On April 10, the State Council Information Office held a themed press conference of “Promoting High-Quality Development” specifically for Shandong Province. The press conference released that as of 2023, the gross domestic product (GDP) of Shandong had expanded by over 6% annually on average over the past three years. In 2023, the province’s GDP reached 9.2 trillion yuan, and three cities’ GDP reached the trillion yuan level. The output value of high-tech industries accounted for more than 51%, an increase of over three percentage points on a year-on-year basis. There were 14.74 million business entities in Shandong.

“Digital economy has contributed to half of Shandong’s economy.” At the conference, Sun Aijun, Director of the Shandong Development and Reform Commission, said that the digital economy is the key to winning future competition. In 2023, the value-add of Shandong’s digital economy was 4.3 trillion yuan, accounting for 47% of its GDP. It was nearly eight percentage points higher than that of the secondary industry. Shandong, a manufacturing powerhouse province, has beefed up efforts to promote the integration of the digital economy and the real economy. It ranks at the forefront in China regarding industrial digitalization and boasts 47 national-level industrial internet platforms and 35 national-level smart factories.