Digital resilience key to firms amid disruptions

Digital resilience will determine whether or not companies worldwide, including those in China, can respond quickly to business disruptions and restore market confidence amid the COVID-19 pandemic, industry insiders said.

"The growth in worldwide spending on information technology far exceeded the GDP growth amid the pandemic last year. It was a contrast to the situation during the (2008-09) Global Financial Crisis, where the former was far lower than the latter," said Huo Jinjie, president of leading market research firm International Data Corp China.

Huo said the sharp contrast shows that technology is helping companies solve more business problems. Digital resilience has become a key phrase for the country's enterprises to survive and grow.

"Digital resilience, which refers to an organization's ability to rapidly adapt to business disruptions by leveraging digital capabilities, will not only enable businesses to restore operations, but also drive them toward more innovations and growth," she said.

IDC predicted that 65 percent of global GDP will be driven by digitalization by 2022 and will drive over $6 trillion of IT spending from 2020 to 2023.

As for the Chinese market, Wu Lianfeng, IDC China's vice-president and chief research analyst, said that the year 2021 is extremely important, as the nation embraces the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the launch of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) and the country's 2035 long-term development goal.

"It's also a watershed of digital transformation for companies, as businesses with good digital transformation will accelerate to success, or vice versa," he said.

Wu pointed out that national strategic technological prowess, modern industrial systems, dual-circulation development pattern, digital construction, regional development and green transformation will be the keywords for digitalization during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.

The market consultancy also noted that the superfast 5G technology will be a new engine of the digital economy over the next few years. It predicted that over the next five years, China is expected to invest 650 billion yuan ($101 billion) in constructing 5G network infrastructure and will have 4.5 million 5G base stations by 2025.

Zhao Zhiguo, head of the information and communications management bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said earlier that the nation will build more than 600,000 5G base stations this year to speed up the commercialization of 5G technology.

He said that the nation will also expand the construction of 5G base stations to more counties and towns this year. The plan comes even after China built more than 718,000 5G base stations as of December, with 5G available in more than 300 cities at prefecture level and above.

"More efforts will be made to combine 5G with emerging consumption models, including augmented reality, virtual reality and immersive games, as well as promote the integration of 5G into daily services," he said.