Data sector to see leapfrog development

China's data industry is poised for robust growth in the coming years as the country will give full play to its advantages in massive data resources and promote the in-depth integration of digital technologies and the real economy to nurture new quality productive forces, said officials, experts and company executives.

Highlighting that data serve as a new type of production factor, they said China's emphasis on accelerating the construction of digital infrastructure and deepening reforms related to the market-oriented allocation of data elements will drive industrial upgrade and promote the high-quality development of the digital economy.

As data elements have become key and strategic resources that drive economic growth in the digital era, facilitating the development of the data industry is conducive to bolstering the circulation, transaction and utilization of data, nurturing a national integrated data market and unleashing the huge value of data elements, they added.

Liu Liehong, head of the National Data Administration, the country's top data governance regulator, said data elements are speeding up their integration with economic and social development, injecting momentum into the transformation of various industries and stimulating innovation vitality.

Liu said China has favorable conditions for the development of the data industry, given its world-leading data infrastructure, ever-increasing technological innovation capacities, broad application scenarios, high-quality data sets and supportive policy measures.

He made the remarks at the recently concluded China International Big Data Industry Expo 2025, which was held in Guiyang, capital of Southwest China's Guizhou province.

"In recent years, the rapid development of artificial intelligence has led to an explosive increase in demand for data, greatly driving the construction of high-quality data sets and accelerating breakthroughs in technologies such as data annotation, data governance, data mining and analysis, and secure circulation," he noted.

The added value of China's digital economy is expected to reach around 49 trillion yuan ($6.9 trillion) by the end of this year, accounting for about 35 percent of GDP, according to Liu.

China's data sector has made great strides during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period. Statistics from the National Data Development Research Institute show that the number of data-related enterprises in China surpassed 400,000 in 2024, while the market scale of the nation's data industry reached 5.86 trillion yuan.

The nation's total data output reached 41.06 zettabytes last year, up 25 percent year-on-year, while the added value of core industries of the digital economy accounted for about 10 percent of GDP, said the National Data Administration.