BEIJING, May 4 (Xinhua) -- As the construction of the Belt and Road proceeds, building regional ecology of digital economy has been a key part of infrastructure connectivity, and the Digital Silk Road has become a new engine for economic growth in Belt and Road regions.
The first Digital China Summit has been recently held in Fuzhou, capital of south China’s Fujian province. Experts attending the summit believe that the Digital Silk Road has paved the way for the Chinese proposal to go global and is a feasible carrier for Belt and Road countries to develop beyond the restrictions of national boundaries, races and cultures.
To echo the Belt and Road Initiative, some enterprises have already taken practical steps. Alibaba is building and promoting a Digital Silk Road for free trade, thereby facilitating global small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to participate in international trade.
Guangxi Liugong Machinery Co., Ltd. (Liugong) has expanded businesses in most countries along the Belt and Road with substantial increase in sales in these countries, said Luo Guobing, vice president of Liugong, adding that Liugong would intensify AI research through big data and other digital resources to serve Belt and Road countries.
More domestic electronic information enterprises is expected to join the construction of the Digital Silk Road, to share China's IT development experience with Belt and Road countries and make more countries access the development dividend from Digital Silk Road, said Lu Shan, director of the China Center for Information Industry Development.
Experts also believe the Internet is an emerging infrastructure which can help many countries overtake others and gain late-mover advantage.
Harvey Dzodin, a former legal advisor to the U.S. Government, considered network interconnection as important as physical interconnection in the era.
The construction of the 21st Century Digital Silk Road will cement the internet business cooperation among relevant countries, and may produce huge market effects. Strengthening the internet cooperation under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative is not only of high economic value, but also will build a bridge of cultural exchanges between relevant countries, Dzodin added.
The Chinese government has called for efforts to intensify the effective supply of public products for international cyberspace governance, deliver public cyberspace products to Belt and Road countries through Belt and Road construction, and strengthen the cooperation with these countries in digital economy and network security, said Roger Thys, a professor of economics at KU Leuven, adding that this is a major move of China to participate in the reform of the global network governance system.
Besides, China has called for efforts to strengthen the cooperation with Belt and Road countries, especially developing countries, in network infrastructure construction, digital economy, network security and other fields against the background of Belt and Road construction, to construct the 21st Century Digital Silk Road.
"In the future, the world needs more cooperation than competition, China is inseparable from the world and vice versa," said chairman of Alibaba Group Jack Ma, adding that we must open our mind to embrace changes and new technologies, only in this way, can the human society develop with sustainability and will the dream of pursuing progress remain unchanged.
Yang Xiaowei, deputy director of Cyberspace Administration of China pointed out that national innovation capacity and competitiveness is becoming a focus in new-round global competition, and to speed up informatization development and to build digital countries has become a global consensus.
China should improve the policy environment of informatization development, promote the opening up of the information market, deepen international exchanges and cooperation in the digital economy, advance the reform of the global internet governance system and join hands with other countries to build a community of destiny for cyberspace, said Yang.
(Edited by Yang Qi, kateqiyang@xinhua.org)
A single purchase
