The future of China’s economy is digital, but its enormous wealth and benefits must be spread out to everyone, not just a few big tech companies. That’s the message from President Xi Jinping, in a 3,000-Chinese character essay signed with his own name. Published in the official Qiushi Journal , Xi envisions a digital economy with 5G connectivity as its backbone and nationwide big data management at its core. With an economy on course to become the world’s largest, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence will play a big role, wrote Xi. New developments will include 6G telecommunications. This blueprint as spelt out in the essay is in line with Xi’s speech on the digital economy last October and is explained further in more technical details in a master plan laid out by the State Council. In 2020, China’s digital economy expanded by 9.7 per cent to 39.2 trillion yuan (US$6.2 trillion), equivalent to 38.6 per cent of China’s economic output. But beyond the purely technical, Xi helps put the crackdown on Big Tech within the past two years in perspective. The crackdown, which has wiped out US$1 trillion of value from their stocks, is often interpreted in the West as the communist state’s fear of losing control over the digital economy, including online banking. But that is too simplistic, a projection of Western business priorities and assumptions over Chinese ones. Beijing has made it clear profit is not the only or the ultimate goal of business; “common prosperity” or spreading the wealth is. To this end, monopolistic practices and market dominance can no longer be tolerated. Many foreign critics have countered that China’s capitalist take-off in recent decades has also created one of the most unequal societies in the world. Video game journal suspends publication amid China’s gaming crackdown Well, that’s all the more reason to try to reverse this dangerous and corrosive global trend that eats away at social cohesion and trust. China is leading with an all-of-government approach to address the problem. The major state policy goal is to try to halt the creation of wealth for the few, and to promote the welfare of the many. It’s a work in progress that may yet fail or partially succeed; only time will tell. But the goal is eminently defensible. It’s true that the antitrust and cybersecurity crackdowns have snared many of the country’s largest technology companies. Some have argued they have gone too far. But it’s equally undeniable that the rapid growth of the Chinese digital economy has exposed regulatory loopholes and, as Xi warns, threatened the country’s economic and financial security and stability. Just like Beijing’s crackdown on overly indebted developers, targeting Big Tech is to take the pain now to ensure healthy future growth. It’s the opposite of kicking the can down the road.