On the evening of June 10, 2023, the 20th lecture of the "Digital Economy and Management Lecture Hall" of BNUBS, "Great Divergence and Modernization: The Macro Logic and Industrial Direction of the Digital Economy" was held in the Electronic Lecture Theatre. Dr. Wu Xuliang, Senior Expert and chief economic Advisor of Tencent Research Institute, was invited to give the lecture, and Li Jing, Associate Director of MBA Education Center, presided over the lecture.

Speaker: Wu Xuliang

Starting from the historical background of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-late 18th century and the great divergence of economic growth between the East and the West in the 19th century, Dr. Wu Xuliang analyzed the key role of general-purpose technology in economic growth and total factor productivity improvement. He dissected the impact of the 200 years of Western-centric modernization on the global economic landscape from 1770 to 1970, and the dynamics of China's rapid economic growth in the four decades since reform and opening up.

Dr. Wu focused on four key questions: why the economy needs to grow, why the economy can grow, why the transition from growth to development to high-quality development, and the role of technology in high-quality development. He believed that the three key factors to promote economic growth are resources, institutions and technology, and the impact of digital technology on the macro economy can be broken down into "technology effect" and "allocation effect", and "allocation effect" is more important for the improvement of total factor productivity.

On this basis, Dr. Wu Xuliang combined with industry practice cases, elaborated on the scale measurement of the digital economy, the underlying logic of the evolution of the digital industry, the boundary of the platform economy, the form of the future economy, as well as the key directions of digital and real integration and digital transformation. He believed that digital technology is on the eve of a new round of application outbreak, the possible direction of breakthrough included network, computing, terminals and products, and at present, cloud computing, spatial computing (full interconnection), and large model computing have begun to emerge. The breadth, depth and speed of the diffusion of general digital technology in different industries depended on the iteration of technological capability and the change of the relative price of resource factor endowment, which was an important topic worthy of further study. He finally analyzed the "industry tree" of the digital innovation ecology, and believed that what we are most in need of at present is not one or two technologies, but the ability to find and lead the direction of technological and industrial innovation. Behind this capability lied the prosperity of the innovation ecosystem in each country, and the key was whether thousands of the most dynamic enterprises can truly become the main body of innovation.

In the interactive session, Dr. Wu Xuliang answered many students' questions about digital economy theory and industrial Internet practice.

Finally, Li Jing, Associate Director of the MBA Education Center, said in the summary that Dr. Wu Xuliang, as the authoritative enterprise expert in this semester's lecture hall, provided us with a unique corporate perspective to interpret the development of the digital economy and digital industry, which is very enlightening.

BNUBS adheres to the mission of " Promoting business and culture to serve the nation and the world by creating knowledge and developing talents" and continues to pay attention to the development and practice of digital economy and management. Since September 2020, the "Digital Economy and Management Frontier Lecture Series" has held 16 lectures. From May 2023, the lecture series has been officially upgraded to "Digital Economy and Management Lecture Hall", showing the current development picture of digital economy and management from the perspectives of economy, management, culture, technology and change, trying to interpret the connotation and law of this surging forward tide and leading the deeper thinking and practice of China's economic development and enterprise change and innovation in the new economic era.

From May to June 2023, "Digital Economy and Management Lecture Hall" successively invited 5 heavyweight experts to share lectures, we welcome you to attend.

Provided by MBA Education Center

Edited by Zhang Li, Li Jing

Reviewed by Cui Xuegang