China's digital economy hits $6.77t in 2021

China's digital economy reached 45.5 trillion yuan ($6.77 trillion) in 2021, up 16 percent year-on-year, and ranked second in the world, according to a new report released at the ongoing fifth Digital China Summit in Fuzhou, Fujian province.

The report showed that as of the end of 2021, the scale of China’s computing power also ranked second in the world, and the average annual growth rate of computing power in the past five years has exceeded 30 percent.

China has built a world-leading infrastructure for IPv6, or internet protocol version 6,with the number of active IPv6 users reaching 608 million by the end of last year, the report said.

IPv6 is the most recent version of internet protocol, the communications protocol that provides an identification and location system for computers on networks and routes traffic across the internet. It allows much higher theoretical limits on the number of IP addresses than the current IPv4 system, and is better designed for the internet of things era.

As of June, China built more than 1.85 million 5G base stations and the number of 5G mobile subscribers reached 455 million.

The two-day fifth Digital China Summit, which kicked off both online and offline on Saturday, focuses on new innovation-driven changes and new digitalization-led landscapes in pursuing the Digital China initiative.