The digital economy, which can boost GDP growth and increase employment, has become an integral part of China's economy, an expert at the Tencent Research Center said on Wednesday.
Meng Zhaoli, deputy dean of the Tencent Research Center, said during the research center's open lessons on Wednesday that the development of the digital economy can enhance economic effiency, release development potential and drive regional economic development.
She said that the digital domain has assumed its preliminary structure. The first-tier cities for the digital economy consist of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province. The second tier include 14 cities like Foshan in Guangdong and Suzhou in East China's Jiangsu Province.
The third and fourth tiers have 19 and 65 cities, respectively. All other cities are considered fifth tier.
Meng noted, however, that the digital economy is growing fastest in the fourth- and fifth-tier cities, while the first-tier cities had the slowest growth last year.
According to a report released by the Tencent Research Center on April 20, the digital economy accounted for 30.6 percent of the nation's GDP. The report was compiled by Tencent along with a number of companies like Didi Chuxing and Ctrip, and it was based on big data that reflected the development scale of the digital economy in 351 cities.
The report compiled this year's "Internet Plus" & Digital Economy Index for provinces and municipalities. The research center took various factors, like mass entrepreneurship and innovation levels, into consideration while calculating the indexes.
According to the report, Guangdong had the highest index at 54.23, while Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region had the lowest at 0.77.
Zhou Ziqi, a researcher at the Tencent Research Center, said each point increase in the index will cause the GDP to increase by about 141 billion yuan ($20.5 billion) and 17,300 new jobs to be created in cities and towns.
Li Gang, director of the Industrial Research Center under the Tencent Research Center, said that activity related to mass entrepreneurship and innovation have become "rational" after an explosion in 2015.
