatory mechanism in supervision, as well as the consideration of giving full play to the energy of social subjects to improve supervision. In the aspect of security system, we should focus on the establishment of early warning mechanism to prevent the occurrence of trouble.

Sixth, digital trade and international digital cooperation have been upgraded to a new height.

Yu Jianing: from the overall and strategic perspective, the plan has made systematic arrangements for strengthening the construction of digital infrastructure and improving the governance system of digital economy, which is conducive to further promoting the deep integration of digital technology and real economy, and promoting digital industrialization and industrial digitization in a coordinated manner. It is of great significance for China to grasp the new opportunities of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform.

One is to highlight the value of data elements. Data elements are the core engine of deepening the development of digital economy. To promote the innovation of technology, mode, format and system, and to make good use of data elements will bring strong impetus to the development of digital economy. Data dividend will be the second wave of factor dividend after demographic dividend. Accelerating the cultivation of data element market and realizing efficient allocation of data elements are the key to promote the development of digital economy.

Second, promote the quality and efficiency of the industry. In the development of digital economy, "digital industrialization" is the means and "industry digitization" is the purpose. Digitalization has promoted the improvement of industry quality, efficiency, cost reduction and inventory reduction, reshaped the new pattern of industrial division and cooperation, bred new formats and new models, accelerated the transformation of new and old kinetic energy, built a modern industrial system, and strengthened the security and controllability of industrial chain supply chain.

The third is to promote smooth economic circulation. By improving the level of digital supply, we can further stimulate digital consumption and help supply side structural reform, so as to accelerate the construction of a new development pattern with domestic big cycle as the main body and domestic and international dual cycle promoting each other.

Fourth, standardize the healthy and sustainable development of digital economy. The scale of China's digital economy is expanding rapidly, but the problems of unbalanced, insufficient and non-standard development are more prominent. It is urgent to change the traditional development mode, speed up the supplement of weak points, improve the governance level of digital economy, and walk out a high-quality development path.

Liu Xiangdong: as the first national special plan in the field of digital economy, the planning is of great significance to grasp the new opportunity of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform, and to accelerate the high-quality development of China's economy.

First, it helps to cultivate new driving forces for economic growth. Digital technology is becoming an important driving force to promote the development of China's market economy. Digital industrialization and industrial digital transformation are the new engine and new driving force of economic growth.

Second, it will help to optimize the supply system and build a modern economic system. The development of the digital economy, especially the increase in the proportion of added value of the core industries of the digital economy, will effectively promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, guide all walks of life to make use of digital technology to realize structural optimization, quality improvement and efficiency improvement, especially to expand the new space for development on the basis of continuously upgraded digital infrastructure, and create a new space for the construction of intelligent, intelligent, and high-quality industries The new economic form and business model of network and high-end will provide strong support for the construction of modern economic system.

Third, it is helpful to promote the market-oriented reform of factors and improve the level of social governance. To speed up the development of digital economy, we need to give full play to the role of data elements in promoting the development of productivity, and form various market mechanisms based on data, such as production, trading and circulation. At the same time, we should use digital technology to improve the level of social governance and create a good regulatory environment for the development of economic and social security.

Fourth, it is conducive to achieving high-level dynamic adaptation of supply and demand, and improving the ability to serve the people's needs for a better life. Making full use of digital technology can effectively break the comprehensive advantages of space-time isolation and reduce information asymmetry, promote the efficient connection and adaptation of supply and demand through effective digital platform, reduce the cost of all links from production to consumption, and create more value for smooth economic cycle.

　　2. At present, many enterprises begin to speed up the pace of industrial digital transformation. What challenges do Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, face in the aspect of industrial digital transformation?

Yu Jianing: the challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises in digital transformation are mainly reflected in the weak digital foundation of underlying equipment, immature digital technology, and difficult innovation of digital business model. Under the background of the vigorous development of digital economy, digital transformation is the thorough innovation of enterprise product form, business process, service scene, operation system, financial mechanism and other aspects to establish a complete set of digital system.

First of all, enterprises should speed up the establishment of a sound digital infrastructure in combination with the characteristics of the industry. It is not only necessary to build ERP, MES, SFC and other digital systems, but also to form a more intelligent and data-driven management and operation system, which helps decision makers analyze the current situation of enterprise operation in the massive operation data, and ultimately improve the customer experience and operation efficiency.

Secondly, enterprises should establish the organizational structure to adapt to the digital transformation, and cultivate the digital thinking and ability from enterprise leaders to ordinary employees. The digital transformation of an enterprise not only tests the digital application ability of the enterprise, but also tests the promotion ability of the enterprise organizational structure facing the digitization, and the adaptability of the company's decision makers and employees to the digitalization.

Finally, we should pay attention to the new direction of digital transformation such as "meta universe". Metauniverse is the new generation of Internet Web3 0, will be a new digital space deeply integrated with the physical world, and is expected to bring the digital economy into a new stage of development. Digital people, digital collections, digital real estate, digital twins, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain and other new technologies, new formats and new models emerge in endlessly in the era of meta universe, which also represents the new direction of digital transformation in the next stage, and all kinds of enterprises should pay attention to it.

Pan Helin: first, the enterprise's cognition of digitalization is not deep enough. Most enterprises have path dependence, and they are afraid of difficulties for new industries, new models and new technologies.

Second, enterprises lack the necessary technical ability of digital transformation. If outsourcing technology, SMEs will worry about being controlled by others; If endogenous R & D, SMEs do not have enough talents and resources to support.

Third, the financial institutions do not support the digital transformation of enterprises, especially the small and medium-sized enterprises. Enterprises, especially the small and medium-sized enterprises, are facing difficulties in financing and expensive financing. Based on the lack of the expected ability of financial institutions to achieve the effect of digital transformation, the performance of the relevant enterprises seeking digital transformation is not active enough in terms of credit.

Fourth, the infrastructure of digital development is weak, which limits the pace of digital transformation of enterprises. In the construction of digital infrastructure, China has made great progress, but the distribution of digital resources among regions is not balanced, such as computing network and cloud network, the distribution of computing power and communication bandwidth is unbalanced, and the national integrated big data center system has not yet been formed.

Fifth, the system construction of digital development needs to be followed up. Although the construction of digital economy system will increase the supervision cost, in many fields, the system is the precondition of digital innovation.

Sixth, there are still weak links in the industrial chain. The "neck sticking" phenomenon in chip and other industries leads to bottlenecks in the development of digital economy for enterprises, and also has an impact on the development of China's entire industrial chain.

Liu Xiangdong: the epidemic has accelerated the digital transformation of enterprises, but Chinese enterprises, especially small and medium-sized enterprises, are still facing many challenges in terms of industrial digital transformation. First, I don't know how to transform. Different from the consumer side, although the "Internet access" rate of production or service enterprises has increased, the strategic direction of digital transformation of many enterprises is not clear. In particular, they do not know how to make better use of digital technology to improve business conditions, and naturally they do not know how to use digital tools to realize the needs of business transformation.

Second, digital investment is obviously insufficient. Compared with large-scale enterprises, most of the small and medium-sized enterprises lack of digital investment, and these enterprises themselves lack sufficient operating funds. Moreover, digital transformation is not a one-time investment. With the change of technology, the cost of data system conversion is higher, and the trial and error cost and learning cost are beyond the affordability of small and medium-sized enterprises.

Third, digital infrastructure is uneven. Due to the great differences in various industries, the investment specificity of digital facilities is strong, and it is a long-term and continuous process, many enterprises dare not invest rashly, resulting in the situation of enterprises of different sizes investing in digital facilities is uneven.

Fourth, enterprises lack of stable talent team to master digital skills. Many small and medium-sized enterprises have low income, so it is difficult to recruit talents with digital skills and form a stable team. Therefore, the use of digital tools is in short supply. In addition, the phenomenon of "data island" of upstream and downstream enterprises in industrial chain supply chain makes it more difficult for these enterprises to promote digital transformation and implement the established digital blueprint.

　　3. To speed up the digital transformation, what else should enterprises do?

Liu Xiangdong: to speed up the digital transformation of enterprises, it is necessary to combine the actual situation, grasp the opportunities, clear the direction, and obtain large profits with small investment. In particular, small and medium-sized enterprises should realize the importance of digital transformation from top to bottom. This requires all employees of the enterprise to receive regular training on new digital technology and new products, fully grasp the usefulness of digital tools for business transformation and development, ensure that the strategic direction of digital transformation is clear, and formulate the corresponding timetable and roadmap to make it closely match with the company's development strategy.

The second is to grasp the suitability of input and output. For many small and medium-sized enterprises, the applicable technology is in line with the actual situation of the enterprise. It is necessary to consider not only the applicability of enterprise capacity and technology, but also the cost performance of digital tools, so as to obtain the best return with the minimum investment.

Third, actively participate in the digital transformation of industrial chain supply chain. We should guide small and medium-sized enterprises to actively participate in the digital transformation of industrial chain supply chain driven by leading enterprises, and promote the coordinated development of large and medium-sized enterprises relying on the whole chain digital system. Actively play the role of enabling integration of Internet platform enterprises, and provide efficient system solutions for the collaborative development of large and medium-sized enterprises. Strengthen the digital infrastructure network of the whole process of the whole industry, and promote the flow of industry data and information sharing.

Fourth, actively promote the digital skills of all staff. Encourage small and medium-sized enterprises to actively carry out staff digital skills training, increase the quality of digital skills of all employees, timely help employees master the necessary digital skills, so as to adapt to the emergence of new business formats.

Yu Jianing: in the process of digital transformation, enterprises should pay more attention to digital assets and assets digitization, so that data can truly become the production factors of enterprises. In terms of digital capitalization, for any enterprise, data is an asset. Frontier emerging technologies such as 5g, artificial intelligence and industrial interconnection will greatly improve productivity, while technologies such as blockchain and smart contract will bring new changes in production relations, and big data and Internet of things will bring new means of production. In the future, data assets will become the core asset category of every enterprise and the key source of creating digital value. The multiplier effect of data is helpful to realize the value of other factors. In addition, the safe storage and transaction of data assets is an important topic in the process of digitization.

In terms of assets digitization, at present, many enterprises have a large number of "stagnant assets" with low liquidity, which further aggravates the financial difficulties of enterprises. One way to increase asset liquidity is to digitize assets, which can further reduce costs and improve efficiency. In addition, with the gradual promotion and application of digital RMB, the process of digitalization of enterprise assets will be further accelerated. By integrating capital flow and information flow, capital flow can become a part of data flow, which can fundamentally solve the differences and contradictions, and provide the driving force for the transformation of traditional industries to "new intelligent commerce".

Panhelin: enterprises should make efforts in the following aspects: first, enterprises should improve their understanding of digital economic transformation. The plan has raised the development of digital economy to an unprecedented height. We should understand the general trend of China's digital economy development, improve our understanding of digital economy and digital technology, and look at the possibility of digital transformation in combination with our own industry. We should think of danger in times of safety and focus on the long-term.

Second, enterprises should pay attention to the flow of data elements. Data element is a new factor of production in the era of digital economy. We should understand the importance of data elements to the production and marketing of enterprises, and make use of industrial data and sales data to make data feedback to enhance the development power of enterprises.

Third, we should be good at learning and using external forces. We should not only cultivate digital talents within the enterprise, but also introduce digital enterprises from outside to help reform. The biggest characteristic of the development of market economy is the division of labor and cooperation, professional people do professional things, especially in the setting of enterprise digital development framework, scientific overall planning is conducive to the sustainable development of enterprises.

Fourth, enterprises should attach importance to the formation of their own technical barriers. Innovation is the key driving force for the development of enterprises, and science and technology are the primary productive forces. Enterprises should promote the transformation of technological achievements through the integration of industry, University and research, and strengthen the protection of intellectual property rights with a positive attitude, so as to promote the development of enterprises.

Fifth, pay attention to the cultivation of digital talents. Enterprises lack of digital talents, especially those with the top-level framework design perspective of digital economy. Talents should not only understand digital technology, but also have a forward-looking perspective on digital economy to keep up with the trend of digital economy.

Sixth, promote standardization and interconnection. Standardization and interconnection can build a bridge between enterprises and eventually form an industrial ecology. New ecology will bring new demands. Innovation does not necessarily come from technology. In the era of digital economy, more innovation comes from the integration of existing technologies.

Seventh, promote digital transformation in a healthy and orderly manner. We should pay attention to the data security, protect the privacy of personal information, prevent the occurrence of trouble, and do a good job of risk warning for all kinds of risks.

(source: International Business Daily)