New forces drive China's economic growth

New driving forces for China's economic development continued to expand in 2019, with faster growth of new industries, new forms of business and new business models, the National Statistics Bureau said on Monday.

Meanwhile, economic vitality was further enhanced, giving a strong impetus to the country's economic growth toward high-quality development.

China has seen stable and fast growth of the new economy since 2014. The China New Economic Driver Index, which measures the performance of the new economy, jumped 23.4 percent in 2019 from a year earlier to 332 points, according to data from the NBS.

As a main aspect of the digital economy and an outstanding form of new economy, the Internet economy has become a key engine for China's new economic driver, said Lu Haiqi, director of the bureau’s Institute for Statistical Research.

The Internet economy index, one of the five sub-indexes of the new economic driver index, surged 42 percent to 856.5, to contribute 80.5 percent to the growth of the combined index last year.

As a main component of the Internet economy, the number of mobile Internet users in China had reached 1.32 billion by the end of 2019, up 3.5 percent year on year.

The country also recorded 34.8 trillion yuan (US$4.97 trillion) in e-commerce transactions in 2019, up 10.1 percent from a year earlier.

The new trade pattern represented by cross-border e-commerce has become a bright spot in foreign trade, Lu noted. In 2019, 24 new pilot areas for cross-border e-commerce were set up. China's cross-border e-commerce transactions reached 1.99 trillion yuan, an increase of 12.4 percent over the previous year.

The sub-index for innovation-driven development, meanwhile, also rose 15.6 percent year on year to 201.4. 

National expenditure on research and development is equivalent to 2.19 percent of gross domestic product in 2019, 0.05 percentage points higher than the previous year. 

The number of patents granted per 10,000 R&D personnel reached 3,448, up 1.5 times from 2014. 

China's technology factor market is growing rapidly, with the overall value of contracts in the technology market increasing by 26.6 percent in 2019.

The other three major sub-index for economic vitality, human resources, and transformation and upgrading all increased, by 7.4 percent, 8.3 percent and 1 percent, respectively, from the previous year.