Promote the deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry
Core Tip: As a new economic form, the digital economy is developing continuously and rapidly, and the breadth and depth of its integration with various fields of economy and society are constantly expanding, which has injected new kinetic energy into the high-quality development of the service industry and provided new support for the fair distribution of social wealth. "Digital dividend" can promote development and income, optimize the allocation of factors, and increase social wealth. However, while enjoying the "digital dividend", we should also be alert to the imbalance between development and distribution caused by the "digital divide". Fiscal policy can promote the deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry by optimizing fiscal expenditure structure, implementing tax subsidy policy, improving social security system and strengthening new infrastructure construction, and help realize the goal of common prosperity.
Abstract: As a new economic form, the digital economy is developing rapidly and continuously, and the breadth and depth of its integration with various fields of economy and society are constantly expanding, which has injected new kinetic energy into the high-quality development of the service industry and provided new support for the fair distribution of social wealth. "Digital dividend" can promote development and income, optimize the allocation of factors, and increase social wealth. However, while enjoying the "digital dividend", we should also be alert to the imbalance between development and distribution caused by the "digital divide". Fiscal policy can promote the deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry by optimizing fiscal expenditure structure, implementing tax subsidy policy, improving social security system and strengthening new infrastructure construction, and help realize the goal of common prosperity.
Keywords: digital economy, service industry and common prosperity fiscal policy
【 Chinese Library Classification Number 】 D669 【 Document Identification Code 】 a
In 2023, the Central Economic Work Conference comprehensively summarized the economic work in 2023, profoundly analyzed the current economic situation, and made a systematic arrangement for the economic work in 2024, proposing to "lead the construction of modern industrial system with scientific and technological innovation" and emphasizing "to vigorously promote new industrialization, develop digital economy and accelerate the development of artificial intelligence". On the historical journey of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, the digital economy, as a new economic form, has developed continuously and rapidly, and the breadth and depth of its integration with various economic and social fields have been continuously expanded. It has become an important engine for expanding domestic demand, promoting high-quality development and fair distribution of social wealth. A proactive and sustainable fiscal policy can provide an important guarantee in releasing the "digital dividend" and bridging the "digital divide", and help the digital economy and modern service industry to deeply integrate.
New Opportunities: "Digital Dividend" Promotes Development and Income Increase
Common prosperity of all people is the essential requirement of Chinese modernization, and common prosperity has two themes: efficiency and fairness. In the new stage of development, the medium and high-speed economic growth and the emphasis on fair and just social wealth distribution are indispensable. The application of disruptive technologies and cutting-edge technologies enables the transformation and upgrading of the service industry to innovate and develop a number of new formats and models that adapt to the characteristics of the digital economy era and become a new kinetic energy to lead the high-quality economic development.
In terms of scale, the digital economy promotes the growth of output value and absorbs employment. At present, the service industry has become the largest industry in China’s national economy and has an increasingly important influence. Digital economy accelerates the integration into the whole chain production and consumption of service industry, which greatly promotes the potential growth of service industry. According to the data of the National Bureau of Statistics, the contribution rate of service industry to the national economic growth in 2022 was 41.8%, which boosted the GDP growth by 1.3 percentage points. In the first half of 2023, the contribution of service industry to economic growth reached 66.1%. The vigorous development of the service industry has absorbed a large number of jobs. International experience shows that the employment-driven efficiency of the tertiary industry is about 20% higher than that of the secondary industry. With the proportion of service industry in GDP increasing steadily, at present, China’s GDP growth of 1 percentage point can create about 2 million new jobs. Promoting the deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry can produce a strong resource agglomeration effect and improve the total factor productivity of service industry. The continuous development of service industry will support the gradual improvement of employment, boost household income and consumer confidence, and help promote common prosperity.
From the format, the digital economy promotes industrial upgrading and optimizes distribution. According to the Digital China Development Report (2022) issued by the National Internet Information Office, the scale of China’s digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan in 2022, a nominal increase of 10.3% year-on-year, accounting for 41.5% of GDP. ③ The scale expansion trend of digital economy is obvious. The deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry will reshape the productivity, improve the labor productivity of service industry, conform to the trend of diversified expansion of service industry, and promote the innovation drive at many levels such as employment form, product category and service characteristics. Mobile Internet, big data, cloud computing, Internet of Things, etc. are more and more closely connected with modern service industries, resulting in a number of emerging industrial clusters, and new models such as digital medical care, digital travel, digital education and unmanned economy are constantly emerging, extending the boundaries of value creation by practitioners. Digital technology usually has the characteristics of high penetration, and the flow of various production factors within and between industries is accelerated, which can be integrated with traditional service industries to form new formats and models, tap potential value and create new added value, and promote resource sharing and output improvement of the overall economy. The participation of data elements will further optimize the income distribution pattern, give birth to a shared economic platform, improve the employment model, enhance the value of human capital by relying on information, and achieve a fairer distribution of wealth.
From the cost point of view, the digital economy alleviates "cost disease" and creates new wealth. Some economists, represented by W.J.Baumol, believe that in the process of service industry development, because its technological progress is usually slower than that of manufacturing industry, the relative cost of service industry will increase with time. From this, we can draw a conclusion that the continuous expansion of service industry will slow down the growth rate of the whole economy, which is called "Baumol’s cost disease". This model explains the trends and laws of industrial transformation in major economies in the last century, and also has reference significance for the development of service industry under the current digital economy. The continuous development of digital technology can alleviate or even overcome the "cost disease" of service industry: new technology is conducive to reducing transaction costs, reducing the impact of information asymmetry, promoting economies of scale, realizing economies of scale and multiplication effect; Through new career combination, career reengineering and career innovation, we will continue to expand new career associations and open up new employment boundaries, and reshape and integrate old development factors and resources with traditional careers, so as to further connect with the global value chain and realize the synchronous growth and fair distribution of income, wealth and economic development, thus balancing efficiency and fairness in development, not only "making a big cake" but also "dividing a good cake" and finally achieving common prosperity.
From the layout point of view, the digital economy helps the coordinated development of industries and the integration of regional resources. The core production factor of digital economy is data. Its fluidity and accumulation make the importance of regional factors of industrial agglomeration decline, service producers no longer rely on upstream and downstream production areas and markets for layout, and the dispersion trend of digital economy enterprises is relatively stronger. Distributed production is conducive to breaking regional division and local protection, and the development of online platform is helpful to integrate resources and help build a unified national market. The production, exchange and consumption of digital technology services have gone deep into urban and rural areas, and the value chain layout has become more fragmented and regionalized. In particular, regional brands represented by online celebrity products in rural areas have broken down information barriers, which has spawned new formats of rural manufacturing and service, created new jobs and created new jobs. Private enterprises have gained more market access opportunities and a level playing field, which has driven more residents to start businesses and become rich. The deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry will promote the further equalization and coordination of industrial layout, strengthen the mobility of factors, improve labor productivity, create a good new format and participate in the initial distribution; The shortcomings of inter-regional public services are supplemented, the government’s service capacity is improved, the inter-regional adjustment of taxation and transfer payments is strengthened, and redistribution is improved; The atmosphere in which the main beneficiaries of the digital economy give back to the society has gradually formed, and the interregional social welfare undertakings have made great progress through digital technology, enhancing the importance of the third distribution.
New challenge: the "digital divide" easily leads to the imbalance between development and distribution.
While the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation have brought development dividends, the "digital divide" has also expanded to a certain extent, showing problems such as the formation of information cocoon, the intensification of information asymmetry, the lack of motivation for industrial sustainable development, and the difficulty in timely follow-up of policies and regulations.
First, the difference of digital resources will lead to the "intelligence gap", and the difference of opportunities is not conducive to the fair distribution of wealth. "Digital divide" means the gap between the information rich and the information poor, that is, in the process of global digitalization, the polarization phenomenon caused by the differences in access and use of information network technology, the proportion of data elements and the innovation ability of digital industry among different countries, industries, enterprises, communities and individuals. The "digital divide" can be divided into "access divide", "use divide" and "intelligence divide", which respectively correspond to three different levels of network information infrastructure access, technical skills mastery and data element use. At present, the "digital divide" has emerged and is more focused on the "intelligent divide", that is, the gap between users in the acquisition and use of data and the understanding, mastery, application and innovation of the new round of artificial intelligence technology. Globally, the "digital divide" will aggravate the inequality of individual opportunities: from the perspective of educational opportunities, people have more and better resources to improve their digital literacy in areas with higher digitalization, while in areas with lower digitalization, individuals are even in a state of "off-line" and "semi-off-line"; From the perspective of job opportunities, enterprises in the digital age prefer workers with high digital literacy. The "digital divide" will aggravate the blocking of factor flow between regions, within industries and within industries, leading to the widening of economic income gap and the differentiation of employment patterns.
Second, the difference in digital transformation will lead to uneven industrial development, and industrial differentiation will lead to uneven income. The different nature of the service industry will lead to great differences in its digital integration and transformation, and the adjustment effect on reducing the cost of the service industry and promoting the rational distribution of factors will also be different. Generally speaking, producer services represented by financial industry, warehousing and logistics industry and real estate industry have strong integration ability with digital technology, which can significantly improve the labor productivity of the industry and drive employment increase and salary increase. The life service industry, represented by catering and accommodation industry, domestic service industry and old-age service industry, has a slow transformation speed and faces many obstacles. Life service industry is directly related to consumer experience. Most of the market players are small and micro enterprises and individual industrial and commercial households. Some industries require low technical threshold, weak financial strength, insufficient digital literacy of practitioners and low human capital stock. There are also some industries with strong heterogeneity and irreplaceable service production, which makes it difficult to expand economies of scale and reduce transaction costs. Practitioners who master the production link of digital resource center can get rich profits at less cost, while practitioners in peripheral industries of digital resources bear the rising acquisition and use costs because they rely on increasingly important digital technology, and the income polarization effect is strengthened.
Third, the difference in digital time series will lead to fluctuations in employment income, and the pain of transformation will easily lead to imbalance in distribution. The deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry is a long-term process, and the substitution effect and income effect play a role at the same time, which has a far-reaching impact on the development model of service industry and the income distribution of employees. Taking time as the axis, the influence of digital time sequence difference on income shows an "inverted U-shaped" curve, that is, the income gap gradually expands in the early stage of transformation, and gradually narrows in the late stage of transformation. On the one hand, in the early stage of the integration of digital economy and service industry, the demand for low-skilled workers in society began to decline due to the influence of technological substitution, resulting in unemployment of related practitioners; On the other hand, with the deep integration of digital economy and service industry, the "digital dividend" is constantly emerging, the digital ability and literacy of the whole society are constantly improving, new jobs are constantly recreated and created, the unemployment situation is alleviated, and the substantial increase in labor productivity makes the income distribution more balanced and the income gap narrowed. From a long-term perspective, the deep integration of digital economy and service industry will promote the realization of efficiency and fairness; However, the pain of short-term transformation will also lead to fluctuations in economic growth and wealth distribution, and market regulation lacks certain initiative in improving the overall digital literacy and skills of society.
Fourth, the digital regional differences will bring about the imbalance of regional development. As the key production factor of digital economy, data depends on two traditional factors, namely labor and capital, to some extent. Therefore, similar to the regional differences of traditional production factors, the imbalance of data elements between regions will also lead to different degrees of digitalization of industries in different regions. At present, the digitalization process of China’s service industry presents a spatial pattern of development from east to west, from south to north, and from central cities to surrounding cities. As far as development opportunities are concerned, the digital economy in the eastern and southern regions has obvious first-Mover advantages, and digital technologies such as big data, Internet of Things, cloud computing and artificial intelligence have developed slowly in areas with weak digital infrastructure such as the central and western regions. In terms of development potential, the digital economy empowerment effect in the central and western regions is more prominent. Problems such as lack of digital skilled talents, weak investment attraction, and scattered digital asset resources are likely to make some areas miss the development opportunities of digital economy, hinder the improvement of labor productivity, and widen the income gap between regions. For example, in the eastern part of China, digital technology has enabled the development of the service industry, continuously reducing the cost of the service industry, attracting global talents and capital inflows, and even forming a siphon effect.
New assistance: fiscal policy empowers industrial integration and development, improves quality and efficiency.
As an important means of macro-control, fiscal policy can empower industrial integration and development, improve quality and increase efficiency by optimizing fiscal expenditure structure, implementing tax subsidy policy, improving social security system and strengthening new infrastructure construction. From the supply side, government procurement of related digital services can stimulate the supply of related products, and tax incentives and relief policies can reduce the economic burden of service enterprises, increase their investment in innovative research and development, give more opportunities for small and medium-sized enterprises to develop, and promote the balanced distribution of social wealth. From the demand side, the proactive fiscal policy stimulates the consumption demand of digital services and related products by expanding public expenditure and reducing the tax burden of consumers, encourages related enterprises to carry out digital transformation, improves the profitability of enterprises, attracts more private investment and creates more jobs. In terms of initial distribution, the stability of the policy can create a good investment atmosphere, encourage more small and medium-sized enterprises to enter the digital service market, and optimize the distribution of factors; In terms of redistribution, the rationality and predictability of tax subsidies will help all people share the fruits of digital economy development, reduce the gap between the rich and the poor through transfer payments, and expand middle-income groups; In terms of the third distribution, the policy inclines to social welfare undertakings and establishes a charitable donation platform, which can enhance the credibility of charitable undertakings and help form a standardized charitable donation market. In short, fiscal policy can promote the deep integration of digital economy and modern service industry. By standardizing market competition and supervision, and promoting the coordination of cross-regional digital service platforms,Safeguarding consumers’ legitimate rights and interests and employees’ reasonable labor remuneration level is helpful to realize the goal of common prosperity.
First, continue to strengthen fiscal expenditure on science and education and optimize the allocation of resources. Increase the total fiscal expenditure in the field of science and education, keep the proportion of fiscal science and education expenditure in public finance expenditure rising steadily, and stimulate the new kinetic energy of high-quality development of service industry. First of all, optimize the allocation of educational resources, promote the equalization of digital educational resources, and bridge the "digital divide" between urban and rural areas and regions. Financial funds should give priority to areas with weak digital infrastructure, so as to ensure the acquisition and literacy accumulation of digital resources in society as a whole and realize the supply of high-quality digital education resources. Secondly, optimize the expenditure structure of science and education, standardize the use process of scientific research funds, improve the efficiency of fund use, clarify the responsibility of fund use, focus on the use of scientific and technological funds in remote areas, support key digital technology research and technological upgrading in remote areas, and expand the use of spillover effects of scientific and technological innovation. Finally, improve the training system of workers’ digital literacy, optimize the allocation of funds and digital capital investment in primary, secondary and higher education, comprehensively improve the total factor productivity, and form a talent bonus driven by creativity and efficiency.
Second, the tax subsidy policy cooperates with industrial transformation and encourages enterprises to cooperate and win-win. The integrated development of service industries with different characteristics is conducive to bridging the division of departments. The tax subsidy policy can give good guidance to industrial development, break down the barriers of factor flow, promote the overall improvement of labor productivity in service industries, and realize the basic synchronization of residents’ income growth and economic growth. First of all, reasonably control the corporate income tax and commodity value-added tax rates of producer services and lifestyle services, increase the corporate tax rates of industries in the center of digital resources acquisition, study and consider the taxability of data, strengthen the coordination and linkage between different taxes, standardize the cooperation and competition among service enterprises, and enhance the total social welfare. Secondly, encourage the integrated development of producer services and life services enterprises through appropriate subsidy policies, and guide digital technology to give consideration to both production and consumption. Platform enterprises combine digital technology to promote the integration of consumer networks and industrial networks, and encourage the development of new consumption formats such as food and beverage takeout, fresh e-commerce and instant delivery. Finally, we should strictly investigate tax-related crimes, strengthen anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition, create a good tax business environment, and promote common prosperity with scientific fiscal and taxation policies.
Third, strengthen social security, firmly grasp the bottom line of people’s livelihood, and coordinate and promote the fairness and justice of social wealth distribution. Social security system is the "safety net" of fairness and justice and the "stabilizer" of common prosperity. A high-quality social security system can help common prosperity by safeguarding and improving people’s livelihood, adjusting income distribution, promoting social justice and realizing people’s sharing of economic development achievements. First of all, improve the unemployment insurance system, expand the coverage of unemployment insurance, optimize the payment standard of unemployment insurance, and implement the dynamic adjustment mechanism of welfare security. Secondly, increase public service posts and facilities, give play to the guiding role of community service in promoting employment, and help low-skilled workers improve their skills and competitiveness. Finally, improve the training system for talents related to new business forms, provide public welfare social education benefits, establish a joint training mechanism in Industry-University-Research, encourage low-and middle-skilled workers to participate in skills training and vocational further study, and enhance their employability, work ability and innovation ability.
Fourth, accelerate the construction of new digital infrastructure and help regional coordinated development. Accelerating the construction of new digital infrastructure is an important measure to bridge the "digital divide", tap digital value and share digital benefits. The digital transformation of service industry should be based on the perfection of new digital infrastructure construction. First of all, set up special funds, give financial support to the central and western regions where the digital industry foundation is relatively weak, fill the shortcomings of regional resources, promote regional coordinated development, and ensure the balance of spatial development and the fairness of factor distribution. Secondly, make rational use of financing, steadily promote the cooperation between the government and social capital, optimize the capital structure, and improve the efficiency of project construction. Finally, standardize project management, strictly control project audit, strengthen budget performance management, track and supervise the use of funds for key projects, control the construction risks of large-scale projects, and enhance the effectiveness and standardization of the use of financial funds.
General Secretary of the Supreme Leader stressed: "Promote the deep integration of the digital economy with advanced manufacturing and modern service industries." ⑤ To improve the service market system and accelerate the service industry to improve quality and efficiency, we need to make full use of China’s super-large-scale market advantages, empower the modern service industry with the digital economy, promote the innovation of service formats, service models and management models, and give full play to the amplification, superposition and multiplication of digital technology on economic development.
（作者为对外经济贸易大学政府管理学院教授、博导；对外经济贸易大学政府管理学院本科生于烨飞对本文亦有贡献）
【注：本文系对外经济贸易大学中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金资助项目（项目编号：QHZX01、20YQ09）阶段性成果】
【注释】
①《李锁强：服务业延续恢复发展态势》，国家统计局网站，2023年1月18日。
②《国务院新闻办发布会介绍2023年8月份国民经济运行情况》，国务院新闻办网站，2023年9月15日。
③《2022年我国数字经济规模达50.2万亿元 数字技术和实体经济融合深入推进》，新华网，2023年5月24日。
④李勇坚：《数字化推动服务消费：理论逻辑、实践方式与政策建议》，《人民论坛·学术前沿》，2023年第22期。
⑤《中共中央政治局召开会议 分析研究当前经济形势和经济工作 中共中央总书记最高领袖主持会议》，《人民日报》，2023年7月25日。