5. Development of the World’s Digital Economy

Digital economy is the major economic form in the era of information revolution, representing a new technical model, new resource endowment and a new institution and system. It is the most promising new drive for the mid and long-term growth of the global economy, marking that human beings have entered a new stage with digital productivity as the monument. Digital economy has become the direction of all countries in guaranteeing their steady economic growth and rebuilding their competitive strength as well as one of the cooperative areas of international community. (1) In major countries, digital economy is developing fast, with its speed higher than that of GDP. In 2016, the global digital economic scale accounted for over one fourth of the global total GDP. (2) China and the United States are the “twin stars” in the field of digital economy. The latter ranks first in the scale of digital economy while the former is the largest e-commerce market of the world, with its e-business transaction volume accounting for 40% of the world’s total. (3) Platform economies have new ecosystems of digital economy. Global Internet businesses have adopted the platform development mode. So far, the top 10 Internet businesses in market value have surpassed the top 10 traditional multinationals and become the leading force in the global digital economy development. (4) Digital economy has become the “wind gap” of global entrepreneurship and innovation, attracting a large proportion of technologies, capital and talents of the world. (5) Digital economy is ushering in a new round of globalization. In the global service trade, digital trade accounts for an increasing percentage. It is expected that the transaction volume of global cross-border B2C business will reach US$994 billion by 2020. (6) Intelligent manufacturing has become the major direction of global manufacturing and will bring about revolutionary changes in traditional industrial manufacturing. (7) China’s sharing economy has become the biggest highlight of the world. In 2016, the transaction volume amounted to RMB3.45 trillion yuan, with a year-on-year growth of 103%. It is taking the lead in global sharing economy.