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The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) held in 2022 proposed that "high-quality development is the primary task of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way" and "comprehensively promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with Chinese-style modernization". The great achievements of China's reform and opening up are to a large extent due to the mutual promotion of internal modernization and external globalization. However, in the face of the current situation of major changes in the external environment at any time, how to achieve high-quality development and achieve the goal of the next stage of modernization has become an urgent problem to be solved.
Chinese Modernization Is Not a "Modern Utopia"
Chinese modernization has five distinctive characteristics: first, the modernization of a huge population, second, the modernization of common prosperity for all the people, third, the modernization of the coordination of material civilization and spiritual civilization, the fourth is the modernization of harmonious coexistence between man and nature, and the fifth is the modernization of taking the path of peaceful development.
These five constitute a "five-in-one" all-round and three-dimensional definition of modernization, and are also the highest standard in the process of modernization. Among them, except for the first feature with "Chinese characteristics", the other four characteristics can be said to be universal values, which are the common goals pursued by all countries in the process of modernization.
Although "Chinese-style modernization" originates from the definition of policy level, it is by no means a reconstruction of modern "utopia". On the contrary, these values are the goals and values that China has been pursuing since its reform and opening up, and have been achieved to a certain extent. In other words, these five characteristics of Chinese modernization are policy expressions of the goals pursued by China's practice and practice.
However, great efforts are still needed to achieve the ambitious goal of Chinese-style modernization. First, from a global perspective, if you look at the West and other advanced economies as representatives of modernization, the total population of these countries is about 1 billion, while China's population is more than 1.4 billion. This difference in scale determines the arduousness of achieving Chinese-style modernization.
Second, in terms of the other four characteristics of Chinese modernization, China is not satisfied with the characteristics of countries that have achieved modernization so far. Especially in the context of a huge population, it is enough for people to understand the difficulty of Chinese-style modernization, and it is even more difficult to avoid the uncoordinated modernization of developed countries in all aspects, and to achieve comprehensive and coordinated modernization.
The environment for the realization of Chinese-style modernization has changed dramatically
Chinese modernization needs to be realized in a realistic environment, and today's China faces a complex and volatile internal and external environment.
From the perspective of internal development level, we must adhere to the supporting role of scientific and technological innovation in high-quality development. Since the reform and opening up, China has achieved a great transformation from "standing up" to "getting rich", becoming the world's second largest economy, and building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, but it still needs to realize the leap from "getting rich" to "becoming strong".
Although "modernization" is a composite concept that involves all aspects, including the material, institutional, and social (human) levels, from the experience of modern times, modernization is mainly caused by changes in other aspects caused by scientific and technological progress. Technological change promotes economic, political, and social change, and technological change itself requires internal and external dynamics. In other words, the modernization of technology and other aspects is mutually reinforcing.
The most direct manifestation of scientific and technological progress is the economic development of a country. In terms of economic indicators, there is still a long way to go between China and developed countries. Although some social groups and some regions have reached the level of advanced economies, because of the uneven development, on the whole, our country is still at the level of a middle-income economy.
Although the per capita GDP (gross domestic product) has grown from less than 300 US dollars in the 80s of the 20th century to about 13,000 US dollars today (as of 2023), there is still a big gap with the 50,000~60,000 US dollars of developed economies. As far as the middle-income group is concerned, although the number of this group in China has reached 400 million, the absolute scale is very large, but it only accounts for about 30% of the total population, while the proportion in developed economies is generally 60%~70%, at least more than 50%.
As far as the external environment is concerned, the country is facing more severe challenges. Since the beginning of reform and opening up, our internal modernization and external globalization have gone hand in hand, and the two are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. However, today this no longer exists.
Economic nationalism and trade protectionism prevail in United States and some Western countries. In particular, the United States defines China as the only country that has the ability and will to compete with United States on a global scale, which is also reflected in its China policy and its allies to "stuck" and "systematically decouple" China's high technology.
Although the European Union has used the concept of "de-risking" after taking into account the interests of its enterprises, the United States has also used the concept of "de-risking", for United States, whether it is "decoupling" or "de-risking", its ultimate goal is the same, that is, to contain China's scientific and technological development and maintain its absolute hegemony.
At the same time, the United States is also shaping China's surrounding environment and exerting increasing geopolitical pressure on China. In contrast, China has lost the external conditions that it has been able to do as economies that have successfully navigated the middle-income trap.
How can the goal of Chinese-style modernization be achieved?
The core challenge facing China lies in how to effectively promote high-quality development under complex and volatile internal and external conditions, and achieve the goal of Chinese-style modernization in the next stage.
The realization of high-quality economic development is promoted by many factors, but from the experience of world economic history, whether it is the Western countries that took the lead in completing industrialization, or the late-developing countries and regions that have successfully crossed the middle-income trap and entered the ranks of advanced economies, or the economies that have been trapped in the middle-income trap for a long time, technological upgrading and industrial upgrading based on technological upgrading are the key and core of their transition from middle-income to high-income economies.
Especially for a large economy like China, the importance of technological upgrading is self-evident. Without technological breakthroughs, there can be no high-quality economic development.
For a long time, the international academic community has discussed the "success and failure of countries" frequently, and many of these studies have focused on institutional factors. However, these studies, especially those in the West, tend to be heavily ideological, tending to explain the complex phenomena of development in terms of simplified institutional frameworks.
In fact, there is a close interaction between scientific and technological progress and institutional change. Institutional elements are indeed related to changes in science and technology, that is, institutional elements can both promote the development of science and technology and pose resistance to scientific and technological progress. But in fact, the system belongs to the superstructure, the economy is the foundation, and science and technology are the core of the economy. In modern times, the great social and political changes have been initiated and created by wave after wave of industrial revolutions. In other words, from the perspective of scientific and technological change, we can better see the dynamic mechanism of social progress.
In recent years, my research team has conducted in-depth discussions on China's path to high-quality development, and is committed to elevating it to a strategic study of advanced economies. Through a comparative analysis of advanced economies such as Europe, the United States, Japan in Asia, and the "Asian Tigers" (Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong), as well as some economies in Latin America and Asia that have long been caught in the middle-income trap, we propose a new concept of the "middle-income trap".
The experience of both advanced economies and those caught in the middle-income trap tells us that in order for an economy to move from middle-income to high-income economies, it must overcome the middle-tech trap, or in other words, the key to the middle-income trap is to cross the middle-tech trap.
From an empirical point of view, the transition of an economy from a low to a middle-income level can often be achieved with the help of technologies that have diffusion from developed economies. However, with the exception of some smaller economies, it is difficult for large economies to make the leap from middle-income to high-income economies through pure technology diffusion.
In other words, economies can rely on technology diffusion in the early stages of development to accelerate development by learning to replicate the technologies transferred from advanced economies. However, in order to meet the standards of high-income economies, on the one hand, it is necessary to rely on cultivating "0~1" original technological innovation capabilities; On the other hand, it is also necessary to have the ability to achieve sustainable technological upgrading in the existing technology field, that is, to continuously progress to the highest level within the technical scale of "1~0".
As far as China's technological level is concerned, it is generally at a medium level from multiple perspectives such as supply chain, industrial chain and value chain. Specifically, China faces the following challenges: first, the lack of original technology, that is, the lack of "0~1" technological creation; Second, the development of application technology, even in terms of application technology, China is in the "1 ~ 10" scale is also in the "4 ~ 7" position, lack of "8 ~ 10" technical level, which means that in many areas has not reached the world's top level, many core technologies and key components are still very dependent on foreign countries; Third, China has caught up with or even achieved the world's leading level in some fields of applied technology, but these fields are still in a fragmented state and have not formed a system, or in other words, the overall level of China's technology is far from reaching the all-round and systematic strength.
Zheng Yongnian is currently a professor and dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Hong Kong Chinese Shenzhen, the dean of the Qianhai Institute of International Affairs, the chairman of the Academic Committee of the Institute of Public Policy of South China University of Technology, the chairman of the Guangzhou Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Research Institute, and the honorary dean of the Institute of Political Economy of Shanghai Jiao Tong University.