Illustration：Liu Rui/GT

Hyping potential risks from China's legitimate regulatory moves to secure healthy development of emerging sectors has become a new routine for Western doomsayers. Some of them have launched into another round of bad-mouthing since China commenced its 'two sessions' on Thursday.

In addition to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, international financial markets are facing "a larger risk" from "renewed regulatory crackdown" that China may impose after the two sessions, Bloomberg warned on Monday.

The Government Work Report delivered to the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature, on Saturday, indeed renewed China's resolve to continue its crackdown on market monopolies to ensure fair competition. 

China will "act quickly to improve regulatory rules for key industries, emerging sectors, and sectors with foreign involvement and introduce new measures," according to the report of the central government delivered to the NPC.

Yet, implementing a series of other beneficial and supportive policies, China's regulatory measures are apparently aimed at ensuring fair market environment and improve governance of the digital economy, instead of initiating a so-called tech crackdown, as recklessly claimed by Western media outlets.

Viewing things in the context of China's overall support and protection for the booming internet industry and digital sector, the alarmist warning about China's regulatory moves seems fairly illogical and laughable. 

Compared with "the prospect of a new regulatory crackdown in China," what investors should really heed to is the promising future of China's digital economy.

China's digital economy has grown significantly, ranking second in the world with a size of $6.1 trillion at the end of 2020. The digital economy accounts for 38.6 percent of China's GDP last year, according to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT). Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, China's economy has demonstrated great resilience in the face of uncertainty and witnessed a rapid post-COVID recovery. 

To spur the digital economy as a new driver of economic growth, China in January rolled out a plan to facilitate the development of the digital economy in the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) period. The annual government work report also placed a stronger emphasis on further boosting the digital industry which was referenced more than 10 times in the government work report.

With such strong policy support, China will see digitalization of industries to quicken its pace, digital public services will become more inclusive, and the digital economy governance system will improve noticeably. 

Chinese major technology giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and Huawei have attached great significance to the advancement of digital services' integration with traditional industries like agriculture and education.

Anti-monopoly and other regulatory measures implemented by the regulators for the purpose of serving the healthy and regulated development of the digital economy will not impact the development of the sector. Although the regulatory measures that have been introduced covers a broad range of market activities, a research by the US think tank Peterson Institute for International Economics last October showed that they will only have limited side-effect. 

China's previous anti-monopoly measures against internet giants did cause short-term market fluctuations at the time, but the positive effects are emerging. For instance, the rules to forbid internet platforms' market manipulative activities including forcing businesses to "choose one merchant out of two" or using big data-based algorithm to classify customers as a means to enable price-gouging have protected normal market order in the country.

With more supportive measures and sound supervision, China's digital sector will undoubtedly usher in a period of stable and healthy development, which will render Western doomsayers' alarmist talks broken again.

The author is an editor with the Global Times. bizopinion@globaltimes.com.cn