At the Professional Forum on “Digital Governance” in Guiyang, Guizhou Province, held in late May, scholars said that the digital age has put forward new requirements for the modernization of governance capacity, necessitating the construction of the e-government with people-centered digital governance at its core. Meanwhile, Chinese modernization has provided a broader space for the development and innovation of the current e-government and digital governance.

Digital governance of megacities

Chinese modernization is the modernization of a huge population. The governance of megacities poses an inevitable challenge and problem in the modernization process. The integration of urban governance and digital governance is a topic of shared concern among both society and academia. Focusing on the construction of online public services and digital infrastructure systems, Shanghai has carved out an innovative path to megacity governance.

Xu Huili, director of the Shanghai Urban Operation Management Center, said that platform-based governance is an important starting point for promoting digital governance. This governance model resets the role of the government in the social information system, transforming it from a single producer and publisher of government information to a comprehensive hub of social public information and smart services, which improves social participation and facilitates cooperation between the government, market and society.

“One network unified management” represents a major innovation in the governance of Shanghai. Xiong Yihan, deputy dean of the School of International Relations and Public Affairs at Fudan University, said that this management model is essentially determined by the size of a megacity, which is also one of the core features of Chinese modernization. As such, to understand one network unified management, it is necessary to comprehensively learn about and understand the objective situation in China’s megacities. The scale of super-large cities like Shanghai and Beijing determines that China’s governance logic is completely different from that of countries like the United States, where small towns constitute the majority. In the meantime, the characteristics of high population density, rapid pace of life, and complex social dynamics in megacities have introduced significant uncertainties to urban governance. In response, one network unified management provides integrated digital governance that considers every individual and organization as a variable, thereby forming an overall concern.

Institutional construction for data governance

Data governance has emerged as a central focus within academic circles, as it serves as a fundamental pillar in the development of e-government infrastructure. A plan for the overall layout of China’s digital development issued in February 2023 clearly stated that by 2025, the value of data as a factor of production must be effectively released. Wang Yimin, director of the E-Government Research Center at the Party School of the Central Committee of CPC (National Academy of Governance), said that the plan emphasized the value of data because data in the digital age is surpassing land, labor, and capital as a key factor of production for high-quality economic and social development. From this perspective, data not only serves as the primary catalyst for production, but is also a crucial development foundation for achieving Chinese modernization. Therefore, an important goal of data governance is to provide efficient, credible, and usable data to support business decision-making and innovation. To this end, it is necessary to leverage the leading role of the government in data governance.

In March 2023, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council released a plan on reforming Party and state institutions, announcing to establish a national data bureau. This represents a significant measure for coordinating and promoting basic institutional construction and coordinating the integration, sharing, development, and utilization of data resources at the national level.

In fact, big data bureaus have been emerging across China since 2017. Tracking their operations, Meng Qingguo, executive director of the Institute for Governance Studies at Tsinghua University, pinpointed significant challenges including inadequate data collection, low sharing rates, and low utilization, and prominent problems like the unclear positioning of the functions of data departments and business departments, and unclear division of authority and responsibilities. He highlighted the necessity to collect data from various departments from an overall and holistic perspective and strengthen coordination among the departments.