Tao Feng and Xu Yang: Leading the Construction of a Modernized Industrial System with New Quality Productive Forces
General Secretary Xi Jinping has emphasized: "New quality productive forces are characterized by innovation playing the leading role. They break away from traditional economic growth modes and development paths for productive forces, featuring high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. They are advanced states of productive forces that align with the New Development Philosophy." This significant thesis profoundly demonstrates that new quality productive forces represent the most active and driving components of the industrial system, serving as the critical engine for promoting the construction of a modernized industrial system and achieving high-quality development. We must gain a deep understanding of the profound significance and primary directions for leading the modernized industrial system through new quality productive forces, providing the institutional and mechanistic guarantees for their development.
Developing new quality productive forces is an inherent requirement for constructing a modernized industrial system
An industrial system is a whole composed of various interconnected industries; the modernization of an industrial system is a process of dynamic evolution in which new quality productive forces continuously replace traditional ones. New quality productive forces are an advanced state of productive forces catalyzed by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, the innovative allocation of factors of production, and the deep transformation and upgrading of industries. Disruptive and frontier technological innovations give rise to new industries, new models, and new growth drivers, promoting a steady increase in the proportion of emerging industries while traditional industries relatively decline, thereby continuously optimizing the internal structure of the industrial system. The new scientific and technological revolution not only helps improve the productivity of traditional factors of production and catalyzes new factors (such as data factors) but also promotes adjustments in the methods of factor allocation. This makes new quality productive forces an important support for enhancing the functionality, resilience, and efficiency of the industrial system. Traditional industries obtain new growth curves by grafting new technologies and models, achieving deep transformation and upgrading, which constitutes another important path by which new quality productive forces currently lead the construction of a modernized industrial system.
Developing new quality productive forces is the critical engine for China’s current construction of a modernized industrial system. Presently, disruptive and frontier technologies—such as artificial intelligence, energy and environment, life sciences, and aerospace—are exhibiting cluster-style breakthroughs. This has made "intelligentization," "greening," and "integration" the major trends of the global scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, as well as the most active fields for generating new quality productive forces. These new technologies, products, and "new tracks" [1] can fill the missing parts and weak links of China's existing industrial system, thereby enhancing its integrity. Meanwhile, compared to traditional industries, the technological gap between China and developed countries in these emerging industrial fields is relatively smaller. This is conducive to China achieving technological catch-up and forming a state of "running alongside" or even "leading the race," which holds great strategic significance for enhancing the advanced nature of China’s modernized industrial system. Furthermore, new quality productive forces rooted in disruptive and frontier technologies are a key means to solve the "bottleneck" [2] problems of key technologies imposed by developed countries, helping China build a modernized industrial system that is more autonomous, controllable, secure, and stable.
The primary directions for leading the construction of a modernized industrial system via new quality productive forces
First, focus on the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, promoting the advancement of the industrial foundation and the modernization of industrial chains, and accelerating the movement of manufacturing toward high-end, intelligent, green, and integrated development. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that developing new quality productive forces does not mean neglecting or abandoning traditional industries. "Traditional" does not equal "backward." Driven by the new technological revolution, traditional industries have great potential; by grafting artificial intelligence and digital technology, they can be completely transformed into new quality productive forces characterized by high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. For example, Guangzhou Zhijing Information Technology Co., Ltd. used its newly developed "Flysow" (飞梭智纺) digital-intelligence system to upgrade more than 9,000 textile enterprises across the entire industrial chain. This allowed upstream and downstream enterprises to achieve precise and efficient alignment in R&D, product matching, and order procurement, pushing the industry's capacity utilization rate from 60% to 80%.
Second, focus on the innovative application of frontier technologies, accelerating the strategic layout of emerging and future industries. The current cluster-style emergence of new technologies in various fields brings huge opportunities for integrated innovation and entrepreneurship in strategic emerging industries and future industries, making these the key areas for generating new quality productive forces. We must emphasize cultivating emerging and future industries "from nothing" (无中生有) through the industrial application of frontier technologies. Even more importantly, we must focus on integrated innovation between traditional and emerging technologies to cultivate emerging and future industries "from the old to the new" (有中生新) derived from traditional industries. For example, the Huangpu District of Guangzhou has initially formed a complete low-altitude economy industrial chain—integrating design, R&D, and application services—gathering 50 key enterprises with an industrial scale of nearly 13 billion yuan.
Third, construct a new system of high-quality, high-efficiency modern services and promote the deep integration of modern services with advanced manufacturing. Judging from industrial development trends, AI and digital technologies are profoundly changing the business models, service methods, and management methods of the service industry. This creates new tracks, new models, new growth drivers, and new value, making the service industry—especially producer services—an important direction for the development of new quality productive forces. We must fully utilize emerging technologies to activate new scenarios and growth drivers for consumer services and promote the deep integration of producer services with manufacturing. For example, Dongguan Yiheda (怡合达), as a one-stop supplier of domestic Factory Automation (FA) components, has in recent years successfully transformed into a service-oriented manufacturing enterprise through standard-setting, supply chain management, and platform operation innovation, strengthening its professional level while improving its ability to handle upstream and downstream risks.
Fourth, guide agriculture to "connect the secondary and tertiary sectors" (接二连三) [3], developing in integration with manufacturing and services to promote the transition from traditional agriculture to modernized "large-scale agriculture." We must accelerate the promotion of rejuvenating agriculture through science and technology, increase efforts to tackle key core technologies in germplasm [4], and achieve self-reliance and self-strengthening in seed industry technology while ensuring that seed sources are autonomous and controllable. We must accelerate digital empowerment, using modern information technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data to develop smart agriculture and utilize digital marketing models to optimize and upgrade agricultural product market channels. For example, Jiangmen, Guangdong, established the "Xinhui Chenpi Big Data Platform" to monitor the planting, processing, warehousing, planting intention, yield estimation, cost-benefit, and market sales data of Xinhui citrus in an all-around way, achieving digitalization of the entire industrial chain. Through digital empowerment, the total output value of the Xinhui Chenpi industry has exceeded 30 billion yuan since 2020, driving an average per-capita income increase of 20,000 yuan for farmers.
Fifth, coordinate the development of traditional and new types of infrastructure to build a modernized infrastructure system that is comprehensive, efficient, practical, green, intelligent, secure, and reliable. The focus of traditional infrastructure construction lies in opening up "capillaries" [5], continuing to strengthen weak links, enhance strengths, and tap potential. The new quality productive forces catalyzed by the new round of technological revolution require an upgrade from traditional "thermal and electric power" to "network and computing power." We must accelerate the construction of new types of infrastructure. As a pilot area for "new city construction" designated by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, Nanshan District in Shenzhen took the lead in creating the "Zhen Wisdom" (圳智慧) CIM "one-network management" platform within a 4-square-kilometer area of Houhai. By importing BIM models of important buildings and integrating urban operation data such as people, housing, and space, it provides a unified urban base map, construction framework, and platform capacity support for various application sectors, initially constructing a "Digital Twin Nanshan."
Institutional and mechanistic guarantees for leading the construction of a modernized industrial system via new quality productive forces
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that we must deepen reforms in the science and technology, education, and talent systems to remove the "congestion points" and "bottlenecks" hindering the development of new quality productive forces. Facing global competition for new quality productive forces, China must strengthen the supply of "new quality relations of production" and form institutional mechanisms and policy systems more suitable for their development.
Leverage the advantages of the New Whole-Nation System [6] to promote the deep integration of industrial and innovation chains and enhance the original supply capacity of industrial technology. We must quickly resolve the "two separate skins" [7] problem between scientific innovation and industrial development, forming institutional mechanisms for collaborative innovation among industry, academia, and research. This will effectively push basic and applied research in universities and institutes to focus on solving key scientific problems regarding core and common technologies in key industries. To this end, the roles of the government, market, and society in the allocation of innovation resources must be adjusted accordingly. We must effectively leverage the global coordination role of the New Whole-Nation System in specific industrial fields and technical stages, making it an important supplement to the effective market. Under the premise of strengthening fair market competition and intellectual property protection, the government should, on the one hand, increase investment in basic research from the technical supply side and, on the other hand, provide market-cultivation support via government procurement from the market demand side.
Lead the growth of new quality productive forces through cross-sector integrated innovation and break down institutional barriers to integrated industrial development. Currently, the crossover, penetration, and integration of emerging technologies are constantly creating new products, business forms, and models that span traditional industrial boundaries. This leads to transformative breakthroughs in traditional industries and rapid growth in emerging industries, making cross-sector integrated innovation a key path for the generation of new quality productive forces and the expansion and quality enhancement of the industrial system. We must strive to break down administrative and industry entry barriers, encouraging cross-sector entry, integrated innovation, and resource sharing. On one hand, we should promote horizontal and vertical integration of industrial sectors, especially the cross-sector integration of emerging and traditional industries and the extension of industrial chains. On the other hand, we should strengthen the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, encouraging AI and digital technology to broaden application scenarios in traditional manufacturing, services, and agriculture.
Clarify the foundational status of competition policy and accelerate the formation of an industrial policy system that catalyzes new quality productive forces. The development process of new industries, models, and growth drivers based on disruptive and frontier technologies often faces high uncertainty and cannot succeed without large-scale trial-and-error screening by market entities. To this end, we must strengthen the pre-emptive and foundational role of competition policy within the industrial policy system, while accelerating the transition from selective industrial policies to functional industrial policies, further cultivating and enhancing the decisive role of market mechanisms in the development of new quality productive forces. We should provide inclusive policies for the entire market level and increase the supply of institutional public goods, such as high-quality market competition rules and innovation incentive mechanisms, to improve the market environment and policy conditions for catalyzing new quality productive forces.
Accelerate the construction of a National Unified Large Market [8], transform the incentive orientation of local governments, and promote the construction of a regional division of labor and cooperation system. Regions achieve coordinated development through industrial complementarity, while industrial layouts achieve structural optimization through regional division of labor. We must transform the evaluation and incentive system for local governments, guiding them from a traditional mindset of developing productive forces to a mindset of developing new quality productive forces. This requires breaking down barriers to factor mobility and homogeneous competition between regions to optimize the spatial layout of new quality productive forces. We must build a national unified large market that is efficient, standardized, fair in competition, and fully open, truly leveraging the huge advantages of an ultra-large-scale market in aggregating resources, motivating innovation, optimizing the division of labor, and promoting competition, making it the market cornerstone for the development of new quality productive forces and a modernized industrial system.
(The authors are respectively Dean of the Institute of Industrial Economics at Jinan University and Director of the Research Center for the Modernized Industrial System of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area; and an Appointed Youth Researcher at the School of Economics and Trade, Foshan University) Source: Chinese Social Sciences Net – China Social Sciences Today Web Editor: Huihui