Abstract: With forty years of reform and opening-up, China’s economy has developed rapidly from agricultural economy to industrial economy, and then stepped into the era of digital economy. Under the tide of development of global digital economy, how China relies on the development of digital economy to achieve high-quality economic growth is worth our careful consideration and research. Digital economy refers to a series of economic activities with the use of digitized knowledge and information as key production factors, modern information network as an important carrier, and effective use of information and communication technology as an important driving force for efficiency improvement and economic structure optimization. It has the characteristics of interconnection of all things, intelligence of knowledge, data element and wealth virtualization. This paper focuses on the analysis of the world’s most developed economies represented by the United States, as well as the development status of digital economy in Guangdong, Zhejiang and Guizhou, and summarizes and analyzes its characteristics. On the basis of the above analysis, this paper puts forward that the development of digital economy in China is facing the challenges of core technological innovation ability, enterprise management mode, government governance ability and digital transformation of real economy. And China should further enhance its awareness of crisis and opportunity, build a digital government, break through core technologies, promote open application of data resources, and promote sharing economy and platform economy development, so as to realize digital transformation of real economy.