Ge Feng, special commentator of China Economic Weekly
With the ringing of the New Year's bells, the third decade of the 21st century has begun. Among the vivid and splendid scenes behind the curtain, technological innovation will undoubtedly be the most important keyword to promote the development of "plot".
Regarding the importance of scientific and technological innovation, it cannot be overemphasized. General Secretary Xi Jinping once pointed out that scientific and technological innovation is the core, and if we grasp scientific and technological innovation, we will seize the bull nose that affects the overall development of our country.
This incisive thesis will surely lead our country to put scientific and technological innovation in a more important position at a new historical starting point and more firmly promote comprehensive innovation with scientific and technological innovation as the core.
Of course, scientific and technological innovation will not occur out of thin air, that is to say, to give play to the supporting and leading role of scientific and technological innovation, first of all, under the premise of deeply grasping the inherent laws of scientific and technological innovation, we must build a precondition for scientific and technological innovation to be conducive to its occurrence at a closer point to the origin. The most fundamental of these prerequisites is the comparative advantage and industrial base determined by the factor endowment structure.
Sustained and comprehensive scientific and technological innovation should be a self-expanding order of endogenous factor endowment structure, because the social production mode generated by the factor endowment structure has a significant prerequisite for scientific and technological innovation. Marx has long made an extremely splendid exposition of this. He pointed out that a revolution in the mode of industrial and agricultural production necessitated, in particular, a revolution in the general conditions of social production, namely the means of transport. Subsequently, with the construction of railways and the development of ocean shipping, the huge machines used to make prime movers were produced.
From the perspective of negative examples, since the end of World War II, the reason why most developing countries in the world have not been able to successfully catch up is that they ignore the prerequisite nature of factor endowment structure for technological progress and industrial upgrading, so they usually fall into two situations and are difficult to get rid of, one is that in the absence of comparative advantages, in order to achieve catch-up and overtaking, the target industry is set on too advanced industries, and such industrial sectors need government protection subsidies and support policies due to the lack of self-viability and technological background. This will lead to various interventions and distortions; second, in order not to violate its own comparative advantages, it is forced to over-"target" competitive advantages on primary factors of production, thus being "captured" in the global value chain of an increasingly vertical professional division of labor.
China's continuous technological progress and industrial upgrading are actually at the practical level, which further verifies this prerequisite. Because a very important part of China's successful experience is that in addition to making full use of the advantages of latecomers and continuously promoting factor investment in departments with potential comparative advantages, in the process, the cultivation, guidance and upgrading of factor endowments and comparative advantages have been realized simultaneously. For example, the most obvious is that in recent years, China has shown a "curve overtaking" situation in some areas represented by Internet technology, and the important supporting factor behind it lies in China's huge reserve of engineering and technical talents, and this endowment is obviously closely related to China's education policy and education investment.
Therefore, scientific and technological innovation is endogenous to the factor endowment structure, but the factor endowment structure is dynamic, not completely given, China should accelerate the pace of scientific and technological innovation in the current era of changes, especially in the "card neck" and emerging industry key technology links self-reliance, independent innovation, we must upgrade the factor endowment structure, especially in the cultivation of high-end elements, agglomeration to do more resolute and dynamic efforts, to actively create a policy environment and institutional environment conducive to scientific and technological innovation, the most important grasp, Let the high-end elements with people as the carrier become the source of inexhaustible source of scientific and technological innovation.