Golden online era dawns for cloud, big data, AI

China's digital economy, or D-economy, has entered a "golden era" and has become a new economic growth engine, said an expert from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, a government think tank.

The internet, and technologies like cloud computing, big data and artificial intelligence, or AI, are helping transform several industries and sectors, thereby driving economic growth, he said.

"The country's digital economy has stepped into a new phase, with the focus shifting from high-speed growth to both quantity and quality development," said Lu Chuncong, director of the Policy and Economic Research Institute, at CAICT.