The new quality productivity has a generation mechanism that is very different from the traditional productivity. To lead the development of global breakthrough technological innovation, strategic emerging industries and future industries, it is necessary to be able to provide a more suitable institutional and policy environment for breakthrough technological innovation, strategic emerging industries and future industrial development ahead of other countries. Removing institutional obstacles that are not conducive to the development of new quality productivity is a necessary condition for the leading development of new quality productivity, and providing a more effective incremental system than other countries is essential for the development of new quality productivity. First, it is necessary to give full play to the overall coordinating role of the new national system in appropriate fields and at specific stages of industrial development; second, on the premise of changing the development orientation of local governments, we should give full play to the creativity and enthusiasm of local governments in promoting the development of new productive forces.
The process of this leap is not only a process of the emergence of breakthrough technologies and new industries, but also a process of changing and forming the industrial development system, policies, and innovation systems that match the technical and economic characteristics of these breakthrough technologies and new industries. The key to whether the new quality of productivity can take root, sprout and grow in China lies in whether China can be ahead of other countries and provide a more suitable institutional soil and policy environment for the new quality of productivity.
The picture shows the production scene in a manufacturing company in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, on October 23, 2023. Photo/ China News Service
The key to the new quality of productivity lies in the novelty of its generation mechanism
General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that it is necessary to integrate scientific and technological innovation resources, lead the development of strategic emerging industries and future industries, and accelerate the formation of new quality productivity. The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2023 once again emphasized that "it is necessary to promote industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation, especially to promote new industries, new models and new kinetic energy with disruptive technologies and cutting-edge technologies, and develop new qualitative productive forces." "On the whole, the recent discussion on the new quality of productivity mainly focuses on the connotation and extension of the new quality of productivity itself, such as emphasizing that the new quality of productivity includes strategic emerging industries and future industries based on scientific and technological innovation, emphasizing that the characteristics of the new quality of productivity are new technology, new products, new business forms, or emphasizing that the core characteristics of the new quality of productivity are digitalization and greening. However, a careful analysis shows that these connotations and extensions are the externalization characteristics of the new quality productivity, the generation mechanism of the new quality productivity is its internal prescriptiveness, and the externalization characteristics of the new quality productivity are the result of its generation mechanism. If the policy and academic circles cannot outline the uniqueness of the new quality productivity in terms of the generation mechanism, the excessive attention of governments at all levels and the rush of various investment entities will not only not promote the high-quality development of the new quality of productivity, but may even hinder and destroy the formation of new quality productivity.
The new quality productivity is the direction of scientific and technological progress and industrial upgrading proposed by the CPC Central Committee and the State Council to effectively respond to internal and external risks and challenges in the context of great changes unseen in a century, which can reflect the requirements of the new development pattern and relative to the traditional productive forces.
From the perspective of technological form, the scientific and technological progress corresponding to the traditional productive forces is mainly imitation innovation and digestion, absorption and re-innovation, while the technological progress corresponding to the new quality productive forces is mainly original innovation. It can be seen that the difference between the new quality productivity and the traditional productivity is not driven by scientific and technological innovation. Under the traditional mode of development, science and technology are also the primary productive forces, but the main way of scientific and technological progress on which the traditional productive forces are based is technological absorption and secondary innovation, and the scientific and technological progress that drives the development of new productive forces is a breakthrough innovation dominated by me.
From the perspective of industrial forms, the industries corresponding to the traditional productive forces are labor-intensive industries, capital-intensive industries, and high-tech industries that have gradually developed in the developed countries. The traditional productive forces are the productive forces that drive China's economic development under the condition that China's technological level is relatively backward and the industrial system is relatively incomplete, and its core role is to drive the rapid expansion of China's economic scale and economic system. Corresponding to this development idea, governments at all levels emphasize that the focus of industrial development is on leading industries and pillar industries, which either have a large economic volume in themselves, or have a strong forward and backward correlation, and the core characteristics are scale and growth. The new quality productivity corresponds to strategic emerging industries and future industries. Although the new quality productivity is also the driving force of a country's long-term growth, its more important prescriptiveness is the carrier of a country's core competitiveness, and it is a landmark achievement that can represent a country's unique contribution to the world's industrial civilization.
The picture shows the FAW Jiefang J7 vehicle intelligent factory in Changchun, Jilin Province, which relies on the industrial Internet and big data technology to create a new intelligent manufacturing model of personalized customization and networked collaboration. Photo/ China News Service
The paradigm of technological innovation has changed from imitation innovation to original innovation, and the direction of industrial upgrading has changed from pillar industries and leading industries to strategic emerging industries and future industries. The enterprise competition paradigm of new quality productivity is large-scale trial and error, while the enterprise competition paradigm of traditional productivity is large-scale follow-up. The generation of new and traditional productive forces is the result of enterprise competition, but the market competition mechanism that promotes the development of the two productive forces is different. In the process of the development of China's traditional productive forces, the industries corresponding to these productive forces are mature industries that have completed large-scale trial and error in developed countries, and the leading technical routes and business models of these industries have been established. In this context, the traditional way of generating productivity is large-scale follow-up, including the large-scale follow-up of Chinese enterprises starting from low-end products and marginal markets in the early stage of large-scale transfer of foreign production capacity to China, and the later stage of large-scale follow-up by Chinese enterprises through internalizing the technical capabilities and management capabilities of leading enterprises. Although the innovation activities of Chinese enterprises that have successfully achieved catch-up and overtake in the second stage have strong autonomy (Lu Feng, 2006), it is undeniable that the overall innovation ability of Chinese enterprises is still manifested in secondary innovation ability and positive design ability, rather than original innovation ability, and benchmarking the technology and management of leading foreign enterprises is the most important way for Chinese enterprises to improve their ability at this stage. Except for a very small number of industries such as mobile communications, in the vast majority of industries, Chinese enterprises participate in productive competition on the mature technological routes that have been explored by leading countries. Different from the certainty of traditional productivity technology routes and competition paradigms, whether it is a strategic emerging industry such as biomanufacturing, commercial aerospace, and low-altitude economy, or a new track of future industries such as quantum communication and life sciences, its leading technologies are uncertain for both Chinese and foreign enterprises, that is, the leading technologies and business models are still in the emerging stage (Utterback, 1994). For such technologies and industries, a large number of enterprises related to new technologies or unrelated enterprises carry out large-scale trial and error in pursuit of high expected profits, which is the dominant paradigm of industrial technological progress and business maturity, and market competition shows a high degree of dynamics, that is, leading enterprises are often replaced or even eliminated by other enterprises in a short period of time (Geroski, 2003). The formation of a dominant technology route and business model in one country ahead of other countries is the result of the gradual iteration of a large number of enterprises in the process of large-scale trial and error in the face of highly uncertain technical and market opportunities. Although the necessary intervention and coordination of the government is crucial for a very small number of industries with industry-wide technical routes and standards, such as mobile communications (He Jun, 2022), firstly, there are a small number of industries with industry-wide technical routes and standards, and secondly, even for industries with industry-wide technical routes, large-scale technological exploration and diversified competition at the enterprise level are important in the early stage of industrial development. It should be emphasized that large-scale trial and error to promote the development of new productive forces is different from vicious competition or excessive competition that often occurs in the development of traditional productive forces. Vicious competition is the productive competition and price competition of enterprises on the established mature technology route, while large-scale trial and error is the exploration of multi-technology routes carried out by enterprises based on original innovation.
With the new system of supply, we will lead the generation of new quality productivity
The new quality productivity is very different from the generation mechanism of the traditional productivity. If a country wants to lead the development of global breakthrough technological innovation, strategic emerging industries and future industries, it must be able to provide a more suitable institutional and policy environment for breakthrough technological innovation, strategic emerging industries and future industrial development ahead of other countries. On the surface, the competition of global new quality productivity is the competition of science and technology and business model innovation, but behind it is the competition of the supply of systems and policy systems that match the new quality of productivity. This kind of institutional competition is mainly embodied in two aspects: First, whether we can more effectively reform the system and policy supply that cannot match the new quality productive forces; and second, whether we can more effectively supply the incremental system and policies that match the new quality productive forces.
As far as China is concerned, to speed up the formation and development of new-quality productive forces, it is first necessary to conscientiously readjust those traditional systems and policies that are no longer conducive to the development of new-quality productive forces. Since October 2010, when the State Council issued the "Decision on Accelerating the Cultivation and Development of Strategic Emerging Industries", the development of strategic emerging industries in mainland China has been more than ten years, and strategic emerging industries such as new energy, new materials, bioengineering, new generation information technology, green environmental protection, new energy vehicles, artificial intelligence, and high-end equipment have achieved considerable development, especially new energy vehicles and new generation information technology have achieved a phased leading position. However, most strategic emerging industries still face the difficulty of being controlled by others in key technologies and underlying technologies. The industrial security of most strategic emerging industries is still passive security based on domestic substitution, rather than active security based on asymmetric competitive advantage. This shows that there are still factors in our system and policies that restrict the full development of the new quality productive forces. The most prominent problem is that some government management departments still use the development of traditional productive forces to promote the development of new productive forces, such as "choosing winners" to stimulate enterprise innovation, or trying to accelerate the development of strategic emerging industries through large-scale subsidies. However, the dominant development paradigm of new quality productivity is the cutting-edge technological innovation and large-scale trial and error of enterprises in a highly uncertain environment of technology and market. Under conditions of high uncertainty, the government actually lacks the insight to "pick the winner", and the government subsidizes either the "imitation" that stifles real innovation, or the "loser" that inhibits the incentive of breakthrough innovators. In view of the demand for the large-scale trial-and-error development paradigm of new quality productivity, on the one hand, the government should promote the transformation of enterprise competition from traditional capacity competition to innovation competition by strengthening fair competition and intellectual property protection; on the other hand, the government should reduce the intervention and subsidies on production factors (such as capital and land), and instead reduce the cost of enterprises to carry out innovation activities by strengthening the basic research capabilities of research universities and national laboratories, the quality of talent supply in teaching universities, and the pre-competition technology supply level of common technology research and development institutions. At the same time, it makes full use of public needs such as defense, energy, and health to provide a leading market for breakthrough innovations of enterprises. Such a policy system is not only conducive to truly solving the pain points of breakthrough innovation of enterprises, but also can motivate enterprises to internalize their innovation costs (including risks) and benefits to the greatest extent, and fully stimulate the innovation vitality and risk-sharing function of the market itself while avoiding the waste of public resources.
Removing institutional obstacles that are not conducive to the development of new quality productivity is only a necessary condition for the leading development of new quality productivity, and if China is to lead the development of new quality productivity in the world, it must also be able to provide a more effective incremental system than other countries. The emergence of new qualitative productive forces is not a new thing that has emerged since mankind entered the industrial society. The mechanization of industrial production driven by steam engine technology in the first industrial revolution of the 18th century, the great development of modern chemical industry driven by chemical technology in the late 19th century, the large-scale production driven by electrification technology in the second industrial revolution in the first half of the 20th century, the boom of lean manufacturing in Japan after the 70s of the 20th century, and then the information revolution driven by Internet technology at the end of the 20th century, were all new quality productivity representing the most advanced level of global productivity at that time. From the perspective of institutional supply, the countries of origin of these new quality productivity have provided unique institutional innovation for the birth of new quality productivity in a specific period, such as the United Kingdom has provided a more effective system than other countries in protecting the property rights and intellectual property rights of entrepreneurs, Germany has taken the lead in the world in the construction of research universities and enterprise R&D centers, and the United States has formed an important breakthrough in the development of modern capital markets, providing lower-cost intellectual property protection and a more perfect modern company system and anti-monopoly. The development-oriented government has carried out active and effective coordination to promote industrial catch-up, and so on. Both theory and historical experience indicate that if China can become the leader of a new wave of science and technology and industrial transformation, it will also need to complete the mission of providing a new system that matches the new quality of productive forces.
In the fierce competition between countries in science and technology and industry, the following two aspects are likely to be China's unique institutional capabilities in leading the generation of new quality productivity in the world: first, in appropriate fields (such as fields where industry-wide technical routes and standards exist) and at specific stages of industrial development (such as after the emergence of leading technology routes and business models), the overall coordination role of the new national system is effectively played, making it an important supplement to the effective market and playing a unique and irreplaceable role in the inter-state competition (He Jun, 2022), and second, under the premise of changing the development orientation of local governmentsto give full play to the creativity and enthusiasm of China's local governments in promoting the development of new quality productive forces, and make them a hub for the flow and interaction of resources, information and knowledge between the state, enterprises and community organizations.
Disclaimer: This article is transferred from China Development Watch, and the original author is He Jun. The content of the article is the original author's personal point of view, and this official account is compiled/reprinted only to share and convey different views, if you have any objections, please contact us!
Transferred from丨China Development Observation
Author丨He Jun
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