China Data Industry Scale Reached 6.78 Trillion Yuan in 2025, Official Data Show

China's data industry grew steadily over the past three years, reaching an aggregate market scale of 6.78 trillion yuan ($950 billion) in 2025, according to official figures released at the 2026 China International Big Data Industry Expo. Hu Jianbo, president of the National Data Development Research Institute, reported that the total number of registered data enterprises in China reached 482,000 by the end of 2025, an increase of 17.9 percent year-on-year. The figures underscore persistent regional concentration, with eastern provinces generating 5.23 trillion yuan, or roughly 77 percent of the national total.

The steady growth in both data market size and enterprise counts demonstrates ongoing progress in Beijing's campaign to institutionalize data as a factor of production. At the same time, the overwhelming dominance of eastern coastal provinces highlights the steep regional imbalance in digital infrastructure and commercialization capabilities across the country.

China's data industry maintained steady expansion over recent years, expanding to a market scale of 6.78 trillion yuan in 2025, according to official figures released at the 2026 China International Big Data Industry Expo in Guiyang. Speaking at the opening ceremony on August 28, Hu Jianbo, president of the National Data Development Research Institute, reported that the nationwide data market expanded from 5.06 trillion yuan in 2023 to 5.86 trillion yuan in 2024, before reaching 6.78 trillion yuan by the end of 2025, state-run Xinhua News Agency reported. The organizational footprint of the sector has expanded alongside market revenues. By the end of 2025, the total number of registered data enterprises nationwide reached 482,000, representing a 17.9 percent increase year-on-year, Hu said. He noted that industrial vitality within the sector continues to unlock, with enterprise clustering effects becoming increasingly pronounced. Regional distribution, however, remains heavily weighted toward China's developed eastern seaboard. Data industry scale in eastern provinces reached 5.23 trillion yuan by 2025, representing more than 77 percent of the national total. The concentration reflects the continued advantages of major tech centers in coastal provinces, where established digital platforms, abundant venture financing, and advanced commercial applications drive the majority of transaction volume. The figures arrive as Chinese authorities continue a broader policy push to commercialize data resources and build fundamental rules for data assetization, intellectual property, and market distribution. Beijing has positioned data as a critical production factor alongside labor, capital, and land, encouraging local governments and state enterprises to inventory and monetize public and corporate datasets. While central policies have promoted cross-regional computing initiatives to shift processing workloads to resource-rich western regions, the commercial realization of data products remains firmly anchored in the east. Whether interior provinces can convert foundational infrastructure investments into higher-value data enterprise activity remains an ongoing test for national digital development policy.