China's economic resilience, vitality in four sets of data

By People’s Daily reporters

Data serves as a crucial lens for observing economic development. Let’s explore four sets of data from different sectors to gain insight into the resilience and vitality of the Chinese economy.

56.707 Million: Private Enterprises Driving Economic Dynamism

The private sector is a vital component of China’s economy.

The metamorphosis of China’s economic musculature finds its most dynamic fibers in the private sector’s silent revolution. Fresh regulatory data reveals an exponential leap – from 10.857 million private enterprises in 2012 to 56.707 million by January 2025, a 420% surge mirroring the nation’s tectonic economic shifts.

Yet the true seismic activity occurs in innovation’s fault lines. Private tech enterprises now dominate the landscape, their numbers ballooning from 28,000 to 420,000 in thirteen years. What began as scattered foothills now forms an innovation mountain range, private firms constituting over 92% of national high-tech entities compared to 62.4% in 2012.

“These enterprises exhibit biological adaptability,” observes Zhang Lianqi, president of the Enterprise Financial Management Association of China. “Their DNA contains codes for perpetual reinvention – migrating from industrial lowlands to cognitive highlands through relentless R&D mitosis.” This upward mobility through industrial strata transforms entire value chains, private ventures becoming both architects and beneficiaries of China’s technological orogenesis.

9 Million: Computing Power Unlocking Development Potential

In the algorithmic age where silicon replaces steam, China’s computing infrastructure undergoes silent continental drift. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s latest survey maps 9 million standardized server racks now humming across data centers – tectonic plates of the digital economy shifting beneath society’s surface.

Zhang Li, director of the China Center for Information Industry Development, deciphers this terrain: “Each rack deployment acts as neural expansion, multiplying computational muscle fibers.” His metrics reveal a nervous system nearing completion – 58.3% of computing nodes pulse in sync through national neural pathways, while 65% of provinces and municipalities in China exist in a five-millisecond reality horizon, their digital synapses firing at relativistic speeds.

The raw numbers translate to 280 EFLOPS of concentrated cognitive might – equivalent to 280 quintillion calculations per second crystallizing into competitive advantage. This invisible forge now ranks among Earth’s mightiest computational engines, its distributed firepower melting analog industries into liquid data streams.

In the algorithmic crucible where silicon reshapes institutional DNA, DeepSeek’s integration patterns reveal biological imperatives. Corporate organisms spanning governmental nervous systems to automotive chassis and smartphone ecosystems have achieved symbiotic integration – not mere partnerships, but full genomic splicing with this artificial cognition platform.

AI-driven applications are expanding rapidly across various sectors, including industry, education, healthcare, and energy, with over 13,000 computing power-driven projects already in operation.

4.756 Million: Patents Highlighting Innovation Strength

Patents are a key indicator of a country’s innovation capacity.

China’s patent landscape has undergone tectonic shifts, with the National Intellectual Property Administration reporting 1.045 million invention patents granted in 2024 – a year-on-year surge of 13.5%. This milestone positions China as the inaugural nation to amass over 4.76 million valid domestic invention patents, eclipsing the 4 million threshold through sustained innovation momentum.

Turning coal into electronic casings, clothing fabrics and tires, the pioneering methanol-to-olefins (MTO) technology has yielded transformative results after 40 years of innovation efforts.

The methanol-to-olefins (MTO) conversion breakthrough exemplifies this technological metamorphosis. Four decades of chemical alchemy now transform coal into electronic components, textile polymers, and synthetic rubber compounds. Liu Zhongmin, director of the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, reveals how persistent R&D investments have scaled this technology across 20 industrial facilities, achieving annual production capacities exceeding 13 million metric tons.

Strategic patent proliferation is catalyzing next-generation industries. High-value invention patents ballooned to 1.978 million in 2024, marking an 18.8% annual expansion. Concurrently, strategic emerging sectors witnessed 15.7% growth in patent holdings, reaching 1.349 million protected innovations.

“China has become a true intellectual property powerhouse. The next step is to enhance the commercialization of intellectual property and integrate it with new quality productive forces,” observed Shan Xiaoguang, Professor at the Shanghai International College of Intellectual Property, Tongji University.

3.8 percent: Energy Efficiency Underscoring Green Commitment

China’s economic transformation is being rewritten through the prism of ecological calculus. While the nation’s GDP expanded at a 6.1% annual clip between 2013 and 2023, its energy appetite grew at barely half that pace—a 3.3% yearly increase that redefines the arithmetic of modern development. The 2024 figures reveal deepening momentum: each unit of economic output now requires 3.8% less energy than the previous year, even after excluding non-fossil sources and industrial feedstocks.

Beneath these statistics lies an industrial metamorphosis. The world’s most comprehensive renewable energy ecosystem now generates electricity through wind turbines and solar arrays with a combined capacity surpassing 1.4 billion kilowatts. This energy revolution manifests in tangible environmental dividends: urban centers have breathed cleaner air for five consecutive years, while over 90% of surface waters meet stringent quality benchmarks. Forest canopies now blanket a quarter of the nation’s terrain, creating carbon sinks that offset emissions.

“The numbers tell a story of synchronized evolution,” observes Tsinghua University environmental scholar Chen Lyujun. “China isn’t merely balancing economic and ecological priorities—it’s engineering their convergence.” From particulate matter reductions to watershed revitalization, these parallel achievements form the substructure of a development model where carbon neutrality timelines and economic modernization roadmaps are becoming inextricably intertwined.

A worker assembles computational servers in a workshop of a tech firm in southwest China’s Sichuan province. (Photo by Yang Bo/People’s Daily Online)

Workers work in collaboration with robotic arms in a workshop of Shanghai Junyi Industrial Automation Co., Ltd. (Photo by Jiang Huihui/People’s Daily Online)