Can you imagine the huge space of Zhejiang’s digital economy? The reporter learned from the press conference on Tuesday on “Zhejiang Province Digital Economy Development White Paper (2022)” that Zhejiang aims to build a high ground for digital transformation and plans to achieve a new round of “double growth”. That is, by 2027, the added value of Zhejiang’s digital economy and core industries will exceed 7 trillion yuan and 1.6 trillion yuan respectively.

Today, the digital economy has become the main engine of Zhejiang’s economy. Data shows that in 2021, the province’s digital economy added value reached 3.57 trillion yuan, ranking fourth in the country, doubling from the initial stage of the “13th Five-Year Plan”; accounting for 48.6% of GDP, ranking first in all provinces (autonomous regions) across the country.

2022 is the final year of Zhejiang’s five-year digital economy doubling plan, and the first year of the upgraded version of Zhejiang’s digital economy “Project No. 1”. During this critical period, Zhejiang compiled and released the “White Paper on Zhejiang Province Digital Economy Development” for the first time, summarizing the results of “Project No. 1” and looking forward to future trends in about 70,000 words.

Technological innovation is the primary driving force in creating a high ground for digital transformation. Next, Zhejiang will build a high-level digital technology innovation center with global influence. Specifically, following the “315” major innovation system, it will launch 200 scientific projects in the digital economy every year, and form more than 150 major innovation achievements.

Digital industrialization and industrial digitization are the two major paths for the development of Zhejiang’s digital economy. To this end, Zhejiang will build a high-level national leading area of digital industrialization and a national demonstration area of industrial digital transformation.

On the one hand, through the cultivation of advanced manufacturing clusters, it will strengthen and expand the six 100 billion-level characteristic industrial clusters such as digital security and integrated circuits, so as to build a world-class new generation of information technology industry clusters; On the other hand, it will accelerates the new paradigm of “industrial brain + future factory” integrated development. By 2027, it will build 50 industry brains, and cultivate 100 future factories and 1,200 smart factories, so as to realize full coverage of digital transformation of industrial enterprises above designated size and small and medium-sized enterprises in key sub-sectors, and full coverage of industrial Internet platforms for industrial clusters of more than 10 billion yuan.

To develop the digital economy, institutional change is crucial. Zhejiang will build a high-level national pilot zone in digital economy mechanism innovation to amplify the effect of digital reform and improve the governance capacity of the digital economy.

In addition, Zhejiang will build an emerging financial center with global influence, a global digital trade center, a pilot area for data infrastructure systems, a pilot area for digital empowerment and common prosperity, and a new computing center in the Yangtze River Delta.