Cao Dongbo: Expanding Development Advantages Through the Enhancement of Capabilities [1]
Tempering the skills of governance and improving leadership capacity are matters tied to stability and growth; they determine our future direction and overall strategic configuration. For Shanghai to fully play its role as a "dragon's head" in driving and demonstrating the progression of Chinese-path modernization, it must deeply study and implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speeches delivered during his inspection of Shanghai. We must strengthen confidence, temper our skills, prioritize "action" [1], and strive for a "vigorous leap" [2]. We must continuously improve our capacity for strategic agility and strategic initiative, our capacity to focus on the "knotted joints" [3] to overcome formidable difficulties, and our capacity to grasp objective laws and conduct scientific dispatching.
Improving the Capacity for Strategic Agility and Strategic Initiative
Strategy focuses on studying governing laws that possess a global, overarching nature. Being adept at using the correct strategy to achieve set goals is a distinct practical character and political advantage of a Marxist party. Correctly handling the relationship between strategy and tactics is also one of the series of major relationships that must be properly managed to advance Chinese-path modernization. Since strategy concerns the overall situation, one must assess the hour and judge the situation [N], agilely and proactively adjusting stances and tactics according to changing times and circumstances.
Strategic agility and strategic initiative are key capacities for adapting to change, seizing the first opportunity, and leading development in a complex and volatile environment. They represent a dialectical unity of flexibility and adaptability with foresight and proactivity. Only by enhancing strategic agility and strategic initiative can we "nurture new opportunities amid crises and open new frontiers amidst shifting landscapes." Strategic agility requires the ability to keenly capture changes in the situation within a turbulent macro-environment and to flexibly adjust directions and tactics; strategic initiative means being able to actively seize strategic opportunities and skillfully guide the development of the situation when formulating and implementing strategy. These two complement and promote each other, together forming the key elements for survival, development, and prosperity in complex environments.
As General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out, senior cadres must have strong risk perception and foresight—that is, the ability to "know a deer is passing by the swaying grass and rustling leaves, know a tiger is coming by the rising wind in the pines, and know the arrival of autumn throughout the world by the changing color of a single leaf." In the book Xi Jinping in Shanghai, several interviewees discussed the forward-looking strategic thinking Comrade Xi Jinping displayed during his tenure as Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. He promoted the shift from focusing on the development of the "3-2-1" industrial structure [4] in a prioritized order to the collective and integrated development of these industries. In a city as large as Shanghai, how could we afford to lose our manufacturing sector?
Currently, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is accelerating, further highlighting the urgency of speeding up the improvement of scientific and technological innovation capabilities. Artificial intelligence is one of the three "pioneer industries" Shanghai is striving to develop; it concerns the enhancement of the city's functional level and core competitiveness, as well as deep industrial transformation and high-quality development. To improve strategic agility and strategic initiative, we must refocus and reinvest in "Modu Space" [5], further promoting the aggregation of space and factors of production to accelerate the establishment of a national AI highland.
The Central Economic Work Conference proposed supporting major economic provinces to "play the leading role" (tiao daling). Playing the leading role requires not only courage and boldness but also high levels of capability. Shanghai and the relevant provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Delta must provide not only high-quality products but also high-level scientific and technological supply. They must focus on building a more mature and competitive industrial ecosystem, thereby supporting high-quality development nationwide. For Shanghai specifically, it is essential to firmly grasp the opportunities presented by the accelerated construction of the "Five Centers" [6], the optimization of trade structures, industrial transformation and upgrading, scientific innovation, talent aggregation, and "going global" development. We must correctly handle the relationships between "establishing the new and breaking the old" [7], the internal and the external, and the "trees" and the "forest." We should better expand new development advantages through our own capability enhancement and effectively hedge against external uncertainties with our own proactivity and certainty.
Improving the Capacity to Focus on "Knotted Joints" and Overcome Formidable Difficulties
Chinese Communists have always possessed a sense of "historical initiative"—the conscious grasping of the historical process. The Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee was epoch-making, initiating the new period of reform, opening up, and socialist modernization. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee was also epoch-making, initiating a new journey of comprehensively deepening reform and advancing reform through systematic and holistic design in the New Era, creating a brand-new situation for reform and opening up. These two "epoch-making" moments reflect a powerful sense of historical initiative and historical turning points formed on the basis of a deep sense of "hardship consciousness" [N].
The so-called "knotted joints" (kenjie) refer to those critical moments and turning points that are worth grasping firmly and where great achievements must be made. Opportunity knocks but once. In a broad sense, this refers to a major period of strategic opportunity for a country or nation; in a narrower sense, it refers to the rare "vantage points" in urban development. Just as "only in the chaos of a raging sea does a hero show his true colors," focusing on the "knotted joints" requires us to overcome formidable difficulties. This is a process of "gnawing on hard bones" and overcoming "chokepoint" [8] problems. In essence, it involves facing and resolving fundamental dilemmas that restrict high-quality development with a spirit of perseverance and innovative breakthroughs. Focusing on the "knotted joints" emphasizes precisely targeting key links and bottleneck problems and concentrating major resources and superior forces to achieve breakthroughs. Only by daring to touch deep-seated "pain points" and "blocking points" can the potential for development be truly released. Overcoming formidable difficulties means forging ahead despite hardships after identifying the "knotted joints," demonstrating the courage and determination to conquer challenges until a breakthrough is achieved.
Focusing on the "knotted joints" and overcoming formidable difficulties means showing extraordinary perseverance in the face of "hard bones," sparking innovation before "chokepoint" barriers, and thereby transforming difficulties into advantages, pain points into momentum, and bottlenecks into thoroughfares. For example, developing high-end manufacturing provides solid support for enhancing the city's functional level and core competitiveness; focusing on reducing costs and increasing efficiency, we should analyze the difficult problems surrounding key enterprises to find effective breakthroughs; and we should encourage various districts to cultivate their own specialized "tracks," seizing key links that drive the industrial chain and continuously increasing the density and intensity of innovation and industrial factors.
Improving the Capacity to Grasp Objective Laws and Conduct Scientific Dispatching
Marxist philosophy has always attached great importance to the study of objective laws. This research includes not only universal laws but also the inherent value ideals based on these universal laws. Laws are the inherent connections in the process of the movement of matter itself; their objective existence and function do not change according to human will. Only by recognizing the essence, grasping laws, guiding practice, and transforming the world—specifically by deepening our understanding of the laws of the CPC's governance, the laws of socialist construction, and the laws of the development of human society—can we better grasp law-governed necessity, enhance proactivity, reduce blindness, and overcome onesidedness.
Scientifically grasping the laws of urban development and efficiently dispatching resources is the key to ensuring that all aspects of urban work proceed smoothly. Grasping laws requires a deep insight into the inherent logic and long-term trends of economic and social development, using these as the basis for decision-making and action. Scientific dispatching means precisely and rationally arranging resources and tasks in the process of resource allocation, project implementation, and work advancement based on actual conditions and objective laws, so as to maximize efficiency and benefit.
As early as 2007, when Comrade Xi Jinping conducted research in Baoshan District, he enjoined local cadres to deeply grasp the trends and laws of industrial structure optimization and upgrading. He urged them to vigorously develop advanced manufacturing and achieve integrated industrial development by focusing on the advancement of producer services. Today, the broad masses of cadres in Shanghai must likewise learn to improve their capacity for grasping laws and scientific dispatching through a deep understanding of market laws, industrial laws, and technological laws. They must gain insight into industrial trends, accurately grasp the mechanisms of enterprise aggregation, find "work handles" [9] that have a leading and leveraging effect, and purposefully "mend short boards" [10] and strengthen weak links.
For example, based on the characteristics of different service sectors, we should implement classified and precise policies for producer services, knowledge-intensive services, and consumer services. Producer services should seize the opportunities of digitalization, intelligence, and green transformation, exploring mechanisms for cross-industry integration, supporting new models of service-oriented manufacturing, and accelerating the cultivation of influential "unicorn" enterprises and public service platforms. Knowledge-intensive services, especially scientific and technological services, should improve the supply of policies and institutions, accelerate the expansion of concept verification centers, pilot-scale testing and maturation platforms, and industrial investment funds, and perfect the sci-tech innovation service system to better support the development of tech startups. Consumer services should optimize the structure of service providers, explore the cultivation of "employee-system" social service enterprises [11], strengthen the training of high-skilled talent, and accelerate the construction of service standard systems.
It must be recognized that continuously improving these capacities is not only a core element of urban development but also the cornerstone of achieving high-quality development. On this basis, we must strengthen a style of work characterized by consistency and seeing things through to the end. With the "spirit of driving a nail" [12], we must strike hammer after hammer, intensifying our drive to go deeper and progress further. We must continuously make new discoveries, inventions, creations, and advancements, demonstrating new actions and creating new achievements.
(The author is a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Committee, Director of the Propaganda Department, and Professor at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics)
Source: Guangming Daily (January 7, 2024)