Studying theory

Promote the reform of data factors for high-quality economic development

—Cai Luchen (a lecturer with a Ph. D in economics of Teaching and Research Office of Economics, Zhejiang Red Boat Cadre Academy

“Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese Modernization” reviewed and adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has arranged the work on accelerating efforts to construct the mechanisms to develop the digital economy and improve the systems and rules on data factor markets, and clearly proposed “building a national integrated technology and data market”.

In this background, promoting the market-oriented allocation reform of data factors and the smooth flow and high-efficiency allocation of data factors will bring about new industries, new models and new driving forces, develop new quality productive forces and accelerate economic high-quality development.

The market-oriented allocation reform of data factors covers many fields such as clarifying data property rights, establishing data flow mechanisms, evaluating data value and ensuring data security. It is one of the most forward-looking innovative fields in today’s digital economy. Juxtaposing data with traditional factors of production, i.e., land, labor forces, capital and technologies can optimize resources’ allocation and stimulate economic endogenous driving forces. This reform will transform data resources into factors of production, inspire the efficient flow and utilization of data resources and upgrade economic development in an overall way.

In this reform, an important step is to improve the liquidity and market value of data resources by building a sound data market mechanism. On the one hand, the reform will encourage enterprises and institutions to collect, manage and utilize the data in an innovative way, upgrade technologies and business models, and improve total factor productivity. On the other hand, this reform will continue to expand the demand for data and finally form the demand-side impetus of this reform. The mechanism of the positive interaction between the supply and demand will strongly support the efficient use of data factors and economic development.

Jiaxing has taken the lead in Zhejiang in responding to national policies, and become a pioneer in this market-oriented reform. The city has seized the opportunity of this reform and established data flow and trading platforms to promote the efficient allocation of data resources; and it has issued a series of favorable policies to clarify data property rights, regulate data flows, establish data evaluation standards and ensure data security and privacy protection, and has established a sound data market system.

Breaking the ice

Data serve as a “smart brain” for river and lake supervisions.

In the Exhibition Hall of Zhejiang Xingtian Marine Sci-Tech Co., Ltd. located in Xiuzhou District, a colorful three-dimensional underwater topographic map on a big electronic screen is particularly noteworthy in addition to the patents exhibited on the walls. It is a data platform able to monitor water surfaces and underwater geomorphologic features in real time, and detect the details of the river bottoms such as shipwrecks, underwater piers.

Pointing to four sets of underwater sonar detection equipment on the booth, Ding Fei, deputy general manager of the company, said, “Our sonar detection equipment can be used in any area, whether it is the two-meter-deep shallow water area of rivers and lakes, or the 11,000-meter-deep sea areas of the Mariana Trench.” Among these equipment the largest one is unusual. Last year, it joined hands with the intelligent unmanned ship “Kehai No.6” for an Antarctic detection trip, and provided accurate data for the marine environment research in the Antarctic waters.

Why does such a company able to provide professional equipment and data technologies for a national scientific research team settle in Jiaxing?

In October 2019, the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed for the first time data be a factor of production. Since then the digital economy has achieved rapid development.

Based on the rapid development of digital economy and its leading technical experience in marine mapping, this company focuses on civilian fields to drive the comprehensive development of underwater detection.

As a typical city with rich water resources and developed river networks in the plain, Jiaxing is naturally attractive to the company like Xingtian Ocean, who is mainly engaged in the R&D of underwater detection equipment and marine information systems. Additionally, Jiaxing boasts rich data resources, convenient transport and unique advantages in developing the data industry since it is located in the core of the Yangtze River Delta and adjacent to Shanghai and Hangzhou. In Ding Fei’s view, Xingtian Ocean will not only work hard for its prosperous development in Jiaxing but also attract more related industries to develop here.

It is not easy to transform its sea-based business to rivers, lakes and reservoirs-based business. The detection equipment used for rivers, lakes and reservoirs tends to be small, portable and multi-functional so as to be used in smaller unmanned ships for detection, so it has to integrate various functions. How to contract key components? How to achieve heat dissipation? How to block RF interference? Those difficult problems must be settled first. “We must spare no effort to remove those tough problems one by one,” said he. He knows the company can march forward only through sci-tech innovation either in military or civilian fields.

Since then the company has spent 20 million to 30 million yuan on R&D annually. Two thirds of its employees are R&D technicians, which is the best proof for the company to develop digital economy.

In 2020, the first-generation GeoBeam400M equipment used in river and lake detection was born with its volume being just as small as a piece of A4 paper and its weight less than 5 kg, light enough to be easily carried in a backpack. In 2023, the three-dimensional sounder CuBeam ONE was born, whose weight and volume are only half of the products of the previous generation but whose detection accuracy and efficiency are both further improved. The new-generation of products can be carried on smaller unmanned ships and provide users with software and hardware platforms for the secondary development through improving software algorithm. In this respect, it is the only company in the world ...  

Based on the characteristics of rivers, lakes and reservoirs and its independent R&D, the company has upgraded equipment and technologies step by step and created a new-generation underwater intelligent supervisory service platform for data to play their maximum roles.

“Through developing underwater detection equipment and collecting, processing, analyzing and applying underwater data, we hope to help front-line management departments make scientific decisions,” said Ding Fei. In his mind, the ultimate purpose of the underwater detection is to better serve economic and social development.

This January, an urban river dredging project was completed in Jiaxing, but  Chen Ye, an engineer from Xingtian Ocean, participated in this project and felt sad. In his periodic measurement of the project, he found the underwater elevation of some river beds was even higher than that before the dredging, and the silt on the bottom of those river beds rose more than 20 centimeters in a short time. According to his experience, that was abnormal.

After observing the latest three-dimensional underwater terrain map transmitted by the online data platform, he said, “The riverbed here was concave in the past, like a pit, but now it bulges out. Obviously it was not formed naturally because the whole silt is fan-shaped, extending from the cofferdam to the river center.”

After observing the silting trend and depth trend, he believed that plenty of garbage was dumped here according to his years of surveying and mapping experience. He immediately gave feedback to the departments concerned, and contacted law enforcement departments to make on-the-spot checks, and finally that an enterprise dumped the waste into the river illegally was confirmed. The law enforcement department punished this enterprise and ordered it to settle the problem immediately.

How too fully release the multiplier effect of data factors? The key is to create more various application scenarios, explore data flow paths and improve data quality in innovative applications. The data of the underwater intelligent supervision platform can help government departments reduce river, lake and reservoir management costs, improve efficiency and make scientific decisions. Moreover, this platform can demonstrate its obvious advantages in underwater emergency rescues.

The data factor market is like a vast Blue Ocean with huge potential value. At the end of 2022, “Suggestions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Building a Basic Data System to Better Play the Role of Data Factors” was issued, which clearly requires establishing an integrated, reasonable and efficient data factor flow and trading system.

Last year, this company made innovative cooperation with Xiuzhou Sci-tech Innovation Talent Group Co., Ltd., developing the system “One-stop  Supervisions of Water Areas of Xiuzhou”. This system digitizes the management, so it can manage and maintain rivers, monitor sluices and illegal conducts and make real-time identifications and inspections in a digital way, improving river management efficiency and reducing primary-level staff’s work burdens.

At the Zhejiang “Data Factor×” Competition (Jiaxing) held at the end of this July, “Underwater Comprehensive Intelligent Supervision and Service Platform” of this company won a second prize among 176 entries.

“We hope to build a model in Jiaxing, and make our data platform serve the whole Yangtze River Delta,” said Ding Fei. Honor is not only recognition, but also motivation, which makes Ding Fei more determined.

Integrating data factors and real economy for their supporting each other

Strengthening the competition is a good opportunity for a city to achieve “leapfrog” development. Data, the fifth factor of production, have become a high-quality factor of production to develop new quality productive forces.

“As a reform pioneer, Jiaxing boasts strong advantages, foundations and confidence in developing the data industry,” said Wu Guofai, director of Bureau of Data of Jiaxing. Since 2016, Jiaxing has been exploring how to transform data resources into to assets. For instance, it has constructed a new-type national pilot smart benchmark city, and implemented the government’s digital transformation and reform made across Zhejiang, and the market-oriented allocation reform of data factors across the country since this year.

In recent years, Jiaxing has strongly supported the deep integration of real economy and digital economy, strengthening leading industrial clusters such as microelectronics, new materials and intelligent equipment, cultivated and attracted a large number of leading enterprises in the digital economy such as Wingtech Communications, Starpower, APsystem and SeaS, strongly boosting the development of the data industry.

Jiaxing has attached special importance to the construction and improvement of the data industry ecology. In data systems, Jiaxing has issued such institutional documents as the registration and management methods for data property rights, established a local data flow and trading system and drafted the document “20 Rules on Data of Jiaxing”. In the flow of data resources, the enterprises of Nanhu District, Pinghu City, Haining City and Tongxiang City of Jiaxing have exchanged their data in the data exchanges since this year.

Even so, Jiaxing’s market-oriented allocation reform of data factors is still in its initial stage. Such problems are still preventing the effective release of the data productivity such as not matching supply and demand of data factors, inadequate use of data value, and data security. How to reform and further activate data productivity in response to continuously introduced favorable policies and rapid development of the digital economy?

According to Wu Guofei, Jiaxing will continue to uphold the innovation-led development concept and deepen the market-oriented allocation reform of data factors to facilitate the high-quality development of the data industry. The city will further construct data infrastructure, i.e. the public data platform, data trading platform, data operation platform, data innovation platform and data industry development platform, strengthen the research of basic data systems, explore the establishment of the profit distribution mechanism of authorized operating public data and the mechanism of promoting the integration and innovation of data factors, and establish reliable data security systems to ensure the security of public data management and operation, and the flow and cross-border transfers of data.