General Secretary of the Supreme Leader pointed out during his inspection tour in Jiangsu in July this year that the digital economy should be deeply integrated with advanced manufacturing and modern service industries. Report to the 20th CPC National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that a new service industry system with high quality and high efficiency should be built. Service industry is an important part of China’s economic and social development, and it is also a key link to achieve high-quality development. Under the current background, upgrading the digital development level of service industry has become the only way to upgrade the development level of service industry and build a new system of service industry development.
First, it is of great significance to accelerate the digital transformation of the service industry in the new era and new journey
China has entered a new journey of building a socialist modern country in an all-round way. As an important source of economic growth and an important way to improve the total factor productivity, the digital economy is not only an important carrier to promote the continuous expansion of the "quantity" of the service industry, but also an important support to ensure the continuous improvement of the "quality" of the service industry.
First, digitalization is the leading force to enhance the competitiveness of the service industry.With the in-depth implementation of innovation-driven development, the digital economy, as the most innovative technical field at present, is constantly improving its leading and driving ability to the service industry.One isThe emergence of new digital technologies is accelerating, and the speed of innovation iteration is constantly improving. A large number of innovations no longer have to be solidified into hardware to form products before they can enter the market. At present, the most important new technologies, such as big data, blockchain and artificial intelligence, are mainly manifested in the service industry format. The service industry has become the main battlefield for new technologies to play a leading role, and it has also become a priority for their empowerment and development.The second isThe rapid development of information technology service industry with digital technology as the main body has become an important driving force for the growth of service industry. In the past three years, the average annual growth rate of information transmission, computer service and software industry is more than double that of the service industry as a whole. In 2022, the proportion of this industry in the service industry was only 7.5%, but the average growth contribution rate in the past three years reached 14.1%.The third isDigital technology is organically integrated with the service industry in an empowering way, which has become an important means to improve the quality and efficiency of the service industry. In 2022, the digital penetration rate of China’s service industry reached 44.7%, which was higher than that of agriculture (10.5%) and industry (24.0%), making it the fastest growing area of digital transformation among the three industries.
Second, digitalization is an important way to expand the coverage of quality service industry.Digital technology innovation allows the supply of high-quality service industry to cover more people, and also leads the supply-side innovation of service industry to form more high-quality supply.On the one hand,Digital technology lowers the threshold of participation, improves the efficiency of supply and demand docking, and promotes the wide coverage of potential people. By the end of 2022, the number of users of online shopping, online take-out, online car rental and online medical care in China has reached 850 million, 520 million, 440 million and 360 million respectively. Digital technology not only enables large-scale consumers to efficiently match service supply, but also enables quality services to stand out through the screening of many consumers.On the other hand,Digital technology effectively activates high-quality niche markets. Due to the increasingly diverse market demand and the increasingly prominent characteristics of differentiated and personalized service demand, the voice of niche market and low-frequency demand is getting higher and higher. With the characteristics of high speed, low cost and wide coverage, digital technology can accurately match the needs of market niche, thus quickly reaching the minimum economic scale of service supply. In recent years, a number of high-quality long-tail market fields of service industries such as research tours and audio dramas have emerged.
Third, digitalization is a powerful starting point for expanding the new space for service industry development.Digital transformation has brought about a great change in the operation mode of service industry, and formed a new huge development space outside the traditional business.On the one hand,Digital technology can effectively expand the development space of service industry by creating a new parallel data market. Massive data is widely collected and used, creating the application value of accurate data, and the new channel of realizing is advertising push formed by consumers based on the attention of content value.On the other hand,The wide application of digital technology in the service industry has crossed the barrier that the production and consumption of the service industry are inseparable, making many traditional non-tradable service departments tradable and bringing new opportunities for the development of the service industry. Online video and online music can continue to generate consumption income by paying a production cost. At present, these two fields have covered 1.03 billion and 680 million people respectively, and the market space is extremely huge. In addition, under the digital empowerment, China’s service trade exports have continued to grow rapidly, with a total increase of 45.8% in the past three years, bringing new overseas development space.
Second, two efforts will be made to accelerate the digital transformation of the service industry
On the one hand,Consolidate the digital base of service industry. The digital base of service industry includes key areas such as elements, platforms and infrastructure. Specifically:One isFully activate the value of data elements, strengthen the open sharing of public data on the premise of ensuring data security, encourage social forces to tap the value of commercial data, and accelerate the cultivation of professional data service providers.The second isPromote the co-construction and sharing of digital technology innovation resources, encourage the development of new digital service infrastructure platforms such as open source communities and open source code hosting platforms, and optimize the digital transformation ecology of the service industry.The third isImprove the basic platform of urban information model (CIM), build the urban three-dimensional spatial data backplane, and improve the digital level of urban transportation, commerce, culture, tourism and other service facilities. We will speed up the construction of a real-life 3D China and a national spatial basic information platform, build a unified national geospatial base and data fusion platform, and improve the spatio-temporal information service infrastructure.
On the other hand,Classification promotes the digital transformation and application of service industry.One isFocus on the needs of industrial transformation and upgrading, and promote the digital transformation of producer services such as R&D design, financial services, transportation, supply chain management, energy conservation and environmental protection. Build a number of digital production service clusters, select a number of typical cases in the fields of intelligent factory construction and operation, innovative application of industrial Internet, flexible manufacturing, etc., and promote the expansion of quality supply of productive services.The second isFocusing on meeting diversified and high-quality living needs, we will accelerate the enrichment of digital application scenarios of life service industries such as commerce, culture, tourism, health, childcare, housekeeping and sports. We will promote inclusive "using numbers to empower wisdom", innovate the supply of digital services, and promote the digital transformation capacity building of service enterprises. Support all localities to cultivate digital brands and benchmarks for life service industries such as digital commerce, digital education, digital travel, digital culture, smart tourism and digital health.(Author: Zhang Zhenyi, Deputy Director of Information and Industry Development Department of National Information Center, and Zhang Liyi, Senior Analyst of Information and Industry Development Department of National Information Center)