China's digital economy reaches $6.7 trillion

(ECNS) -- China's digital economy has jumped from 11 trillion yuan ($1.64 trillion) to over 45 trillion yuan ($6.7 trillion) from 2012 to 2021, ranking second in the world, and the proportion of its digital economy in GDP has increased from 21.6 percent to 39.8 percent, data from the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows.

As of May 2022, China has built the world's largest and technologically advanced network infrastructure, with optical networks built in all prefecture-level cities.

China's gigabit users have exceeded 50 million, 5G base stations reached 1.7 million, and 5G mobile phone users exceeded 420 million.

In 2021, the added value of the country's electronic information manufacturing industry above the designated size has increased by 15.7 percent over the previous year, with the growth rate hitting a new high in nearly 10 years.

The business income of the software and information technology service industry, as well as the Internet and related service enterprises, has maintained a growth rate of 17.7 percent and 16.9 percent, to reach 9,499.4 billion yuan and 1,550 billion yuan respectively.

By the end of June this year, industrial Internet applications have covered 45 major categories of the country's economy, and the high-quality external network of the industrial Internet has covered more than 300 cities across China.

In 2021, China's online retail sales of physical goods exceeded 10 trillion yuan for the first time, a year-on-year increase of 12 percent; its mobile payment services achieved a year-on-year increase of 22.73 percent.