From December 11 to 12, 2023, the ** Economic Work Conference was held in Beijing. The meeting comprehensively summarized the economic work in 2023, deeply analyzed the current economic situation, and systematically deployed the economic work in 2024. The meeting pointed out 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 to develop new quality productive forces.
The new qualitative productivity is a fundamental transformation from quantitative change to qualitative change, which relies more on technological progress and the effective use of resources, and is an important support and guarantee for high-quality economic development. From the perspective of the productivity theory of economics, productivity refers to labor productivity, which is a kind of ability of people to produce and create social wealth.
In traditional agrarian societies, factors such as land and livestock used for work are factors that determine the level of productivity. The new quality productivity refers to the emerging and high-quality productivity, involving new fields, a wide range and high technical content, and its essence is to integrate scientific and technological innovation resources to concentrate on the development of emerging industries and future industries. Different from the traditional productive forces, its composition not only includes the traditional factors of production and subjects such as laborers, labor objects and labor means, but also information, data, networks, knowledge and technology have also become important components of the productive forces, so the new quality productive forces have the characteristics of technological novelty and high scientific and technological content. Especially driven by the development of the digital economy and digital technology, new processes and new materials are constantly emerging. The process of developing new productive forces is the process of promoting the coordinated development of traditional industries and emerging industries, and it is also the process of accelerating the cross-integration of the real economy and the virtual economy.
The new qualitative productivity marks a qualitative change and leap in the level of productivity, which can be understood as a kind of "non-linear" growth or "step" change, which is often accompanied by the wide application of innovative technologies, fundamental changes in production methods and major adjustments in industrial structure. This enables the new quality productivity to play an important role in promoting industrial innovation and helps to promote a qualitative leap in the level of science and technology. Under the trend of technology-driven and globalization, emerging industries such as information technology, renewable energy and biomedicine have ushered in unprecedented development opportunities. It not only accelerates the technological innovation of related industries, but also gives birth to the cross-integration of technology and knowledge between different fields. Through the introduction of advanced technology platforms such as artificial intelligence, big data analysis and cloud computing, the flow of production factors has become more convenient, and more rapid and accurate feedback can be made to market changes, which has further improved production efficiency and resource allocation efficiency.
Scientific and technological progress leads the transformation and upgrading of the economic development model, which is not only a technological improvement, but also a promotion of the innovation of the entire economic structure and social operation mode, which can make economic growth move towards a more innovative, green and sustainable direction.
Specifically, the new quality productivity is a high-efficiency and high-efficiency productivity, which is different from the productivity development mode that relies on a large amount of resource input and consumes resources and energy with a high degree. The shift from traditional productivity to new quality productivity means more efficient use of resources, reducing over-reliance on finite resources and burdening the environment. Through the introduction of advanced technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things, as well as the optimization of management mode and chain, production efficiency and product quality can be greatly improved. By promoting the use of new materials and new energy, some industries with high energy consumption and high pollution can also be developed and transformed, reducing energy consumption per unit of output value, and reducing the emission of waste gas, wastewater and solid pollutants.
In addition, the new quality productivity also promotes the integration and cross-innovation between industries, such as the deep integration of manufacturing and information technology, and then forms a new industrial form and business model, builds an important bridge connecting economic growth and sustainable development, and promotes the transformation of the economic model from the traditional resource-intensive to the intelligent, knowledge-intensive, and high value-added model.
With the improvement of the quality and growth of scientific and technological innovation and the vigorous integration of high-end industries, promoting high-quality economic development with new quality productivity will become an inevitable choice to adapt to the transformation of China's economic development stage, as well as a strategic measure to cope with the increasingly fierce international competition. In the long run, in the face of key problems such as insufficient investment in science and technology, the need to strengthen the industrial base, the imperfect institutional environment and the need to improve the talent reserve in the development of new quality productive forces, economic development needs to be based on a relaxed innovation environment, strong policy support and perfect legal guarantees. Of course, this process requires the coordination of resources and relationships among stakeholders such as **, industry and research institutions. In particular, there is a need to simplify cumbersome policies and regulations, take effective measures to encourage venture capital, intellectual property protection and market access, and reduce ideological barriers and institutional barriers to innovation and investment.
The author is co-director and researcher of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center of Zhejiang University International Business School
*: China Youth Daily client.