Original title: Cultivating new quality productivity and empowering high-quality development.
On September 7, 2023, when presiding over a symposium on promoting the comprehensive revitalization of Northeast China in the new era in Heilongjiang Province, the general secretary pointed out: "Actively cultivate strategic emerging industries such as new energy, new materials, advanced manufacturing, and electronic information, actively cultivate future industries, accelerate the formation of new quality productivity, and enhance new momentum for development." On January 31, 2024, the general secretary emphasized at the 11th collective study of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China that high-quality development needs to be guided by new productivity theories, and new quality productivity has been formed in practice and has shown a strong driving force and support for high-quality development. The theory of new qualitative productive forces enriches and develops Marxist political economy, and is an important part of China's independent knowledge system of economics.
The basic meaning of the new quality of productivity.
The concept of new quality productivity was put forward by General Secretary Xi during his inspection in Northeast China. New qualitative productive forces are an important category in Marxist philosophy and political economy. The so-called "new quality" refers to the fact that the new quality productivity is different from the traditional productive forces in the general sense, and the new quality productive forces are the productive forces produced by achieving key and disruptive technological breakthroughs, and the advanced productive forces with new technologies, new economies, and new forms of business as the main connotations. The new qualitative productive forces are different from the concepts of "spiritual productive forces", "natural productive forces" and "scientific productive forces" put forward by Marx, and it does not emphasize a single factor of production, but highlights the comprehensive transcendence of the "new" factors of production over the old factors of production.
In general, the new quality productivity is born by the revolutionary breakthrough of technology, the innovative allocation of production factors, and the deep transformation and upgrading of industries, with the leap of laborers, labor materials, labor objects and their optimal combination as the basic connotation, and the substantial increase in total factor productivity as the core symbol. The foundation of the new quality productive forces is innovation, the core is high quality, and the essence is the advanced productive forces, which is the innovation and development of the Marxist theory of productive forces, and the concrete embodiment of the modernization of the productive forces. Compared with traditional productivity, new quality productivity has a higher level of technology, better quality, higher efficiency and more sustainability.
The deep logic of new quality productivity empowering high-quality development.
The new quality productive forces are a concept relative to the traditional productive forces, and they are the products of the continuous accumulation and development of the social productive forces to a certain stage. The generation of new quality productivity is the result of the joint promotion of scientific and technological innovation and economic development, which is not only an inevitable choice to achieve high-quality economic development, but also an important way to enhance international competitiveness and achieve sustainable development.
Revolutionary breakthroughs in technology provide innovative impetus for high-quality development. The new technology in the new quality productivity is the transcendence of the traditional imitation and gradual scientific and technological innovation, and the breakthrough of forward-looking and subversive key core technologies, with high-tech, high-efficiency and high-quality advanced quality, covering artificial intelligence, quantum information, blockchain, 5G communication, new energy, new materials, biotechnology and other emerging technologies and future technologies. Once the breakthrough technology embedded in the new quality productivity emerges, it will effectively promote the continuous emergence of strategic emerging industries and future industries, help traditional industries continue to climb into high value-added and high-efficiency industries, and enhance the resilience of regional industries and the independent and controllable ability of the industrial chain.
The optimal allocation of new production factors provides new momentum for high-quality development. Different from traditional factors of production, the new quality productivity contains new factors of production, and the dual identities of both labor means and labor objects are incorporated into production, surpassing the basic attributes and value creation capabilities of traditional production factors, and forming a new development momentum. The innovative application of new factors of production in the practice of industrial development not only improves the total factor productivity in the two major links of production and consumption, but also further transforms into new knowledge after the innovative application, and with the blessing of "data + computing power + algorithm", it continues to generate interactive feedback with users, continuously optimizes R&D design, meets the personalized and experiential needs of users, and better realizes R&D innovation iteration.
The emergence of strategic emerging industries and future industries provides the main support for high-quality development. Through technological innovation, model innovation and business innovation, a number of strategic emerging industries and future industries have been able to grow, and continue to absorb and integrate new technologies and new elements, forming an advanced and complete industrial chain from research and development, production, sales to service, which has greatly promoted the regional industrial value chain and international division of labor, and at the same time driven the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. In particular, for those forward-looking future industries, once they cross the inflection point of explosive growth, the first installers will obtain huge "innovation rents" and continue to occupy the first-mover advantage, becoming a strong support for the high-quality development of the regional economy.
Cultivate a practical path for new quality productivity to empower high-quality development.
In the fourth wave of industrial revolution, China is gradually moving towards the ranks of high-income countries, the labor cost advantage is no longer prominent in the world, and the traditional manufacturing and real estate industries as the main engines to drive high economic growth are not sustainable. As a leap in the energy level of productivity, the new quality productivity is in line with the internal requirements of China's high-quality economic development, and it is necessary to make every effort to promote and accelerate development.
Strengthen the key core technology tackling. Key core technologies are the core of new quality productivity and the first driving force to promote high-quality economic development. At present, the outstanding problem facing the high-quality development of China's economy is that the breakthrough of forward-looking and disruptive key core technologies is insufficient, and it is urgent to make overall arrangements and systematically tackle key problems. It is necessary to give full play to the institutional advantages of China's socialism in concentrating on major affairs, continue to carry out periodic identification of key technologies, focus on new trends in future scientific and technological development, form innovation consortiums, and accelerate the overall scientific and technological research in weak and short fields. It is necessary to pay attention to the role of the "main force" and "leader" of the industrial chain length enterprises in basic research and technology application innovation, drive all kinds of business entities, collaboratively solve the key core technical problems of the industry, and create an industrial innovation ecology with complementary advantages and open integration.
Promote the integration and penetration of new production factors such as data. The new factors of new quality productivity include not only the "quality upgrading" of traditional production factors, but also the embedding and integration of digital and intelligent new production factors represented by data elements in the era of digital economy. Different from the traditional factors of production that follow the law of invariant remuneration of scale, data elements are incorporated into production with the dual identities of both labor materials and labor objects, which have dependence multiplication and intensive substitution, surpass the basic attributes of traditional production factors and the ability to create value, and become an important force in the development of new quality productive forces. At this stage, it is necessary to accelerate the improvement of the collaborative linkage and deep integration mechanism between data elements and other production factors such as capital, labor, technology and the industrial environment, and optimize the combination structure and matching efficiency between factors through the digital reengineering and transformation of all factors in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain. With the help of the model of "cloud computing + computing power + data", we will build a bridge of data elements, integrate and build an all-round innovation chain and an ecological network system for the interconnection of the industrial chain, promote the valueization process of data elements in production activities and value creation, realize the knowledge spillover and sharing of all main links of the industrial chain, and provide inexhaustible power for the modernization and development of the whole industrial chain.
Develop and expand strategic emerging industries. The formation and development of new quality productivity requires a forward-looking layout of strategic emerging industries and future industries to provide core support for the construction of a modern industrial system. In the next stage, we should focus on promoting the development of strategic emerging industries and strengthening global competitiveness. It is necessary to focus on the new generation of information technology, integrated circuits, medicine and health, new energy vehicles and intelligent networked vehicles, artificial intelligence, intelligent equipment and other strategic emerging industries, actively create a national strategic emerging industry base, promote the deep integration of strategic emerging industries across fields, industries and clusters, and form a number of strategic emerging industrial clusters with complete industrial chains, distinctive industrial characteristics, outstanding leading advantages and international competitiveness.
Forward-looking layout of future industries. The first economic work conference held a few days ago proposed: "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 quality productive forces." "The future industry is led by original science and technology, with cutting-edge intersection, subversive and other characteristics, which can lead new demand, stimulate new kinetic energy, and meet the requirements of the development of new quality productivity. From a global perspective, the world's economic powers have successively introduced and implemented future industrial development plans and investment plans, strengthened cutting-edge technology research and development, innovated future industry incubation, and actively sought the leading power of future industrial development. In the next stage, it is necessary to vigorously support the existing industry leaders to lay out the frontier areas of the future industry, rely on innovative technologies and digital platforms to form an open and sharing mechanism, and accelerate the promotion of a number of future industrial clusters that lead the world, such as future manufacturing, future information, future materials, future energy, future space and future health.
Continue to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. Traditional industries are the foundation of a modern industrial system. Once any traditional industry is empowered by science and technology, it is possible to upgrade the chain and transform into a modern industry. It is necessary to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries as the basic foundation for building a modern industrial system, actively guide traditional enterprises to increase technological transformation and equipment investment, and promote the transformation of traditional industries to achieve high-end, digital intelligence and green transformation. It is necessary to give full play to the enabling role of data elements, promote the digital transformation of all elements of traditional industries, realize the organic integration of the industrial Internet and the consumer Internet, and make a number of new manufacturing, new services and new business formats better and stronger, so as to lay a solid foundation for cultivating and forming new quality productivity.
Wu Dejin, the author is a special researcher at the Fujian Provincial Research Center for Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era, and the director and researcher of the Institute of Contemporary Marxism of the Fujian Academy of Social Sciences
*:Fujian**.