Data and policy synchronicity

By Zhang Nan | China Daily Global | Updated: 2026-10-28 20:08

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China's use of digital technology will progress from boosting efficiency to improving governance infrastructure

Looking back at the past decade of the development of China's digital government, one can see how digital technologies have dramatically empowered the efficiency of public services. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-20), the State Council, China's Cabinet, promoted one-stop online handling for government services nationwide, and the National Government Service Platform went online in 2019. The national data-sharing and exchange platform system began connecting previously fragmented government information across departments. Cross-departmental data verification drastically reduced the materials citizens and businesses had to prepare for administrative approvals, and made many public services available across provinces.

During the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, the pace accelerated further. From the guideline on further government digital transformation released by the State Council in 2022 to the Digital China Construction Overall Layout Plan jointly issued by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council in 2023, the value of government data and the importance of sharing and using it received growing attention. That progress is captured by "getting one thing done efficiently" moving from pilot reform to a normalized mechanism: By January, five batches of 55 priority items had been rolled out at the national level, the latest adding 13 items for businesses and citizens. China's integrated government-service platform now serves more than 1 billion registered users, and the country's ranking on the United Nations E-Government Development Index rose from 70th in 2014 to 35th in 2024.

During this period, digital technologies mainly increased efficiency. The wide application of digital technologies made services faster, required less paperwork and created a friendlier business environment. The slogan "letting data do the running instead of people" has gradually become a reality.

China's digital transformation is distinctly application-driven, in ways that differ from what has happened in the United States and Europe. In the Silicon Valley model, technology is the starting point, and the government sector, like every other domain, serves largely as a testing ground for new products. The European model, by contrast, puts governance first. New technologies are examined and constrained through the lens of risk, and are expected to be folded into existing regulatory frameworks.

China's digital transformation, oriented toward public convenience and better service delivery, is organized around the real business of government and targets the genuine pain points of public services, rather than technology for its own sake or regulation for its own sake. This application-driven approach is realized through bottom-up innovation across different cities, in which technology and regulation evolve continuously with the progress of real business, maintaining a dynamic balance.

In earlier research at Tsinghua University, we described this as the alignment of information architecture and business model. Our empirical studies found that in China's successful smart city and community cases, the two are inseparable. Since resources are scarce, no grassroots governance unit can invest indiscriminately across the board; the optimal strategy is to select closely related nodes from the information architecture set and the business model set and let them evolve together, ensuring visible returns on every investment. The result is a pragmatic, public-value-oriented path in which the organizing principle is data-driven policy coordination, rather than platform dominance or precaution alone.

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) both extends the existing logic and adapts to the new realities of the artificial intelligence era. Under the theme of "raising the level of digital and intelligent governance", the plan reiterates an application-oriented approach across the full government process that is convenient and equitable, together with the requirement of data connectivity across the National Government Service Platform.

Against the broader backdrop of the "AI+" initiative, it also commits to safely and steadily deploying large language models and related AI technologies in government work, which involves not only breakthroughs in perception, early warning, and real-time response across key governance domains, but also innovations in service models that precisely identify needs and plan services proactively. This points to a deeper integration of digital and intelligent technologies with management processes. Digital government is no longer merely a set of efficiency tools attached to existing institutions; it is becoming an important governance infrastructure in the modernization of the country's governance system and capacity.

In light of these developments, it is worth reconsidering where technological empowerment should be prioritized in the digital-intelligent era. Building on the efficiency gains already achieved in government services, data and intelligence mark two directions of empowerment.

Extending downward from public services is government data governance — covering data rights confirmation, data update mechanisms, quality standards, the opening, authorized operation, and value release of public data. The National Data Administration, established in 2023, has been advancing this work.

Extending upward from public services is what might be called "policy intelligence". The development of large language models and AI agents makes it possible to embed AI systematically into policy formulation, analysis, implementation and feedback loops — supporting more evidence-based and targeted decision-making. This is a frontier that deserves sustained attention from both researchers and policymakers.