The Global Digital Economy Conference 2023 opened in Beijing on Tuesday night, proposing to build an open innovation network for the digital economy across the world.

Themed "Data Drives Development, Intelligence Leads the Future," the three-day event was co-hosted by the Beijing municipal government, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, the Cyberspace Administration of China, and the China Association for Science and Technology.

Beijing and 18 partner cities, including Abu Dhabi, London, Macao, San Francisco, Vienna, Vientiane, and Zaragoza, released the global digital economy partnership city cooperation initiative at the opening ceremony.

The initiative covers aspects such as accelerating the digital transformation process of cities, green development through digital empowerment, and supporting global digital inclusive cooperation. It aims to build an open innovation network for the digital economy between global cities and within multi-bilateral frameworks.

In 2021, Beijing put forward the development goal of accelerating the construction of a global benchmark city for the digital economy. Data from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology shows that the added value of Beijing's digital economy increased from 871.94 billion yuan (about 121.16 billion U.S. dollars) in 2015 to 1.7 trillion yuan in 2022, and its share of GDP rose from 35.2 percent to 41.6 percent.

In the first quarter of this year, the added value of the digital economy in the metropolis reached 426.57 billion yuan, accounting for 42.9 percent of GDP. Currently, there are more than 8,000 major enterprises in the core industries of the digital economy in Beijing.

According to the organizer, the conference will continue to strengthen the implementation of the initiative by focusing on fields including the development of the digital industry, smart city construction, social governance, and digital transformation.