China has its own unique advantages in building a network power.

　　Editor’s Note: The 5th world internet conference opened in Wuzhen, Zhejiang on November 7th, and the Supreme Leader of president sent a congratulatory letter. The Supreme Leader pointed out that today’s world is experiencing a broader and deeper scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation.

　　Facing the changes and challenges of the global Internet, what kind of answer will China give? The world is looking forward to it..

　　In different historical stages of the development of human society, the social production network has been expanding, from one country to many countries, and from many countries to the final globalization. In this process, the social production network has become increasingly complicated in space, between industries and even within products. At the same time, the key content of production network exchange has gradually changed from agricultural products, industrial products and capital flow to data flow and information flow. Economic powers also show different industrial characteristics at different stages: agricultural power, industrial power, trade power and financial power. Under the background of the internet age, information flow and data flow are becoming new means of production, and at the same time, they are becoming more and more important contents of national security, and economic powers will increasingly rely on network powers.

　　The world today is experiencing an information revolution, which will bring another qualitative leap in productivity and have a profound impact on the development of international politics, economy, culture, society, ecology and military affairs. China must seize this historical opportunity, and use information flow to drive the flow of technology, capital, talents and materials to promote high-quality economic development. China has its own unique advantages in building a network power.

　　China has the advantage of market scale in building a network power.

　　The network has the characteristics of increasing marginal revenue. Every time a new user is added to the network, its scale revenue will be greater. China has a population of nearly 1.4 billion, and the existing Internet users and mobile phone users are huge. From children to the elderly, almost everyone can use smart phones. China’s population advantage is a huge supporting force for building a network power, which is an innate condition that many developed countries in the world do not have. There are world-class Internet companies like Ali and Tencent in China, which is inseparable from the huge domestic market in China. Making full use of population advantages and giving full play to the role of population base can make China’s network power construction get twice the result with half the effort and form a huge scale effect on economic development.

　　Today’s network era is already different from the traditional free Internet era, and innovations in content and form have spawned various profit models. The network era will not bury anyone’s talent, and every participant can use the network to create wealth. They are both creators and users of Internet services. Therefore, building an all-round cyberspace and expanding the coverage of network infrastructure can make China’s market scale advantage play to the greatest extent in the construction of a network power.

　　Building a strong network requires higher talents and infrastructure.

　　The characteristics of a network power are as follows: a country has strong technical strength, strong ability to resist network risks and network governance, which can achieve a high level of network efficiency as well as a high level of network security. No matter what stage of social development, talents and infrastructure are two important pillars of building an economic power. The innovation ability of the former depends on the national talent training and incentive system, while the latter depends on the government’s investment, supervision and maintenance of infrastructure. The construction of a network power still needs to rely on the construction of Internet talents and network infrastructure.

　　For a micro-enterprise, the Internet is first and foremost a technology-intensive industry, which cannot be supported by first-class technical talents. After more than 20 years of unremitting efforts, China has gained gratifying achievements and rich technical experience and professionals in the field of Internet technology. Since 2003, the number of related patents applied by China has increased by 10% year by year. Stimulated by market demand, a large number of college graduates flock to Internet enterprises after graduation, providing a large number of IT talents for the Internet industry. The younger talent team is more conducive to technological progress and innovation. In 2017, among the top ten Internet companies in the world ranked by market value, China’s Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu and JD.COM occupied four of them. China’s Internet practice and innovation is based on its own national conditions, permeating all aspects of people’s daily life, and basic production and life have been closely linked with intelligent networks. However, although the total resources of Internet science and technology talents in China are large, high-end technical talents are still scarce resources.

　　For a country, especially for a big country like China, the construction of a network power has put forward higher requirements for infrastructure. The infrastructure referred to by a network power includes not only telecommunications and Internet infrastructure construction in a narrow sense, but also the interaction between the network economy and the real economy. Network infrastructure also includes network basic theory and core technology, as well as related facilities related to network security. For example, information infrastructure network security protection, network security information co-ordination mechanism, means and platform. "To get rich, build roads first", and network infrastructure is the "highway" in today’s information age.

　　The essence of a network power is an information technology power. Network development is supported by technology, and the core technology is the biggest difficulty that restricts China’s construction into a network power. With the core technology, we can have a comparative advantage in technology, from following developed countries to completing "overtaking in corners". The birth of the core technology is to try it out through massive trial and error. This not only requires that the scientific research assessment mechanism should be inclusive and allow researchers to fail; But also put forward higher requirements for the financing mechanism, that is, the financing mechanism should also be inclusive and tolerant of repeated failures in technical research. Therefore, our scientific research assessment mechanism should be reformed, from short-term and high-frequency assessment to longer-term assessment, from quantitative assessment to quality assessment and peer reputation assessment. In addition, for the financing mechanism, it also requires the development of equity financing, the development of multi-level capital markets, and the change of the financing structure mainly relying on bank loans.

　　China’s construction of a network power is facing the problem of integration with the real economy

　　Undoubtedly, the development of the Internet has played a positive role in promoting economic development, but at the same time, new technologies will have an impact on traditional industries. This "creative destruction" of the network economy has also caused a certain degree of impact on the real economy. For example, the retail service industry tends to weaken under the impact of the Internet. We need to understand this contradiction from two aspects: on the one hand, like other new technologies and new production methods in history, network technology has improved the efficiency of information flow and production, and it is the "cake" of the whole economic output. The distribution problems arising in this process require the state to maintain basic social equity through taxation, subsidies and redistribution; On the other hand, the real economy and the Internet can achieve a benign interaction and achieve a win-win situation for both sides.

　　(The author is a researcher at the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and director of the Economic Development Research Office, distinguished professor, City University of Macau)