Authors: Zeng Gang, Yizhenzhen First, “mask civilization” has gained popularity. “Mask civilization” is a public awareness gradually formed in the prevention and control of COVID-19 in China. More and more people are wearing masks scientifically from a passive way to an active way, which has an obvious preventive effect on respiratory infectious diseases such as COVID-19. Masks play an important role in the fight against COVID-19, which is closely related to the rapid increase of masks production capacity in China. China was reported to have produced more than 5 billion masks in 2019, accounting for half of the world’s total, according to CCID. According to its projections, China’s production capacity will reach 200 million masks per day in the future. According to data from Qixinbao, there are 4,689 mask manufacturers, 64 protective clothing manufacturers and 17 goggles manufacturers in China, and they are mainly located in the Yangtze River Delta region. The provinces of Zhejiang and Jiangsu each have more than 500 mask manufacturers, and Shanghai and Anhui province also account for a high proportion of protective clothing companies. The mask industry chain in the Yangtze River Delta ensures the supply meets demand in terms of epidemic prevention supplies. In early February, Shanghai Municipal Finance Bureau stepped up financing support to key enterprises that make epidemic prevention supplies and enterprises severely hit by the epidemic. The Shanghai Commission of Commerce also took the lead in formulating the joint work plan of mutual aid and assistance with regard to important epidemic prevention supplies in the Yangtze River Delta, by establishing information sharing mechanism for the three provinces and one municipality, and compiling the production capacity list of important epidemic prevention supplies in the Yangtze River Delta. At the same time, in terms of rapid nucleic acid test products for COVID-19, Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission fully supported technology enterprises to fight against the epidemic and achieve steady development. It has introduced several measures to support technology development for COVID-19 prevention and control, innovation, and entrepreneurship, such as “reducing the rents for enterprises” and helping small and medium-sized technology enterprises to carry out technological innovation activities. On January 24, 2020, the COVID-19 nucleic acid testing kit developed by Shanghai ZJ Bio-Tech Co., Ltd. passed the test by Shanghai Testing & Inspection Institute for Medical Device, making it the first novel COVID-19 testing product certified by an authoritarian testing institution in China. So far, 23 COVID-19 testing products have been approved by the National Medical Products Administration of China, involving 5 companies in Shanghai, 1 in Nanjing and 1 in Hangzhou. Second, the e-commerce landscape has changed significantly. The SARS epidemic in 2003 accelerated the growth of e-commerce in China, which was then in its infancy. Seventeen years later, e-commerce is no longer what it was. Alibaba and its ecology influence 700 million users worldwide, while JD has 330 million active buyers. As for global markets, e-commerce penetration rates vary greatly in different regions. China has the highest e-commerce penetration rate at 37%, compared with just 11% in North America and 10% in Europe. As one of the fresh produce apps that mainly target the Yangtze River Delta market, Dingdong Maicai said that its order on the Chinese New Year’s Eve increased by more than 300% compared with last month, and the number of orders placed by citizens during the seven-day Spring Festival holiday exceeded 4 million. During the seven-day Spring Festival holiday, Dingdong Maicai supplied a total of 1,000 tons of vegetables, 439 tons of meat and 350 tons of eggs. On top of the increase in orders, Dingdong Maicai also expanded its supply chain. On the one hand, the purchasing department of the platform is stationed in all major agricultural bases and wholesale markets across the country to increase procurement. On the other hand, some government agencies also came to the platform. For example, Shanghai Municipal Commission of Commerce and Pudong New Area Commission of Commerce helped the platform coordinate with Shanghai Agricultural Products Wholesale Market and Shanghai Xijiao International Agricultural Products Trading Center to secure fresh pork and vegetables. Zhejiang Pinghu Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs approached Dingdong Maicai to help promote vegetables from Pinghu. A strong e-commerce system greatly reduces the risk of infection caused by people shopping together. In contrast, in the current European and American society, although countries have successively promulgated the “stay-at-home” order, it is still the first choice of the European and American people to go to large supermarkets to purchase daily necessities and food. Third, big data helped epidemic prevention and control and resource matching. Big data is an emerging industry that has a profound impact on the future, and it is also an important driving force for the future economic and social development of the Yangtze River Delta. In October 2019, the “Building a Global Digital Economy Highland: 2019 Digital Yangtze River Delta Integration Development Report”, which was jointly written by the Ali Research Institute and the 21st Century Economic Research Institute, pointed out that in 2018, the total output of the digital economy in the Yangtze River Delta reached 8.63 trillion yuan, accounting for more than 40% of the total economy and 28% of the total digital economy in China. The big data industry system in the Yangtze River Delta region has also begun to take shape. The Big Data Development Indexes of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai are among the top five (second, fourth, and fifth respectively) in all provinces and cities across the country. In response to the epidemic, Alibaba’s DingTalk responded quickly by collaborating with Alibaba Cloud, Alipay, DAMO Academy, DingTalk for Government Affairs and YiDA to urgently build a public service and management platform for the COVID-19 in Zhejiang Province within one day. It was launched on January 27 and exported a complete set of “digital epidemic prevention system” to governments and communities across the country for free to help prevent and control the epidemic. On January 29, Alibaba Cloud officially announced that during the epidemic, all AI computing power would be freely available to public scientific research institutions around the world to help develop COVID-19 drugs and vaccines.