The data field welcomes the “national team”.
On October 20, National Data Group Co., Ltd. was unveiled in Xiongan New District, Hebei. This new state-owned enterprise, ranked 28th in the list of state-owned enterprises, has filled the gap of state-owned entities in the data field.
Why did China set up such a central enterprise? And why put the headquarters in Xiongan?
To answer the first question, we must first look at the current general trend.
As of the end of 2025, there are 482,000 data companies nationwide, and the scale of the data industry has reached 6.78 trillion yuan. By 2030, the scale of the data industry is expected to exceed 13 trillion yuan.
As a new factor of production, data is not only the core production resource supporting the high-quality development of my country's digital economy, but also a key area in the current game of great powers and the game of international digital rules.
In this context, the National Data Group entered the data field as a national team. In addition to undertaking commercial functions, it is more important to serve the national strategy.
The company's positioning is very clear: to develop and utilize data resources as its main business, to serve the national team for data elements, to be a leader in data infrastructure interconnection, and to be a strategic force for national data technology innovation.
Behind the triple role is the fact that local data groups and single companies in different industry sectors cannot achieve it at the same time.
"From the perspective of the organizational system, my country has already had an administrative department in the field of data, namely the National Data Administration, and local data groups have been established in various places. However, there is a lack of a central enterprise with data as its main business and market-oriented operations. The formation of the National Data Group has filled this gap. Its starting point is to clear up blockages, build platforms, and coordinate the development and utilization of data resources." Wu Gangliang, a researcher at the China Enterprise Reform and Development Research Association and deputy director of the State-owned Enterprise Development Research Institute of Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, said in an interview with Sanlihe.
He emphasized that the transformation of data from its original form to circulated and tradable data products involves a large number of operational links such as governance, processing, interconnection, and scene docking. These tasks must be undertaken by market operators. Taking on this role as a central enterprise mainly solves two problems: one is to crack data segmentation and promote interconnection; the other is to undertake strategic, long-term investment.
He emphasized that local data groups naturally have a territorial attitude, and the coordination cost is high when data is circulated across provinces and departments. Central enterprises can coordinate and advance from the perspective of a national game of chess, with a higher level of coordination. At the same time, projects such as data infrastructure and cross-regional trusted data spaces require large investments, long cycles, strong externalities, and are directly related to data security responsibilities. If central enterprises are responsible for this, they can better serve national strategies.
Second question: Why settle in Xiongan?
On the surface, this is another step in the decentralization of Beijing’s non-capital functions. But Xiongan’s significance to this central enterprise goes beyond “taking over”.
As a "city of the future", Xiongan has insisted on the simultaneous construction of digital cities and real cities from the planning stage, so it can be called the "testing ground" and "incubator" of the National Data Group. System innovations in cross-regional and cross-departmental data circulation can be piloted here, and real scenarios can be verified and iterated.
"Xiong'an provides a real testing ground for the integrated system. It covers the entire chain of digital scenarios from planning, construction, governance, and people's livelihood. After the institutional innovation is run through, it is expected to form a replicable and promoteable 'Xiong'an Plan.'" Wu Gangliang said.
Looking at a deeper level, the establishment of the headquarters of central enterprises in Xiongan will also have a "chain effect."
As introduced by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, the National Data Group uses its headquarters to drive industrial agglomeration, highlights the strategic arrangement of the advanced layout of high-end high-tech industries, and uses the goose effect of leading enterprises to drive the upstream and downstream implementation of the industrial chain, laying a solid industrial foundation for the city of the future and demonstrating the in-depth consideration of major national strategies at the industrial level.
Of course, there is no precedent for establishing a data group at the national level in the world, and it will inevitably lead to a series of "no man's lands".
Wu Gangliang believes that a series of issues including data property rights, data pricing and asset inclusion, and the governance system of central enterprises must be clarified through exploration. "It is necessary to not only fulfill the national strategic mission, but also operate according to the market-oriented mechanism. How to improve the assessment, incentive and fault-tolerance mechanisms is itself an important task in the new round of state-owned assets and state-owned enterprise reforms, and these need to be gradually solved in practice."
In his view, Xiongan’s own positioning provides the practical soil for this exploration.
For the outside world, in the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, the signal from the placement of this new central enterprise is clear enough: the development and utilization of data elements has entered a new stage.
Whether it can break the existing barriers and truly activate the huge value of data elements, Xiongan’s testing ground will give the answer.
