China's President Calls for Harsher Regulations on Tech Industry

Chinese President Xi Jinping is seeking to further tighten the grip on the country’s digital economy, demanding altered regulations and governance over the industry. 

The President expressed his vision of China’s digital economy, referring to its growth as “unhealthy” development, with a goal of reinforcing China’s economic growth through technological development. 

China should “cultivate a number of enterprises with international competitiveness, and leading ecological firms with control over industrial chains, to create world-class digital industry clusters,” he stated.

“We must see that compared with large and powerful countries the global digital economy,  China’s digital economy is big but not strong, and fast but not superior,” he added. 

Beijing’s call for more regulations and standardization to implement regulatory loopholes into the system to halt any attempt of “monopolies and disorderly expansion of capital,” emphasizing the vitality of China maintaining its strong stance as the world’s second-largest economy, and to reach to higher levels as it spread it technological influence across the globe. 

“In the course of rapid development, China’s digital economy has also displayed some unhealthy and irregular seeds and trends that do not only affect the healthy development of a digital economy but violate laws and regulations and pose a threat to national economic and financial security,” he said.

President Xi emphasized the vitality of enhancing the country’s security infrastructure, all while focusing on heightening the development of the digital economy on a much larger scale.

As the world’s second-largest economy, China is setting the stage for its next phase of imposing more control on its tech sector by controlling systems to secure the protection of leading technologies, “important industries and facilities, strategic resources, and leading enterprises,” according to Reuters. 

China’s cabinet structured on Wednesday a plan to follow top on development of the country’s digital economy, as Beijing seeks to heighten the tech industry’s share of national gross domestic product (GDP), all while encouraging technologies such 6G and data centers.