(Yicai Global) Nov. 9 -- Alibaba Group Holding, which has benefited from the development of China's huge market, aims to speed up industrial transformation while staying true to its origins, according to the chairman.

"Alibaba will always lay its roots in the real economy, make good use of digital technologies to help small and medium-sized businesses, and accelerate the advance of industrial transformation," Daniel Zhang, the Hangzhou-based internet giant's chief executive, said during the ongoing 2022 World Internet Conference.

The three development stages of China's digital economy involve great circulation, great logistics, and great computation, and they are all based on the economic dimension involving the exchange of goods and services, according to the successor of Jack Ma.

The chairman of the Tmall operator further explained the model. The first stage of digitized circulation connected Chinese consumers with tens of millions of merchants and diversified services.

The second stage of logistics linked up production, distribution, circulation, and consumption, effectively covering primary, secondary, and tertiary industries. The significance of online logistics has been proven during unusual periods such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Evidently, China's express delivery volume, which has ranked first worldwide for eight years in a row, rose to exceed 100 billion parcels last year from 5.7 billion in 2012.

Online demand, generated by circulation and logistics, is further promoting the coming era of computation. Digitization is extended to every area of business operations from research and development to manufacturing. Moreover, it will touch every aspect of urban and social public governance, Zhang envisioned.

The "chemical reaction" between digital and real economy is sparked by a digital reconstruction of production, design, and manufacturing links and the use of Big Data models to come up with an optimal procedure, Zhang added.

Despite the big challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic and global inflation, the CEO is optimistic about the future. The confidence comes from the fact that Alibaba's development goals highly coincide with the country's long-term targets and the high degree of societal consensus about using digital technology to promote economic progress, Zhang explained.

Editor: Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi