Digital economy takes off ｜ To develop digital economy, we should continue to do a good job in e-commerce.

Li Mingtao, chief e-commerce expert of China International E-commerce Center.

This year’s government work report proposes to "promote the development of digital economy and strengthen the overall layout of the construction of digital China" in the part of "deeply implementing the innovation-driven development strategy" of the government work task in 2022. Build a digital information infrastructure, promote the large-scale application of 5G, promote the digital transformation of industries, and develop smart cities and digital villages. Accelerate the development of industrial internet, cultivate and expand digital industries such as integrated circuits and artificial intelligence, and enhance the technological innovation and supply capacity of key software and hardware. Improve digital economic governance, release the potential of data elements, better empower economic development and enrich people’s lives. " Accelerate the development of China’s digital economy from infrastructure construction, digital industry breakthrough, promoting digital transformation to digital economic governance. In the process of promoting the development of digital economy, we should always adhere to market orientation, avoid invalid investment, and create a sustainable driving force for the development of digital economy.

In recent years, the rapid development of e-commerce in China has become "an important part of digital economy and real economy, an important engine to promote digital industrialization, promote industrial digitalization and promote governance digitalization, an important way to improve people’s quality of life, and an important force to promote national economic and social development". According to the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2021, the national online retail sales reached 1,308.84 billion yuan, an increase of 14.1% over the previous year. Among them, the online retail sales of physical goods reached 10,804.2 billion yuan, an increase of 12.0%, accounting for 24.5% of the total retail sales of social consumer goods. At the same time, with the gradual decrease of the bonus of the increase in the number of netizens and the continuous improvement of the penetration rate of e-commerce, the development speed of e-commerce has also slowed down year by year. In the process of the development from consumer Internet to industrial Internet, the future development direction and growth space of e-commerce will inevitably focus on how to give full play to the advantages of e-commerce in accurately connecting consumer demand, promote the digitalization of traditional business activities, and serve the digital transformation, product innovation and brand building of the supply side. This is not only the inevitable trend of e-commerce itself, but also the first driving force for the digital transformation of traditional industries.

General Secretary of the Supreme Leader attaches great importance to the development of China’s digital economy, and points out in the article "Constantly strengthening and improving China’s digital economy" that "the important task of building a new development pattern is to enhance the kinetic energy of economic development and smooth the economic cycle. Digital technology and digital economy can promote the rapid flow of various resource elements, accelerate the integration of various market players, help market players reconstruct organizational models, achieve cross-border development, break time and space restrictions, extend industrial chains, and smooth economic cycles at home and abroad. " We see that e-commerce has played an important role in smoothing the economic cycle at home and abroad. E-commerce has formed a unified online market, broken the time and space restrictions, promoted the rapid circulation of goods, information and capital by relying on active online consumption, established a fast direct channel between production and consumption by relying on platform ecology and data elements, and promoted the DTC of production and sales through C2M customization, which fully reflected the high efficiency advantages of informationization and digitalization, and greatly accelerated the social production cycle process of production, circulation and consumption. In recent years, a large number of "new domestic products" brands have emerged at an accelerated pace, which has become a typical representative of the transformation and upgrading of China’s manufacturing industry. These "new domestic products" brands have made full use of the advantages of e-commerce infrastructure to achieve omni-channel access to consumers, full-scene service to consumers and accurate customer orientation. At the upstream production end, they fully rely on domestic mature supply chain resources to carry out C2M customized production and rely on digital collaboration to achieve rapid product iteration. I should say,The digitalization of these enterprises is market-driven, customer-driven and demand-driven. Digitalization has become the gene of enterprises, showing great development vitality and strong competitive advantage. On the other hand, the role of cross-border e-commerce can not be ignored in smoothing the international and domestic double cycle. Cross-border e-commerce is driven by the escalating huge domestic consumer demand, and organizes global high-quality goods to enter the domestic market through the import supply chain, continuously releasing China’s economic growth dividend and driving global economic development; At the same time, the second curve of China’s foreign trade export growth will be created through cross-border e-commerce export. Relying on the advantages of being close to the market and demand, we can better organize the supply chain resources of domestic industrial chain, establish the China channel of online market, support the brand building of China and serve the global development of China’s manufacturing industry. Whether it is domestic e-commerce or cross-border e-commerce, it builds a new digital channel between domestic demand, manufacturing and service supply, and international demand. It constantly relies on its own digital advantages to strengthen its own industrial chain, promote the rapid flow and accurate matching of production factors, promote the digital transformation of business activities and scene innovation, and play a strong supporting and driving role in the development of digital economy.

For a long time, China has attached great importance to the construction of information infrastructure and vigorously promoted the application of information technology. The role of information technology in improving efficiency, improving management and optimizing configuration has become increasingly apparent. At the same time, however, the degree of integration between the real economy and digital technology is still far from enough, and the real economy urgently needs to transform from the initial digital application to the deep digital transformation. In this process, it is very important to identify the driving force for the deep digital transformation of the real economy. E-commerce has always been one of the industries with the highest degree of digitalization. It can play a leading role as a typical digital industry in the development of digital economy, and help the development of digital economy in all aspects, such as promoting the construction of digital infrastructure, helping smart cities and digital villages, serving the digital transformation of traditional industries, and exploring the data factor market.

First, it can continue to drive the construction of social digital infrastructure with the development needs of e-commerce industry. The rapid development of e-commerce has provided a strong demand traction for the construction of digital infrastructure in the whole society. For example, a large number of applications of rural e-commerce, especially live delivery of agricultural products, have driven the rapid popularization of high-speed broadband networks and 4G networks in rural areas, e-commerce platform enterprises have built or rented a large number of data centers, e-commerce warehousing has adopted a large number of Internet of Things applications, and e-commerce traceability has effectively driven the application of blockchain. In the future, the more diversified service mode of e-commerce and the need to enhance the online and offline integration of consumer service experience will definitely demand more abundant application scenarios for modern technologies such as 5G and broadband infrastructure, data centers, cloud computing, big data and virtual reality, and blockchain from the two levels of application breadth and depth.

Second, we can vigorously develop producer service e-commerce and promote the digital transformation of manufacturing industry. In promoting the digital transformation of manufacturing industry, e-commerce platform enterprises have accelerated their layout. Alibaba launched the "rhinoceros intelligent manufacturing" platform, which has achieved the rapid reverse production capacity of 100 pieces in the field of customized clothing production. SHEIN brand, which also focuses on the clothing export field, relies on its own front-end APP customer stickiness and intelligent product selection ability to build a production service platform for the clothing industry belt with Guangdong as the core, driving thousands of suppliers to develop small-scale customized production for the global market, with annual sales exceeding 100 billion, and has become the world’s leading fast fashion clothing brand. Vigorously developing producer service e-commerce can give full play to the advantages of the Internet, effectively organize scattered production and service resources in the industry, realize networked collaboration, promote industrial efficiency and resource reuse, break enterprise boundaries, expand industry services, and then drive digital management and intelligent production within manufacturing enterprises to meet new demands such as personalized customization.

Third, it can promote the development of industrial Internet with the application of industrial e-commerce. In essence, the application of industrial Internet should give full play to the advantages of large-scale and deep-level resource collaboration of the Internet, break the boundary between enterprise resources and assets, and realize the flexibility and intelligence of supply chain and industrial chain for the rapid change of market and product iteration. It can be said that the service and support of industrial Internet are still B2B-based e-commerce applications. Large-scale manufacturing enterprises actively develop industrial e-commerce service platforms, and intelligent manufacturing platforms such as Haier kaos Platform and Sany Heavy Industry’s Roots Interconnection Platform are committed to building industrial Internet integration platforms and empowering the industrial chain; At the same time, the vertical service e-commerce platforms of steel and silver e-commerce, Ouye Yunshang and other industries are also actively developing the supply chain digital intelligent empowerment service. The deep integration of industry e-commerce and industrial Internet will inevitably become the future development trend.

Fourth, the new e-commerce model can drive the digital transformation of the service industry. Mode innovation, scene innovation and format innovation have always been the important direction of innovation and development in the field of e-commerce. During the epidemic period, live e-commerce, content e-commerce, and community group buying grew explosively, and offline new retail also showed great development potential. These new models showed the great vitality and broad development space of China’s e-commerce industry and have become an important field for China to lead the global e-commerce application. In the direction of innovation, the deep integration with offline physical space and physical service resources has become the main trend. For example, shop broadcasting, factory broadcasting and village broadcasting in live broadcast have become the mainstream, and community group buying and offline convenience stores have been widely combined. The proportion of e-commerce applications of corresponding traditional service enterprises has also continued to increase, and a large number of traditional service enterprises have been effectively promoted to achieve smooth digital transformation through the increment of new e-commerce models.

Fifth, continue to vigorously develop rural e-commerce to promote rural revitalization. Rural e-commerce is guided by meeting the online consumption of rural people, focusing on the upward sales of characteristic products in rural areas and the development of rural cultural tourism resources, which has played an irreplaceable role in promoting rural consumption, helping farmers increase their income and promoting industrial integration in rural areas. Continue to vigorously develop rural e-commerce, improve the e-commerce infrastructure conditions in rural areas, and create a new impetus for the sustainable development of rural e-commerce, which will also become a powerful starting point for promoting the construction of digital infrastructure in rural areas, developing rural digital economy, and helping rural revitalization.

Sixth, we can explore the open development of the digital factor market through e-commerce big data. E-commerce big data is now one of the most mature big data application fields. Major e-commerce platform enterprises have accumulated a large amount of e-commerce transaction data, and they are also actively exploring the open application of e-commerce big data. For example, Alibaba’s new business operating system and JD.COM’s open supply chain services are all based on its massive big data support, and it has become an important trend for e-commerce platform enterprises to open up and develop. Therefore, through policy guidance and support, we can continue to encourage the opening of e-commerce big data, support the development of third-party data service industry based on e-commerce big data, further form a good e-commerce big data service ecosystem, and give play to the demonstration and linkage effect of industry data opening.

The author is Li Mingtao, chief e-commerce expert of China International E-commerce Center.