Ten Year construction achievements of Digital China and the advancement strategies for the 15th Five-Year Plan:A measurement analysis based on composite weighting by large language models
Digital China has become a central driver of China’s effort to cultivate new national competitive advantages and advance Chinese modernization. Drawing on the historical evolution of the Digital China strategy, this paper examines the theoretical foundations of this national agenda from three perspectives: the reconstruction of cognitive space, the upgrading of advanced productive forces, and the rearticulation of the subjectivity of Chinese modernization. Following the “2522” strategic framework, we develop a four-dimensional evaluation system covering digital development foundations, deep digital empowerment, technological and security capacity, and the governance and openness environment. To enhance measurement reliability, we incorporate multiple large language models for composite weighting and validation, and assess the performance of Digital China development across 30 provincial-level regions from 2014 to 2024.The results yield three main findings. First, the overall performance of Digital China improved substantially over the sample period, although its growth momentum is now entering a stage of structural transition. Second, interprovincial disparities show a general trend toward convergence;however, beyond the conventional eastern-western divide, widening intra-regional differentiation remains an important constraint on balanced development. Third, the spatial evolution of Digital China exhibits both agglomeration and club convergence, while upward mobility across development tiers remains shaped by path dependence and Matthew effects.In response to these challenges, and with a view to the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan period, this paper proposes five policy priorities: strengthening a self-reliant and secure digital technology innovation system to foster new quality productive forces;prioritizing intelligent computing infrastructure as the foundational artery of the emerging intelligent economy;rebuilding a high-level data-factor supply system to improve data circulation and unlock productivity gains;expanding digital-intelligent application scenarios to accelerate the formation of a new intelligent economy;and promoting a coordinated dual-circulation framework linking domestic and international development to overcome spatial structural inertia.