Zhang Jun: Where does the resilience of the Chinese economy come from?

Reporter 丨 Yan Guihua

The Sixth Plenary Session of the Nineteenth CENTRAL Committee of the Communist Party of China held a few days ago summed up the major achievements and historical experience of the party's century-old struggle, and the plenary session also summed up the achievements made in China's economic and social work in the past few decades.

Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Economics at Fudan University and director of the China Economic Research Center, said that the rapid accumulation of learning ability reveals the secret of China's economic success. Since the reform and opening up, China has seized the opportunity to learn from advanced economies and used these opportunities to give full play to its latecomer advantages to rapidly promote industrialization and economic transformation. In the process of China's successful rise, the economic vitality at the bottom and the creativity of countless small and medium-sized enterprises have played a very important role.

"They're all at the bottom of China's economy and have grown up from the bottom up in the midst of brutal competition." The combination of China's accumulated learning ability and huge market size over the past few decades has indeed shaped the entrepreneurial power of China's bottom. Zhang Jun said.

He pointed out that China has a large number of successful small and medium-sized enterprises that are not known to the public, and these small and medium-sized enterprises, known as unicorns and "hidden champions", are not only amazing in number, but also constantly innovating in the field of scientific and technological applications. Even some policies and events that disturb market expectations have not really stopped the underlying entrepreneurial momentum and the pace of new companies.

Zhang Jun said that the vitality of China's economy is to a large extent the embodiment of the advantage of population size. Given other conditions, a large country with a large population is certainly more dynamic than a country with a small population. Because of the large population, many talents, many inventions and creations, and fierce competition, the vitality of the economy is also more obvious. ”

He further said that in this sense, to maintain the long-term vitality of China's economy, it is necessary to ensure that the market economy can develop better and more standardized. "Over the past few decades, the success, development and rise of our economy has mainly benefited from the creativity and vitality of the bottom of our economy. Now that our economy is larger and our economic strength is stronger, to maintain economic vitality and creativity, we still need to have better development on the road of market economy, and ensure that the size of our population can be transformed into great creativity with the help of the market economy. ”

Zhang Jun also pointed out that the super learning ability is still our strength, although the external environment has become more severe, we still have the opportunity to learn, and the learning ability is always a very important advantage for us.

"We must have a more conscious awareness, that is, many technologies, including basic research, should be able to stand on their own feet like developed countries, and basing themselves on autonomy does not mean that they are not willing to communicate with others, because in fact we are still 'latecomers', and the door of the latecomers is always open, and now it is the forerunners who want to close the door." In this case, our super learning ability is actually not our weakness, it is still our strength, we are based on ourselves, and we still need to learn from many pioneers in the world. ”

"Times have changed, but that doesn't stop us from still having the opportunity to learn. On the one hand, we must study, and on the other hand, we must strengthen our ability to innovate independently. In the past, we didn't know enough about the fragility of globalization, so we used to say ' if you can buy, don't do it', now, the vulnerability of globalization has been exposed, and the risks and uncertainties are getting higher and higher. In this case, strategically speaking, China cannot rely on international technology transfer for a long time, and needs to have the ability to develop independent technology and basic research. Therefore, we strengthen our ability in this regard, not without learning from the forerunners, in fact, in the future development, learning like the forerunners is still very important. Zhang Jun said.