New IP and Standardization Practices in China’s Data-Centric Digital Economy

Abstract

China’s digital economy accounts for almost half of its GDP and recent national planning aims to grow it by leveraging data as a key factor of production. To facilitate this, government agencies, enterprises, and service providers are creating rules and piloting new ideas such as Data Intellectual Property and Data Factorization. They are also developing IP registry standards and providing incentives and regulations for data factorization, data intellectual property, data assets, and other data-related components of the digital economy. Since 2019 the activities have picked up paces with multiple provinces and cities competing for first-in-the-nation statuses. It appears China is leading the world in a number of innovations in the coming data-centric economy.

1. Introduction

On January 1, 2023, Zhejiang Province in eastern China implemented the Zhejiang Province Intellectual Property Protection and Promotion Regulation, a landmark law that is widely watched by practitioners in governments and industries because of its first-in-the-nation provisions regarding “data intellectual property.” The Regulation defines “data intellectual property” as “data after certain algorithmic processing, possessing both practical value and intellectual achievement attributes, which can be protected in a pan-intellectual-property manner via methods including evidence preservation, and registration.” The Regulation also requires provincial agencies to make concrete progress by mid-2023 in scaling up existing technology platforms for data intellectual property’s evidence preservation and creating an official registrar for data intellectual property.

That is just one activity among the numerous initiatives in new rules, trials and practices in the areas of intellectual property, standards, IP financing, and data transactions that are being carried out by government agencies, service providers, and enterprises, in the drive to building a data-centric digital economy, where data are elevated as a key factor of production.

2. Digital economy features prominently in China’s economy

2.1 A large and vibrant digital economy in China

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party in 2012, China has attached great importance to the development of its digital economy and has raised it to the level of a national strategy. In the past decade, China’s digital economy achieved remarkable results and attracted global attention. According to the Report on the Development of the Digital Economy submitted by the National Development and Reform Commission to the National People’s Congress in October 2022, China has made great strides in “digital industrialization” and “digitization of many industries,” and the nation has promoted the vigorous development of the digital economy, realized the leapfrog development of digital infrastructure, accelerated the improvement of digital industry’s innovation capacity, accelerated transformation in digitization of industries, deepened the digitalization of public services, and continuously improved the level of network security and digital economy’s governance, laying a solid foundation for digital economic international cooperation in digital economy.

China’s digital economy has been the world’s second largest for many years. According to China Academy of Information and Communications Technology [1], from 2012 to 2021 China’s digital economy grew from 1.1 trillion to more than 4.5 trillion yuan, and the proportion of digital economy to GDP increased from 21.6 to 39.8%. The size of digital industrialization has reached 8.4 trillion yuan, and the development of digitization of industries has entered an accelerated track, arriving at 37.2 trillion yuan.

A digital economy requires computing power as a key foundation, and the scale of China’s computing power industry has grown rapidly in the past 5 years, with an average annual growth rate of more than 30%. At the end of June 2022, China’s total computing power exceeded 15,000 gigaflops per second, ranking second in the world. In February 2022, China’s “Digital Eastern and Computing Western” project (namely, eastern China focuses on all things digital, and western China on computing power) was officially launched and became a “numeric artery” to link economic and social development in the east and west.

To help frame the understanding of China’s digital economy, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology proposed that a digital economy consists of four parts [1]: (1) digital industrialization; (2) digitization of industries; (3) digital governance; and (4) data valorization. The Academy in its report further illuminated the following:

1. Digital industrialization continues to strengthen. In 2021, China’s digital industrialization reached 8.4 trillion yuan, which increased by 11.9% year-on-year, accounting for 7.3% of the GDP. Among its components, ICT (Information and Communications Technology) services further consolidated its leading position in digital industrialization, and the software industry and Internet industry continued to increase their proportions.

2. Digitization of industries has entered an accelerated track. In 2021, China’s digitization of industries reached 37.2 trillion yuan, a year-on-year nominal increase of 17.2%, and a proportion of 32.5% of the GDP. Industries have fully recognized the importance of developing digital economy, and Industry Internet in particular has become the core methodology of manufacturing digital transformation, service industry digital transformation continues to be active, and agricultural digital transformation has achieved initial results.

3. Digital governance is being built up. China’s digital governance is undergoing a profound transformation from governing using digital technology to governing digital technology and further onto constructing a governance system for the digital economy. Digital government construction is accelerating, and the construction of new smart cities is progressing steadily.

4. Data valorization sees deepening exploration of data’s value. The process of data resourceization based on the life-cycle value management chain of data collection, labeling, analysis, and storage, is continuously advancing. The exploration of data assetization is gradually deepening, the question of data right is progressing in the top-level planning, and data pricing, transaction, circulation, and other issues are being explored.

2.2 Digital economy empowers other parts of the economy

As observed everywhere else, digital economy in China is enhancing other aspects of the general economy. This is unsurprising, since digital economy and many other aspects of the economy are knowledge-intensive, and the endogenous economic growth theory proposed by Paul Romer [2] and other scholars explains this well.

Taking green economy as an example, we can observe how digital economy is beneficial and understand the importance of having a well-developed digital economy.

It can be seen that the development of China’s green economy in recent years has benefited from the digital economy, and practices in digitization of industries, data valorization, and digital governance have added to the green economy. Studies have shown that, on the one hand, the development indicators of digital economy and green economy are highly coupled [3], and on the other hand, the promotion of digital governance to green economy development can be verified by statistical models.

Research also shows that the mechanisms of digital economy empowering the green economy can be divided into the direct and indirect effects: (1) the direct effect mechanism: Digital economy connects the whole process of production, distribution, exchange, and consumption in tandem, which reduces transaction costs and information search costs, and therefore, enhances the efficiency of the green economy; (2) the indirect effect mechanism: By optimizing the upgrading of existing green industrial structure, improving the level of technological innovation, and raising the extent of free market, digital economy enhances the efficiency of the green economy [4].

Is the empowerment observable? The answer from academia is affirmative. For example, using statistical methods, a series of robustness tests were conducted and the conclusion was drawn [4], that digital economy had significantly promoted the efficiency of green economy; furthermore, through the regression statistical method of different dimensions, it was concluded that between digitization of industries and digital industrialization, the latter had a stronger promotion effect on the efficiency of green economy.

There are many cases in which digital industrialization empowers green economy, leading to energy saving and emission reduction in complex scenarios in carbon-peak/carbon-neutral efforts [5]. An ideal energy network has multiple demands, features multiple sources of energy, and requires orderly configuration to form a smart energy system; it is precisely in this field that the achievements of digital industry are remarkable in directly benefiting the green economy; for example, Yitong Group, the first company in China to promote digital energy-saving services, deployed a complete “Building Equipment Monitoring and Energy Management System” at the high-speed rail station in the new city of Xiong’an, connecting hundreds of sensors, thousands pieces of equipment and various information systems, storing and analyzing more than 3 billion pieces of data annually, and achieving more than 20% energy efficiency.

3. A recent national strategy: building a digital economy “with data as the key factor”

China appears to have the first-mover advantage to build “a digital economy with data as the key factor of production.”

A decade ago, a comprehensive report [6] by World Bank and China’s top planners outlined number factors of production, and ways to improving them, in order for furthering the Chinese economy.

In October 2019, the Decision of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China added “data” as a factor of production, reflecting the increasingly prominent role of data in improving production efficiency as the digital transformation of economic activities accelerates [7]. In 2020, a top national planning document [8] lists data, as a factor of production, alongside the more traditional four factors (land, labor, capital, technology), while promoting a market-driving mechanism for allocating these five factors.

Under the umbrella of “a digital economy with data as the key factor,” China’s digital economy is shifting from the traditional elements such as digital industrialization and digital governance to the emerging elements such as data factorization, data intellectual property, and so on. And looking around the world, China is among the earliest, if not the earliest, in deploying data factorization, data intellectual property, and data supervision, in light of the shift.

3.1 Progress in data factorization

Mei Hong, a prominent computer scientist and university administer, proposed that [9] “data factorization is the process of establishing data as an important productive factor and making it participate in social production and operation activities through various means.”

We, in the context of the continuous development of the concept of data factorization, from the point of view of data factor’s utility, propose that data factorization contains at least the following: (1) producing data with compliance; (2) creating data intellectual property; (3) pricing and trading of data.

Once data are considered as a factor of production, a series of problems need to be solved, solidifying the connotation of the concept of data factorization. Mei Hong proposed the following as core of data factorization: (1) data resourceization, (2) data assetization, and (3) capitalization of data. On the same topic, Qiao Han and Huang Chaochun proposed [6] that (1) to strengthen the supply of high-quality data elements, (2) to accelerate the market circulation of data elements, and (3) to innovate the development and utilization mechanism of data elements. China Academy of Information and Communications Technology proposed [10] solving four existing problems: (1) The ownership of data rights is difficult to define, (2) there is no easy basis for data valuation and pricing, (3) the regulations and rules for data circulation are not perfect, and (4) the technology for data circulation is still immature. WeBank proposed [11] that for data to qualify was a factor of production, it also needs to meet the four basic conditions that are shared by the traditional four factors of production, the four conditions being the following: a property that can be defined, its value can be evaluated, the value can be circulated, and the value can be stored.

3.2 Trading of data factor: China among the world’s earliest

We believe that in a data-centric digital economy which elevates data to a factor of production, the trading of data factor reflects the sophistication of the said digital economy. In this regard, China has acted early and done many pilot projects, and is leading the world in experience. Since 2014, China has built many “Big Data” exchanges (exemplified by the Guiyang Big Data Exchange), and over time, newer exchanges have shifted into “Data” exchange (exemplified by the Shanghai Data Exchange). According to information collected by the authors, which might be less than 100% complete, as of October 2022, a total of 46 data exchanges (centers) have been established or are planned to be established across China, see Table 1.

No.	Date of Establishment	Name	Location
1	2014	Zhongguancun Shuhai Big Date Trading Service Platform	Beijing
2		Beijing Big Data Traffic Service Platform	Beijing
3		Hong Kong Big Data Exchange	Hongkong
4	2015	Guiyang Big Data Exchange	Guiyang, Guizhou
5		East China Jiangsu Big Data Trading Center	Yancheng
6		Wuhan East Lake Big Data Trading Center	Wuhan, Hubei
7		Wuhan Yangtze River Big Data Trading Center	Wuhan, Hubei
8		Central China Big Data Exchange	Wuhan, Hubei
9		Chongqing Big Data Trading Platform	Chongqing
10		Xixian New District Big Data Exchange	Xi;’an, Shaanxi
11		Traffic Big Data Trading Platform	Shenzhen, Guangdong
12		Hebei Big Data Trading Center	Chengde, Hebei
13		Hangzhou Qiantang Big Data Trading Center	Hangzhou, Zhejiang
14	2016	Shanghai Data Trading Center	Shanghai
15		Zhejiang Big Data Trading Center	Hangzhou, Zhejiang
16		Harbin Data Trading Center	Harbin, Heilongjiang
17		Silk Road Brilliance Big Data Trading Center	Lanzhou, Gansu
18		Guangzhou Data Trading Service Platform	Guangzhou, Guangdong
19		Asia-Europe Big Data Trading Center	Urumqi, Xinjiang
20		Southern Big Data Trading Center	Shenzhen, Guangdong
21	2017	Qingdao Big Data Trading Center	Qingdao, Shandong
22		Henan Plains Big Data Trading Center	Xinxiang, Henan
23		Henan Zhongyuan Big Data Trading Center	Zhengzhou, Henan
24	2018	Northeast Asia Big Data Transaction Service Center	Changchun, Jilin
25	2019	Shandong Data Trading Platform	Jinan, Shandong
26	2020	Anhui Big Data Trading Center	Huainan, Anhui
27		Beibu Gulf Big Data Trading Center	Nanning, Guangxi
28		Shanxi Data Trading Platform	Taiyuan, Shanxi
29		Zhongguancun Medical and Health Big Data Trading Platform	Beijing
30	2021	Beijing International Big Data Exchange	Beijing
31		Guizhou Province Data Circulation Transaction Service Center	Guiyang, Guizhou
32		Northern Big Data Trading Center	Tianjin
33		Shanghai Data Exchange	Shanghai
34		South China International Data Trading Company	Foshan, Guangdong
35		Western Data Trading Center	Chongqing
36		Shenzhen Data Exchange	Shenzhen, Guangdong
37		Hefei Data Factor Circulation Platform	Hefei, Anhui
38		Deyang Data Trading Center	Deyang, Sichuan
39		Yangtze River Delta Data Factor Circulation Service Platform	Suzhou, Jiangsu
40		Hainan Data Product Supermarket	Haikou, Hainan
41	2022	Hunan Big Data Exchange	Changsha, Hunan
42		Wuxi Big Data Trading Platform	Wuxi, Jiangsu
43		Fujian Big Data Exchange	Fuzhou, Fujian
44		Guangdong Data Exchange	Guangzhou, Guangdong
45		Qingdao Ocean Data Trading Platform	Qingdao, Shandong
46		Zhengzhou Data Trading Center	Zhengzhou, Henan

Table 1.

As of October 2022, as many as 46 data exchanges (centers) have been established or are planned to be established across the country.

Among the newer ones, the Shanghai Data Exchange represents the latest trend. On November 25, 2021, the Shanghai Data Exchange was established, as an important measure to promote the circulation of data factor, release digital dividends, and promote the development of the digital economy. According to Zhang Qi, Chair of the company, the development of data assets is the path to maximize the value of the digital economy and achieve the optimal allocation of data resources. Shanghai Data Exchange actively promotes the leap from data resources to assets.

Shanghai Data Exchange is committed to creating a new data business model that is composed of technology and service providers in the data circulation process, connecting more than 500 data merchants, including data compliance assessment service providers, data quality assessment service providers, data asset assessment service providers, data delivery service providers, data classification, and rating service providers, data security service providers, data consulting service providers, data governance service providers, and data intermediary service providers.

3.3 China leading the world in experimenting “data intellectual property”

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2019 launched a conference series, WIPO Conversation on Intellectual Property (IP) and Frontier Technologies, which is to be held two to three times a year. The original idea is that cutting-edge technologies offer opportunities for economic growth, and in order for all to seize these opportunities, there is the need to ensure that the IP system continues to foster innovation and creativity, and to ensure that the system of IP administration continues to evolve.

While the first three sessions all talked about the relationship between intellectual property and artificial intelligence (AI), the fourth session (held in September 2021) changed to Data: Data: Beyond AI in a fully interconnected world. In his opening remarks, the Director General emphasized that frontier technologies currently represent a $350 billion market that could become a $3.2 trillion market as soon as 2025, and specifically, if digitalization is the engine of the future economy, then data are its fuel. More than 1000 experts from 113 countries discussed a wide range of topics over the 2 days of the Conversation, with two major topics: (1) What are data and why are they so important in the digital economy to build awareness and understanding; and (2) How do data fit into the current global intellectual property system and whether these current rules are sufficient. During the dialog, experts noted that the IP framework is based on social policies that encourage creativity and compensate for the investment required to produce inventions, that under the current IP framework, patents protect useful innovations with industrial applications, that trademarks are the backbone of branding, and that copyright protects the original expression of an idea, not the idea itself; and all three can be applied to data.

While WIPO in September 2021 conducted a conversation on “Data and Intellectual Property,” China’s development of a system of “Data Intellectual Property” was clarified in State Council’s October 2021 “14th Five-Year Period” National Intellectual Property Protection and Utilization Plan.

Since the Plan, implementation trials have been carried out in Zhejiang province, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. In Zhejiang province, from September 2021 to 2022, “data intellectual property pledge” in IP financing, and “data intellectual property trading” were piloted in the city of Hangzhou.

3.4 Data supervision and enterprises’ data resourceization

At present, new business models with data as a core production factor continue to emerge, and more and more industries are collecting, generating, and using data at all times. The generation of massive amounts of data is becoming an important strategic resource for the future development of enterprises. At the same time, the regulation and compliance review on data are also getting more and more attention. It can be said that data have stepped into the era of strong governmental supervision.

In recent years, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress has enacted relevant laws and regulations. Among them,

• The Cybersecurity Law of the People’s Republic of China, which came into force on June 1, 2017, is a comprehensive legislation to protect network security, safeguard the sovereignty of cyberspace and national security, and social public interests, protect the legitimate rights and interests of citizens, legal persons, and other organizations, and promote the healthy development of economic and social informatization. The law’s Chapter 4 “Network Information Security” from Article 40 through Article 50 regulates the activities of network operators in terms of data collection, processing, and use, as well as the corresponding obligations and responsibilities they should assume.

• January 1, 2019 saw the implementation of the Electronic Commerce Law, as a special legislation to regulate e-commerce activities. The law includes Article 23 that specifically provides that “e-commerce operators collect and use the personal information of its users, shall comply with the laws and administrative regulations on the protection of personal information provisions.”

• The Data Security Law, which took effect on September 1, 2021, is a fundamental law in the field of data security in China. The law specifies the rules of data processing activities and data security protection obligations, which will strongly enhance the national data security protection capability and the governance capability of the digital economy.

• The Personal Information Protection Law, which went into effect November 1, 2021, is a special legislation that serves as the overall leading law in the protection of personal information. The law has established a system framework of clear rights and responsibilities, effective protection, and standardized use of personal information processing and protection, providing a clear legal basis for personal information processing activities and ample protection for the protection of personal information rights and interests.

In the context of strong regulation of data security, enterprise data compliance is also facing stricter requirements, so that more and more companies are subject to various types of punishment for data non-compliance. As of June 1, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had issued a total of 24 batches of “notifications on apps in infringement of user rights and interests,” targeting (mobile) apps that have done irregular collection, misuse of user personal information, and even harassment of users, and thousands of such apps were demanded to be rectified. Notably, apps from major companies, such as WeChat, Douyin, Kuaishou, and C-trip were all found to have done illegal or irregular collection of users’ personal information, and the administration continues to maintain high pressure to deter data violations. Large fines for non-compliant management of corporate data, such as the 8.026 billion yuan administrative penalty imposed on DiDi Rideshare by the State Internet Information Office, are ringing alarm bells. Enterprises who have been enjoying the dividends brought by data resources may find themselves looking at data as liabilities.

In these stricter regulatory situations, enterprises much do a god job in data risk identification and prevention before they can gain by data resourceization.

4. A four-part framework for understanding the data-centric digital economy

At a time when the digital economy is turning into a “digital economy with data as the key factor,” it is the right time to further clarify the enablement mechanism of the digital economy for the development other parts of the economy, in order to achieve a new round of more effective empowerment.

We start with a framework [1] proposed by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology: The “four-part framework” of the digital economy provides a useful overview of the main components of the digital economy: (1) Digital industrialization, which includes ICT services, the software industry, and the Internet industry; (2) Digitization of industries, which uses digital technology to achieve digital transformation of manufacturing, services, agriculture, and deeper digital governance; (4) Data valorization, which involves creating resources from data (data resourceization), data assetization, data identification, as well as data pricing, trading, and circulation downstream.

The Academy further points out that data valorization continues to deepen in various aspects. The process of data resourceization based on the life cycle value management chain of data collection, labeling, analysis, and storage is deepening. The exploration of data assetization is gradually deepening, data rights are orderly promoted in the top-level planning, and the exploration of data pricing and transaction flow is restarted, ushering in a new round of construction boom.

We argue that now that the digital economy has turned to the new stage of “data as the key factor of production,” it is time to replace data valorization “data factorization.” thus a updated four-part framework befitting the new landscape, see Figure 1.

Figure 1.

A four-part framework for a data-centric digital economy.

5. Policies, practices, and innovations in data, IP, and standardization

5.1 IP securitization empowers high-tech enterprises

Intellectual Property Asset-backed Securities (ABS) is aimed at high-tech enterprises who own high-value intellectual property rights, which can turn the intangible assets of enterprises into visible capital to feed enterprises’ R&D.

For example, in September 2022, the third intellectual property securitization product in Foshan City, Guangdong Province, the “Xingye Yuanrong – Foshan Yaoda Patent License 3 Asset Support Special Plan” was successfully issued with an issue amount of 367 million RMB, AAA debt rating, and an issue interest rate of 2.9%, which was a historical low for IPR ABS issue rate of similar terms in China. Foshan’s intellectual property securitization products have benefited a dozen enterprises; for example, Guangdong Yin Yang Environmental Protection Company, an environmental protection chemical manufacturing company with good technologies, faces rapid product iteration and high product R&D costs, participated in Foshan’s intellectual property securitization products twice in 2021 and 2022, raising RMB 20 million and RMB 12 million, respectively.

Over the years, governments at all levels have promoted intellectual property finance, in which intellectual property securitization has increasingly been recognized and achieved considerable growth. According to the Economic Daily [12], as of late August 2022, Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges had successfully issued 65 intellectual property securitization products with an issue size of 15.8 billion yuan, further enriching intellectual property financing channels. Products have been issued in many cities, including Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, and Changsha, Hunan province.

Intellectual property securitization is designed by financial institutions, in collaboration with industry experts, to turn specific assets of a company into securities. The outstanding advantage of intellectual property securitization is the larger scale of financing. One important type of intellectual property securitization is patent securitization, which is highly suitable for the characteristics of hard-tech enterprises. China’s first “pure patent” securitization product was issued on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in September 2019, providing a total of $301 million in financing for 11 high-tech private enterprises in the Guangzhou Development Zone, and the product was successfully closed in August 2022 and thus fully validated.

The outstanding difficulty of patent securitization is the poor stability of the predictable cash income flow of the patent as the underlying asset. During the years of successful practices, China’s intellectual property finance industry has developed effective tools such as “patent twice-licensing model,” “formation of intellectual property portfolio, risk reduction,” and establishment of project managers for intellectual property securitization projects.

5.2 Data intellectual property pledge empowers enterprises

In September 2021, China’s first data intellectual property pledge was completed in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province. Led by the local Market Supervision and Intellectual Property Bureau, the pilot gathered multiple parties including government agencies, banks, insurance institutions, data companies, etc. Using big data, blockchain, and other technical means, the pilot collected all kinds of data in the production and operation chain of enterprises, and the blockchain evidence-preservation platform issued evidence-preservation certificates to turn the data into data intellectual property rights that can be issued, and finally, based on the data intellectual property rights, the enterprises received bank credits.

Two companies benefited from this first-in-the-nation pilot. One of them is UEFL (Zhejiang) Technology Company, which provides environmental measurement data generated from garbage classification activities. The data’s credit is enhanced by Hangzhou High-Tech Financing Guarantee Co., Ltd. and the company was finally granted a credit of 5 million yuan by the Science and Technology Sub-Branch of Bank of Hangzhou.

The pilot in data IP pledge was executed in the following main steps: (1) Receiving the data. The public evidence-preservation platform of Zhejiang IP blockchain receives the data and synchronizes it to Zhejiang Intellectual Property Research and Service Center, the provincial Market Supervision Bureau, Hangzhou Internet Notary Office, and Hangzhou Internet Court; (2) Hosting the data. It is hosted by the big data center of Hangzhou Ace Information Technology Co., Ltd.; (3) Confirm the data chain. Zhejiang Intellectual Property Research and Service Center confirms the data chain verification results and issues the “Data Intellectual Property Public Evidence-Preservation Certificate”; (4) Credit granting. Banks and other institution issue credits to the enterprises after receiving the “Data Intellectual Property Public Evidence-Preservation Certificate “ as part of the loan condition.

The participants released a Group Standard “Data Intellectual Property Pledge Service Protocol” in March 2022, and months later an upgraded version, “Data Intellectual Property Pledge Operations Specifications” was drafted in October 2022 as a local standard by Zhejiang province.

5.3 State council and pilot cities fostering data factor markets and opening of public data

At the end of 2021, the State Council issued the “Opinions on Piloting Innovation in Business Environment” (State Council Office [2021] No. 24), deploying six cities to carry out piloting innovation in business environment. The Opinions consists of 101 reform initiatives in 10 areas; among the “key tasks,” the cities are required to “better support the innovative development of market subjects: improve the innovative resource allocation and management mechanisms, explore the access criteria to meet the needs of the development of new business models, and enhance the innovative power of market subjects, …, and improve the market-oriented pricing and trading mechanism of intellectual property rights, and carry out pilot securitization of intellectual property rights”.

The six cities have proceeded in implementing the initiatives, and many are conductive to the buy-and-sell of data factor, including pricing and exchange of data intellectual property, setting up data factor markets, opening government-owned data.

5.4 Standardization enhances digital economy

In October 2022, a set of projects in standardization attracted a lot of competition in Zhejiang Province and around the country, due to both the size (7 projects, each 3 million yuan, to be won) and the content (22 categories in digital economy). Eventually 38 consortia submitted their bids, and the eventual 7 winners were well-deserved the wins.

The winning teams were asked to spend 2–3 years, effectively support the development of industrial innovation standards system, and strive to lead the development of a number of international standards, national standards, industry standards, and group standards.

Some of the 22 candidate categories were high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells, flexible thin-film solar cells, smart photovoltaic modules, etc., smart inverters, controllers, high-efficiency power electronics and other key devices, photovoltaic intelligent control platform, energy management, intelligent operation and maintenance, microgrid trading, and other services.

6. Conclusion

Data play an increasingly central role in digital economy around the world, and China has mobilized government agencies and enterprises to elevate data as a key factor of production, emphasizing its economic role. On the road to turning data into a production factor, namely data factorization, its connotation needs to solidify, so that data ownership is easier to establish, data valuation is carried out, data values can be stored, and data transactions are facilitated. To that end, China is implementing a range of initiatives, starting with newly created registry of data intellectual property, new data exchanges, plus numerous rules, trials and practices in the areas of intellectual property, standards, intellectual property financing, and data transactions. With these experiments gaining insights and experiences, a new economic norm that is a data-centric digital economy would emerge.