The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee emphasized on improving the integration system of real economy and digital economy. As an emerging economic form, digital economy is of great significance to new industrialization, and synergistic promotion of digitization and greening is an important guide for industrial transformation. Recently, Shao Shuai, professor of the Department of Tongji-SEM, with Xu Le published an article in China Social Science Journal, arguing that it is necessary to focus on planning differentiated paths, focusing on key industries, breaking through the bottlenecks of enterprise transformation, and reinforcing the demonstration role of the “leading” city clusters, etc., and that it is necessary to take multiple measures such as the design of the top-level mechanism, regional synergy, industry chain linkage, technological research, market development, and incentive traction. Through the design of top-level mechanism, regional synergy, industry chain linkage, technology research, market development, incentive traction and other measures to realize synergistic transformation. The following is the original text of the publication.

The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee clearly pointed out that “a sound system for promoting the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy”. The digital economy, as an emerging economic form following the agricultural economy and industrial economy, can realize the exponential growth mode under the established level of input of production factors, relying on data resources, digital technology and modern information networks, and promote energy saving, consumption reduction and cost efficiency in industrial manufacturing, which is an important hand in promoting new industrialization and building a modernized industrial system.

Synergistic transformation as the direction of development

Synergistic promotion of digitalization and greening is an important direction for industrial transformation. The digital economy has great potential to promote the construction of the energy Internet, improve the energy structure and enhance total factor productivity. Only through synergistic transformation to effectively reduce energy consumption during the development of the digital economy and to circumvent the energy and carbon rebound effect can we ensure that the digital economy can realize the expected energy saving and emission reduction effects. Therefore, the in-depth integration of digital technology and green technology, especially the R&D and innovation of related common technologies, is the “glue” to promote the synergistic transformation of digitalization and greening.

The greening of digital infrastructure is the key layout direction. The digital economy itself is not sustainable, the operation of the Internet and big data analysis require strong energy support, and the material capital investment required for the construction of digital infrastructure will also lead to large-scale consumption of energy resources. Therefore, only by promoting the greening of digital infrastructure and giving a green and low-carbon undertone to the development of the digital economy can we comprehensively promote the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry, and in particular, it is necessary to strengthen the coordination, scheduling and sharing of arithmetic resources, and improve the efficiency of arithmetic resource utilization.

Intellectualization of the industrial manufacturing system is a fundamental practical requirement. The full application of digital technology to the greening and intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry is the main path to promote new industrialization and build a modernized industrial system. Industrial Internet as a functional platform needs to play a supportive traction role, drive the entity manufacturing industry chain data sharing, management synergy, efficient convergence, and realize the transformation of fragmented industrial data into data assets with commercial value. In addition, it is also necessary to promote artificial intelligence science and technology enterprises and traditional manufacturing “chain master” enterprises to collaborate and cooperate, jointly innovate in-depth intelligent applications, and promote artificial intelligence technology in the green manufacturing of major scenarios to the ground.

Four points of efforts to promote synergistic transformation

Planning differentiated development paths for different regional characteristics. There are obvious differences between different regions and industries in China in terms of their ability to develop, absorb and apply information technology, and there is also a significant difference in the speed of advancing the digital transformation of the real economy. The central and western regions, with rich natural resources and a long-term focus on energy-intensive industries, should accelerate the application of digital technology in energy, chemical, iron and steel, metallurgy and other fields to promote the high-quality development of traditional manufacturing industries. The eastern region, especially the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta and other regions with a better foundation of industrialization and informationization, should focus on high-end manufacturing and future industries, and enrich industrial application scenarios and solutions of AI.

Take high energy-consuming and green low-carbon industries as key industries for transformation and upgrading. High-energy-consuming industries have strong equipment specialization, high asset replacement costs, and greater difficulty in production technology and process innovation, so they need to rely on big data technology and digital integration platforms to promote the transformation and upgrading of high-energy-consuming industries, so as to create advanced industrial growth poles with “win-win” economic benefits and ecological benefits. The digital development of green and low-carbon industries is the key to the multiplier effect of the integration of digitalization and greening, in which energy-saving, water-saving, recycling, clean production and other industries need to explore the whole industry chain transformation program, while the green consumption field needs to innovate green product points, traceability, certification mechanism.

The solution to the bottleneck of digital transformation of micro subjects will be the breakthrough. To stimulate the endogenous driving force of the micro subjects of the digital economy to empower the Chinese-style modernization of man and nature in harmony and coexistence, it is necessary to promote the digital transformation of enterprises. This is not an overnight process, but a systematic project that requires the use of digital technology to comprehensively reconfigure manufacturing processes and business models. In particular, traditional industrial enterprises, often benefiting from the original production technology and equipment, and subject to the level of technology and management capabilities, the lack of comprehensive digital transformation drive. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the awareness of the active digital transformation of enterprises, and at the same time, with the help of policy support and market forces, focusing on breakthroughs in the digital transformation of traditional industrial enterprises bottlenecks, and all-round assistance to help them quickly through the transformation of the “pain period”.

Strengthen the demonstration and driving role of the macro-carriers of the “leading” city clusters. Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen and Guangzhou have been in the front line of digital economy development for many years, and have become the “leading” cities in the country in terms of digitalization construction, which is expected to have a driving and demonstration effect on other cities in the city cluster. However, there is a huge gap between other cities in the city cluster and these “leading” cities in terms of software and hardware for digital economy development, which makes it difficult to give full play to its radiation effect. It is urgent to explore effective ways to stimulate the spatial spillover effect of digital economy development in city clusters, with a view to taking the lead in building a green, low-carbon and modernized industrial system within the city cluster. It is urgent to explore effective ways to stimulate the spatial spillover effect of digital economy development in city clusters, so as to take the lead in building a green, low-carbon and modernized industrial system within city clusters.

Multi-measures to realize synergistic transformation

In terms of top-level mechanism design, the ability to coordinate the development of digital transformation and green transformation should be improved, and enterprises should be guided to link the goals of digital transformation and green transformation by optimizing ESG information disclosure and the linkage of green power, green certificate and carbon trading markets. By optimizing ESG information disclosure and mechanisms such as the green power-green certificate-carbon market linkage, enterprises will be guided to link their digital transformation with their greening transformation goals. At the same time, an accurate assessment can be made of the enterprises’ digital transformation capacity and potential for carbon and pollution reduction, and a number of demonstration projects for the synergistic development of digitalization and green low-carbonization can be built.

In terms of regional synergy, the sharing of the fruits of digital economy development should be promoted by bridging the “digital divide” and promoting cross-regional sharing of digital infrastructure and data resources. For example, Lanzhou and other hub cities in central and western China represented by the “Belt and Road” can be supported to vigorously develop the arithmetic industry, and build a cross-regional arithmetic integration supply and demand docking platform, so as to promote the transfer of medium- and high-latency business from the east to the west, and to realize the staggered development of different regions.

In terms of industry chain linkage, the principle of integration of digitalization and greening should be upheld, and the systematic layout of the whole chain digitalized circular economy system, intelligent green manufacturing system, intelligent green supply chain management system, in particular, digital Internet of Things (IoT) technology can be deeply integrated into the green financial business, and the ecological and carbon footprints can be included in the reference index system of enterprises’ green project financing.

In terms of technology research, we should improve financial subsidy support and tax incentives for energy system digitalization and intelligent technology, accelerate the focus on basic common technology research, demonstration and testing of intelligent upgrading technology in the industry, and application and integration of intelligent system and energy service technology, so as to provide strong technical support for the synergistic transformation of digitization and greening.

In terms of market development, we should improve the data governance system in line with the national integrated data market, integrate fragmented data resources in the industrial field, build an energy big data sharing platform, break the “data silos”, establish a cross-industry, multi-category energy database, and accumulate related data assets to promote the intelligent operation of the energy system, Scientific decision-making and precise service, fully releasing the value of big data.

In terms of incentives and traction, we should address the problems of “not being able to turn”, “not being able to turn” and “not daring to turn” of enterprises, and assist them in docking with scientific and technological enterprises as well as third-party consulting service organizations, and encourage them to develop more applications that can be applied by scientific and technological enterprises, in particular. In particular, we should encourage science and technology enterprises to develop more digital technologies, products and services that can be applied to industrial production processes to improve quality and efficiency, energy saving and consumption reduction. At the same time, enterprises are encouraged to actively introduce industrial intelligence management personnel to promote the continuous improvement of the digitalization level of industrial enterprises’ production equipment, and help more enterprises to step into the “cloud”.