G20 digital economy development status

Current development level

According to the research of the United Nations International Telecommunication Union's "Global Information Society Development Report" and the research report of the "G20 National Innovation Competitiveness Development Report (2016-2017)" published by the author's research group, the proportion of Internet users and mobile phones can be adopted. The number of service subscriptions, the online public service index, and the gross enrollment rate of higher education are used to measure the development of the G20 digital economy in terms of digital readiness, digital popularity, digital usage, and digital application capabilities.

The proportion of Internet users generally reflects the digital economy and digital popularity of G20 members. The G20 can be roughly divided into three camps of different development levels. The United Kingdom, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Germany, Australia and France are in the first camp. The proportion of Internet users is close to or exceed 90%. The United States, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, Italy. Brazil, Turkey, South Africa, China and Mexico are in the second camp, with Internet users ranging from 53% to 75%; India and Indonesia are in the third camp, with Internet users accounting for only about 30%.


The number of mobile phone service subscriptions per 100 people further illustrates the digital popularity of the G20 members and the public digital literacy. The future development of the digital economy depends on the mobile internet, which reflects the development potential of the digital economy of G20 members to some extent. The G20 members have a higher overall level on this indicator. Only Canada, China, India, Turkey and Mexico are between 85 and 100, and the rest of the countries are over 100, with an average of 120. Compared with the "Internet users ratio", the populations of Argentina, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and South Africa have a good digital literacy foundation, which is limited by the infrastructure construction, resulting in a low proportion of Internet access, but Good digital economy development potential. Among developed countries, France and Canada rank lower, indicating that their digital literacy levels lag behind the level of digital infrastructure construction.


The online public service index reflects the degree of social digitalization of G20 members. The six developed countries of the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, South Korea and the United States are in the first camp, and the leading edge is very obvious, indicating that these governments are pushing the digitalization of public services to a greater extent, which is earlier than they proposed the development of digital economy. Inseparable. Japan, Italy, Mexico, Germany, Russia, China, India, Argentina and Saudi Arabia are in the second camp, with the development of online public services in China and India increasing rapidly in recent years. The third camp's online public service levels in Turkey, South Africa and Indonesia lag behind other G20 countries.


The gross enrollment rate of higher education can reflect the public digital application ability of the G20 members and the potential of the digital economy. Higher education gross enrollment rates in Australia, Turkey, South Korea, the United States and Argentina are close to or above 90%, indicating that higher education has entered the stage of universalization; Russia, Canada, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Brazil are in the first In the second camp, the gross enrollment rate of higher education is between 51% and 80%, and it has entered the popularization stage of higher education. The gross enrollment rate of higher education in China, Mexico, India, Indonesia and South Africa is between 20% and 45%. Entered the stage of popularization of higher education.



Based on the analysis of the above indicators, among the G20 members, countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, and South Korea are ranked in the middle of the index of innovation competitiveness, investment, and output due to population and land resources constraints, but rely on the digital economy. Strong performance, leading in the overall ranking of innovation competitiveness, indicating that the development of digital economy has a significant impact on the innovation competitiveness of G20 members.

Problems in development

Faced with the urgent need for economic recovery and the rapid development of the digital economy, G20 members have regarded the digital economy as the main way of economic transformation and innovation development, but there are still the following problems that need to be faced together.

The digital strategic layout lags behind and the innovation environment is not enough. The main driving force for the development of the digital economy has evolved from relying on technology and hardware upgrades to relying on the development of digital industries represented by featured software, online retail, digital finance, and the sharing economy. However, the current digital strategy of most G20 members still stays at the level of promoting the development of information and communication technologies, strengthening the manufacture of digital devices and popularizing the Internet. The understanding of the content of the digital economy has not kept pace with the development of the digital industry. The digital strategy developed by some countries a few years ago cannot cover the new extension of the digital economy and cannot create a good environment for innovation in the digital age.

The digital infrastructure and security construction funding gap is large, affecting the innovation infrastructure. At present, more than half of the world's population still cannot access the Internet, and the construction of high-speed mobile networks that can bring more business and service innovations requires more capital investment, which means that there is still a large amount of capital for the global digital economy infrastructure. gap. Due to insufficient funds, the network security construction in many countries is seriously backward, resulting in an increase in Internet-based criminal activities, which has disrupted the digital economic development order to a certain extent and caused harm to the interests of innovative entities.

The digital divide is still evident, affecting the overall innovation output of the digital economy. Although the G20 members as a whole are moving towards the digital economy, the level of development and speed of countries vary greatly. Around the digital divide, the indicator system created by the US RAND Corporation divides the countries of the world into four categories. Among the G20 members, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Japan are among the leading countries in science and technology; China, Brazil, India and South Africa are mature countries; and Argentina, Mexico and Indonesia are technologically advanced countries, and these countries have average technological capabilities. Next, but some of the individual technical indicators exceed the international average. The more coordinated the regional development of the digital economy, the greater the market and the more users, and the more efficient innovation output under the law of increasing marginal revenue. Therefore, the gap in the digital economy development of G20 members will affect the overall innovation output of the digital economy.

Digital standards are not uniform with the market and affect the investment of innovation. The G20 members vary greatly in the standardization and standardization of data, resulting in certain obstacles in the fields of data storage, wireless communication, security maintenance and Internet of Things. At present, the digital economy strategy that G20 members have begun to implement is aimed at the construction of digital infrastructure and platforms in the country, and less consideration is given to the interconnection of national digital infrastructure and platforms with G20 members. At the same time, the policy and regulatory differences between countries on digital rights, usage rights, privacy protection and other digital related issues are also very large, limiting the entry and investment of multinational companies.

Insufficient public digital literacy education affects the sustainable development of innovation. The overall development of the digital economy places higher demands on the digital skills and digital literacy of more workers. The latest EU survey report shows that in the past decade, ICT professionals have grown by more than 4%, while ICT graduates have fallen by 40%; 45% of European citizens lack basic Digital skills. This is still the case in the EU countries where the overall education level is high and the digital technology investment is huge. It shows that there is still much room for improvement in the innovation and sustainability level of G20 members in the digital economy era.