China’s digital economy exceeds 36% of its GDP

China’s digital economy reached 35.8 trillion yuan (5.45 trillion U.S. dollars) in 2019, accounting for 36.2 percent of the country’s total GDP, Report says, citing Xinhua, Chinese Academy of Cyberspace Studies informed.

The raging COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the importance of the Internet. In contrast, the digital economy has become a vital force in mitigating the virus’s impact, reshaping the economy, and improving governance capability.

By the end of May, China’s fiber-optic network had covered all urban and rural areas, with the number of fiber-optic subscribers accounting for 93.1 percent of the country’s fixed broadband users, the highest in the world, according to the report.

In 2019, there were 5.44 million 4G base stations in China, and the consumption of mobile-data traffic reached 122 billion GB, ranking first in the world. As of September this year, China had built more than 480,000 5G base stations.

China’s e-commerce transactions hit 34.81 trillion yuan last year, up 6.7 percent year on year.