In recent years, emerging information technologies, such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence, and the practice of digital economy, such as platform organization based on information technology, show that under the premise of uncertainty, the contradiction between the low efficiency of local resource allocation and the high efficiency of potential overall resource allocation runs through the whole process of economic development, which together become the main driving force for the evolution of information technology and market structure. The breakthrough of reform lies in the active and dynamic technical elements playing an innovative role and continuously optimizing the efficiency of resource allocation on the overall level. As a historical category, digital economy is a macro emergence in the process of interaction among technology, organization and system in the economic system. In this process, the new production organization model shaped by the high coordination and interaction of human economic activities based on technological optimization has been evolving. It constitutes the essence of digital economy. Under the guidance of the basic principles of Marxism and its scientific research methods, revealing the essence of digital economy and its development logic is not only an important task for local economics to continue to promote Marxism in China with the great practice of the new era, but also provides an important decision-making basis for the construction of modern economic system in China during the strategic opportunity period of the fourth industrial revolution.

In the long history, mankind has experienced the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution. With the maturity of science and technology, a huge information technology revolution is being staged. From live broadcast, e-commerce, take-away, to artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and 5G technology, the digital economy can be found in every production and life scene.

Digital economy is a new economic and social development form after agricultural economy and industrial economy. It has become an important driving force for transformation and upgrading, and it is also the commanding height of a new round of global industrial competition.