Editor's note:On February 28, the 2023 China Enterprise Reform and Development Summit and Results Conference, hosted by the China Enterprise Reform and Development Research Association and the China Enterprise Reform 50 Forum, was held in Beijing. With the theme of "Developing New Quality Productivity and Enhancing Core Competitiveness", the summit brought together guests to collide views, share practices, stir wisdom, and talk about development. The following is a speech by Huang Qunhui, member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Huang Qunhui, member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and director of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
In the 11th collective study of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China on January 31, the general secretary gave a comprehensive explanation of the concept of "new quality productivity", proposing that innovation plays the main role, get rid of the traditional mode of economic growth, and the development path of productivity has high-tech, high-efficiency and high-quality signs, especially in line with the new development concept. High-quality development is the primary task of Chinese-style modernization, and high-quality development is in line with the new development concept. Therefore, the general secretary has repeatedly emphasized that the development of new quality productivity is the key requirement and important focus of promoting high-quality development.
Let me explain the basic meaning and the core symbols.
Basic connotation. The technological revolution has broken through the innovative allocation of production factors, and the deep transformation of the industry has given birth to new quality productivity. Then take the laborers, labor materials, labor objects and their optimal combination as the fundamental connotation. The three elements of production are the laborer, the means of labor, and the object of labor. However, the new quality productive forces must be a new type of laborer, a new type of labor materials, and a new type of labor object, and in addition to the "new type", there must also be an optimal combination.
Total factor productivity (TFP) is a concept in Western economics, with a significant increase in TFP as the core symbol. The characteristic is innovation, the key is high quality, and the essence is new quality productivity.
New qualitative productivity is a complex system, and any system can be explained from its three dimensions: composition, structure and function.
The modern industrial system should be transformed and upgraded by traditional industries, and then try to make the proportion of strategic emerging industries higher and higher, including future industries. The modern industrial structure forms the structural carrier of new quality productivity.
This structure needs to play a corresponding function, which needs to meet the requirements of the new development concept, promote high-quality development, and ultimately achieve the improvement of total factor productivity.
From the perspective of modernization, the core of the development of new quality productivity is to promote the improvement of human beings' ability to transform nature.
In order to develop future industries and strategic emerging industries and cultivate new quality productive forces, our production relations need to be coordinated with new quality productive forces, and our scientific research system, economic system, and education system need to carry out corresponding deepening reforms, especially the income distribution system.
From the perspective of the main body of innovation, the role of universities in the future industry is also increasing, so we often say that colleges and universities need to extend to basic research in order to carry out industrialization, so as to have long-term competitiveness. Therefore, it is important to promote cooperation between universities and enterprises.
In addition to large enterprises, it is also necessary to create some small and medium-sized enterprises with disruptive innovation, and create an ecological environment for small and medium-sized enterprises that can achieve disruptive innovation, so that they can develop. There are many public carrier platforms, that is, new scientific research organizations, including some future industrial research institutes, which need to be continuously explored. This process is long and risky, so it requires a series of common technology R&D institutions and new R&D institutions.
For state-owned enterprises, I think there are two main problems.
One is that R&D investment is insufficient. Looking at the R&D investment of 2,500 large industrial enterprises in the world in 2021, it can be seen that there are 822 in the United States, and the R&D investment intensity is 78, the average household is 5400 million euros; China has 678 companies, but the intensity of R&D investment is only half that of the United States. In my opinion, it is a major social responsibility for state-owned enterprises to strive to be the source of original technology, so state-owned enterprises should increase investment in research and development.
The other is the issue of innovation. There are three key points in the process of innovation: first, the entrepreneurial spirit, which should mobilize the entrepreneurs of state-owned enterprises to give full play to their innovation ability and grasp market opportunities; the second is the assessment mechanism, which should explore a long-term assessment mechanism; The third is the fault-tolerant mechanism, which allows entrepreneurs to innovate and take risks, but also to be fault-tolerant and long-term. Of course, fault tolerance is not an easy problem to solve. At present, when we go to the state-owned enterprises to investigate, it is generally believed that the incentive to tolerate failure is actually relatively small, so it is necessary to further deepen the reform in this area in order to truly cultivate new quality productive forces.