Liu Qing
Vice President of the Institute of National Development and Strategy, Renmin University of Chinese
Professor, Faculty of Economics
In order to understand the past and present of China's economy and the formation and development of new productive forces, we must think in the context of globalization and have the thinking of an open economy. Therefore, it is of great significance and strategic significance to explore and understand the development of new quality productive forces under the open economy.
Understanding the development of new quality productivity under the open economy includes three aspects.
First, how to understand the mainland's current open economy. Our basic viewpoint is that the mainland has made remarkable achievements in building an open economy. Since 1978, the mainland's share of world exports has continued to grow, becoming the world's largest exporter in 2009 and reaching 15% in 2021, the highest share of exports by a single country since the mid-1960s.
However, the mainland is currently facing two major challenges. Second, after the 2008 financial crisis, due to the vigilance of countries around the world on trade imbalances, the trade and development patterns of China and the world are likely to undergo systemic changes, and to a certain extent, their dependence on foreign trade has been reduced, which means that the trade market has become relatively smaller. These two challenges have been further exacerbated by geopolitical tensions in recent years. The mainland's open economic construction needs to seek new breakthroughs, and the direction of this breakthrough can only be industrial upgrading. The upward upgrading of the industry needs the support of new quality productivity.
Second, the theoretical and practical connotations of the new quality productive forces. The development of every era is determined by the productive forces of that era. Theory comes from practice, and good theory can be used to better guide new practice. The new quality productivity is a new productivity theory that comes from the practice of high-quality development and is also used to guide the practice of high-quality development in the future. Although the mainland has been in the past to promote innovation, promote the development of high-tech industry of a variety of special policies, but are all at the practical level, has not formed a systematic top-level guiding ideology, theory, development, so far, we need to have a higher level of theoretical guidance, and the new quality of productivity is this theory.
In this sense, we can easily understand that the new quality productivity emphasizes the leading role of innovation, which should be in line with the new development concept, and be born by technological revolutionary breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading. The structure, efficiency, efficiency, and quality of economic development should be effectively improved, not just quantitative growth.
In fact, the importance of "quality" cannot be overemphasized. For example, according to the British scholar Angus Maddison's "Millennium History of the World Economy", China's gross domestic product (GDP) accounted for about 32.9% of the world's total economy in 1820, while that of Britain was 5.2%. However, the characteristics of the agrarian society on the mainland at that time determined that the "quality" of GDP was not high enough, and no matter how delicate and huge wooden ships were, they could not resist the ironclad gunboats of the industrial world.
In practice, a new scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation are taking place, and subversive breakthroughs are taking place in artificial intelligence, quantum technology, aerospace, new energy technology, biotechnology, etc., and whether we can seize the opportunity of this round of scientific and technological revolution will directly determine the future of the country and the world pattern. The impact of previous scientific and technological revolutions on human history has fully proved this point. The current urgent situation of the scientific and technological revolution requires a special theory to unify thinking and focus resources. Under the guidance of this thought, we need to "concentrate on grasping the scientific and technological revolution".
To sum up, the development of new quality productivity is mainly driven by three factors, one is original and subversive scientific and technological innovation, the second is the innovative optimal allocation of production factors, and the third is the transformation and upgrading of industries. In fact, our country has been working hard to promote these changes at the practical level for at least 20 years, but the progress is still not satisfactory. At present, the premise of making breakthroughs is that we need to think clearly about two issues: First, what is the source of the real comparative advantage in the development of high-tech industries, and second, how to promote innovation.
Third, the development of new quality productive forces under an open economy is particularly necessary for strong institutional guarantees. For a period of time to come, the mainland needs to speed up the formation and development of new quality productive forces against the background of a higher-level open economy. We believe that it is necessary to comprehensively govern the country according to the law and build a business environment based on the rule of law to lead the formation and development of new quality productive forces under the open economy. We can understand this assertion in many ways.
First, high-quality contract enforcement and protection of property rights and intellectual property rights are the most important sources of comparative advantage for high-tech industries. This is because the more high-end the industry, the more detailed and complex the division of labor within and between industries, the longer the industrial chain, the more important the knowledge attribute of the product connotation, and the more it is necessary to make full use of the best domestic and international resources, so as to rely on the mutual cooperation between domestic and international enterprises. Fair, just and strong contract execution and strong intellectual property protection are the fundamental guarantees for reducing transaction costs between enterprises and promoting smooth cooperation between enterprises.
Second, the market system based on the rule of law is a prerequisite for the realization of "promoting innovation through competition". Innovation has the nature of high investment and high risk, and in the environment of fierce market competition, if there is a lack of intellectual property protection, enterprises cannot fully enjoy the potential intellectual property benefits brought by innovation, and enterprises will not engage in innovation risks. This point deserves our attention particularly against the backdrop of the mainland's current expansion of imports and opening wider to the outside world.
Third, the market system based on the rule of law is a prerequisite for the realization of "promoting innovation through openness". By further opening up and reducing import tariffs on intermediate and capital goods, on the one hand, it can promote foreign technology transfer and independent innovation of local enterprises, and on the other hand, it may also lead enterprises to adopt "take-it-or-leave-it" doctrine and rely more on external products and technologies. When the protection of intellectual property rights is insufficient, the benefits of enterprise innovation cannot be guaranteed, and enterprises will be more inclined to "take-it-or-leave-it" and replace independent innovation with imports.
Fourth, the market system based on the rule of law is a prerequisite for the optimal allocation of factor resources. The key to resource allocation still depends on the investment decision of enterprises, enterprises are the main body of the development of new quality productive forces, and the investment process of enterprises is the process of reorganization and allocation of economic resources in society. The market environment based on the rule of law helps enterprises to organize and use the best resources in the widest range in the best way, and the best way to obtain some resources is to invest in production by the enterprise itself, and the best way to obtain some resources is outsourcing, and so on. On the contrary, when the implementation of the contract is insufficient and the protection of property rights is insufficient, the enterprise may always worry about being extorted by independent suppliers when outsourcing, getting stuck and providing inferior facilities, so the enterprise has to retreat to the "whole industry chain model", resulting in the loss of resource allocation efficiency. A good market system minimizes such losses.
Fifth, the uncertainty of economic policies and business environment is an important obstacle to innovation. Policy uncertainty is a huge obstacle to innovation. A sound market system and economic rule of law can give enterprises relatively stable economic expectations, while economic policies are usually more volatile and unpredictable. As far as promoting innovation is concerned, the mainland needs to replace various temporary economic policies with a sound economic system and the rule of law as much as possible when governing the economy.
In short, under the new environment of an open economy, the mainland needs to concentrate its attention on the scientific and technological revolution and the industrial revolution under the guidance of the idea of new quality productive forces. To develop new quality productive forces, there are thousands of roads, and the rule of law is the first, and the mainland needs to lead the formation and development of new quality productive forces under the open economy by comprehensively governing the country according to law and building a business environment based on the rule of law, and create "new reform dividends in the new era".
Article source: The Paper
WeChat editor: Zhang Jingjing
The National Development Institute of the People's Republic of China is a new type of university think tank with Chinese characteristics that the Chinese University focuses on building with the efforts of the whole university, and the current chairman is Zhang Donggang, secretary of the party committee of the university, and the current president is Lin Shangli, the current president. In 2015, it was selected as one of the first batch of pilot units for the construction of "National High-end Think Tanks" in China, and was selected as one of the top 100 think tanks in the world, and ranked first in the "Top 100 Think Tanks of Chinese Universities" in early 2018. In 2019, it was selected as the first echelon in the comprehensive evaluation of national high-end think tanks, and was the only university think tank selected for the first echelon.
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