Giant screen shows Chinese President Xi Jinping at the sixth plenary session of the Communist Party of China CPC in Beijing.
Xi Jinping, a SHANGHAI Reuters president, has called for better regulation and governance of China's digital economy to guard against its unhealthy development, as Beijing tries to boost the sector's contribution to the country's growth.
In an essay in the ruling Communist Party's publication Qiushi on Saturday, Xi called for focusing on key areas including integrated circuits, displays, communications equipment and intelligent hardware.
He said China should cultivate a number of enterprises with international competitiveness, leading ecological firms with control over industrial chains to create world-class digital industry clusters.
Xi said that there should be regulation and standardisation to plug regulatory loopholes and to prevent monopolies and disorderly expansion of capital in the world's second largest economy.
In the course of rapid development, China's digital economy has also displayed some unhealthy and irregular seeds and trends that affect the healthy development of the digital economy, but also violate laws and regulations and pose a threat to national economic and financial security, he said.
China should improve its national security system, with a focus on early warning, prevention and control systems to ensure the security of key technologies, important industries and facilities, strategic resources, and leading enterprises.
Xi's essay comes after a plan issued by China's cabinet on Wednesday for the development of the digital economy, which aims to increase the sector's share of GDP by pushing technologies like 6 G and big data centers.
There were challenges, including lack of innovation capacity in key areas and weak governance, highlighted by the plan.