In August 2025, the Capital University of Economics and Business released the China Data Element Marketization Configuration Research Report (2025), providing a comprehensive analysis of how data is being transformed into a formal economic resource. The report argues that data element marketization is a crucial institutional reform for driving high-quality development of the digital economy and for fostering new industries, new business models, and new productive forces.
The concept of "data as a factor of production" is a distinctive feature of China's economic policy framework. Unlike traditional factors such as land, labor, and capital, data is non-rivalrous — it can be used by multiple parties simultaneously without being depleted. However, realizing its economic value requires solving complex problems of property rights, valuation, privacy protection, and cross-organizational sharing. The report documents how China has been addressing these challenges.
Since 2024, China has made significant progress in public data resource development. The National Data Administration has standardized registration management, authorized operations, and pricing mechanisms. It launched 18 demonstration scenarios for data-driven applications and began pilot projects for logistics data sharing across 16 cities. The "Data Element ×" competition, covering 12 industries including smart manufacturing, precision agriculture, and commercial logistics, has become a major driver of data element marketization reform.
Data exchange markets have seen substantial growth. Trading categories have expanded to cover financial data, medical data, and industrial data, among others. A multi-tiered data trading ecosystem is emerging, with increasing participation from industry-leading enterprises. The report notes that the number of data enterprises in China has grown from 110,000 to over 1 million in the past decade, creating a vibrant ecosystem of service-oriented, application-oriented, and technology-oriented data firms.
The report projects that China's data element market will continue to expand, with data becoming a key driver of economic growth. Privacy computing and blockchain technologies are expected to play crucial roles in addressing data security and privacy concerns, enabling cross-sector and cross-industry data sharing while maintaining compliance.
To further accelerate development, the report recommends several policy measures: improving data property rights systems to clarify ownership, usage rights, and operation rights; establishing unified data trading rules and standards; creating fiscal and tax incentives for data element development; investing in computing infrastructure including high-performance and intelligent computing centers; promoting R&D in privacy computing, blockchain, and AI; and building a comprehensive data security system with multi-departmental regulatory coordination.
Knowledge takeaway: China is treating data as a formal factor of production alongside land, labor, and capital; the data element market has grown rapidly with over 1 million data enterprises now operating; privacy computing and blockchain are key technologies enabling secure data sharing; the market is projected to continue expanding as data becomes a primary driver of economic growth; policy recommendations focus on property rights, trading rules, infrastructure, and security.