China's digital economy has greatly advanced over the past few years, with its scale growing from 11 trillion yuan ($1.7 trillion) in 2016 to 35.8 trillion yuan in 2019, said Yang Xiaowei, deputy director of the National Cyberspace Administration.

Yang made the remarks during a speech at the 2nd Internet Infrastructure Resources Conference held in Beijing on Sunday. The conference brought together academicians from the Chinese Academy of Engineering and scholars from research institutes and think tanks, as well as internet entrepreneurs, to discuss topics on internet technology, industrial development and the digitalization progress.

Yang said the scale of China's digital economy has contributed to 67.7 percent of GDP. Digitalization has brought profound changes to work, life and society in many aspects and continuously met people's needs for a better life.

Over the past five years, China's internet infrastructure resources also have developed rapidly. The number of netizens has increased from 688 million in 2016 to 940 million by June and the internet penetration rate has increased from 50.3 percent to 67 percent, exceeding the global average.

To continue promoting the development of the digital economy, Yang said China should seize the opportunity of global information technology and industrial upgrading, reinforce the construction of basic internet infrastructure, actively promote cellular applications, accelerate deployment and promote the large-scale deployment of IPv6, the most recent version of the internet protocol.

Core technologies, including blockchain, big data and artificial intelligence, should be used more widely in building an internet infrastructure to create advanced internet data, products and services.

He also noted that it is urgent to constantly strengthen the awareness and emergency management capabilities in cybersecurity and actively engage in making the global internet system more equal, open and cooperative.

The conference, featuring one main forum and eight sub-forums, also saw 11 achievements released on Sunday, including the launch of two service platforms based on big data and blockchain and the blue book of China's internet development, as well as several technical products, research results and reports.