He Jianfeng and Chen Qiru: Accelerating the Development of New Quality Productive Forces by Using the Deep Integration of the Digital and Real Economies as a Point of Leverage [1]
"Digital-real integration" (the integration of the digital economy and the real economy) uses digital technological innovation and diffusion as its primary fulcrum and the utilization of data elements as its internal form. By achieving a leapfrog development of productive forces within the application scenarios of physical industries, it represents a typical manifestation of the development of new quality productive forces. While presiding over the 11th group study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping identified "vigorously developing the digital economy and promoting the deep integration of the digital and real economies" as a vital component in accelerating the development of new quality productive forces. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee further proposed to "improve the systems for promoting the deep integration of the real economy and the digital economy," providing an essential guarantee for the development of new quality productive forces. To accelerate the cultivation and development of new quality productive forces, we must take the deep integration of the digital and real economies as a critical lever [1] and continuously promote revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, the innovative allocation of factors of production, and the deep transformation and upgrading of industries.
Stimulating the Dirving Force for New Quality Productive Forces through Deep Technological Integration
Revolutionary breakthroughs in "new technologies" oriented toward expanded application provide the innovative and creative power for the development of new quality productive forces. The process of digital-real integration drives traditional manufacturing toward intelligence and flexibility, ensuring that research and development (RD) achievements are rapidly and precisely transformed into actual productive forces. Enterprises can use technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) to achieve comprehensive collection, storage, and analysis of RD data, assisting researchers in quickly locating points of innovation, predicting and simulating designs for new materials and products, significantly shortening product development cycles, and optimizing RD paths. Through continuous improvement and iterative optimization of product RD and production processes, a closed-loop innovation system of "RD–production–feedback–re-RD" is formed, driving the development of new quality productive forces.
As the core engine of digital-real integration, technological integration transforms and innovates productive forces by deepening digital innovation capabilities and application levels. To this end, first, we must improve our ability to tackle key problems [2] and elevate the level of innovation in core digital technologies. For key core technologies concerning national development, we must grasp the principal contradiction [3], leverage the advantages of the whole-nation system [4] to efficiently allocate scientific and technological forces and innovation resources, and form a powerful synergy for tackling key core technologies. Regarding potential key technologies with first-mover advantages and frontier technologies leading future industries, we must persist over the long term, attach great importance to basic research and original innovation, and strengthen strategic planning and forward-looking positioning. Second, we must accelerate the transformation of technological innovation achievements into real productive forces. Innovation must be implemented in the creation of new growth points, turning innovation achievements into industrial activities. We must strengthen the role of enterprises as the main subjects of innovation while encouraging cooperation between enterprises, universities, and research institutes to co-build laboratories and pilot plants [5]. This will facilitate a "triple jump" for scientific and technological achievements—from scientific research to experimental development and then to popularized application—shaping more new drivers and advantages for developing new quality productive forces.
Consolidating the Foundation of New Quality Productive Forces through Deep Factor Integration
The aggregation and restructuring of "new factors," represented by data elements [6], optimizes the allocation model of factors for the development of new quality productive forces. In the process of digital-real integration, digital technology permeates and empowers all things, imparting digital attributes to the instruments of labor [7] and promoting the innovative allocation of factors centered on data. During this process, the continuous injection of scientific innovation and digital power facilitates the infinite restructuring and sustained aggregation of multiple technologies, functions, and factors. With their strong permeability and trans-spatial-temporal nature, digital instruments of labor promote the rapid flow of resources and efficient matching of factors across various stages of production and reproduction, laying a solid foundation for the development of new quality productive forces through the innovative allocation of resource factors.
The deep integration of the digital and real economies at the level of factors of production constitutes the essential basis for digital-real integration. To achieve this, we must accelerate the accumulation of data elements and the optimized allocation of factors of production. First, we must refine the trading rules for data elements and market construction. This involves clarifying the boundaries of data ownership and the principles of benefit distribution, broadening the scope of market-based allocation of data elements, and improving channels for distribution based on value contribution. Furthermore, we must dismantle barriers to the flow of data elements, establish unified and standardized data management systems and technical standards for transactions, and accelerate the coordinated sharing and open development of public data infrastructure to break down "data silos." Second, we must promote the intelligent upgrading of traditional factors of production. With the aid of digital technology, traditional factors such as labor, capital, and land should undergo intelligent transformation to improve their efficiency and output. Third, we must promote the optimization and innovation of factor combinations. We should encourage the cross-sector integration of factors of production from different industries and fields to form new combination modes. Simultaneously, taking the reform of market-based allocation of factors as an opportunity, we should promote the free flow and efficient allocation of factors, ultimately achieving the comprehensive optimization of factor allocation for new quality productive forces.
Innovating Business Formats for New Quality Productive Forces through Deep Industrial Integration
Driven by digital transformation, we must accelerate the release of "new momentum" in traditional industries to build a "qualitative" advantage for the development of new quality productive forces. Digital-real integration closely combines digital technology with traditional industries, superimposing the transformation of hardware intelligence with the integrated application of software. Through organizational renewal, process re-engineering, and digital implementation, the intelligence levels of enterprises in design, production, and service are comprehensively enhanced. Meanwhile, relying on "networked" systems, we can achieve efficient connections between upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain, manufacturing firms, and digital service providers, driving traditional industries toward full-chain digital transformation and upgrading. The process of digital-real integration realizes the transition of the real economy toward high technology and high value-added sectors, continuously expanding the space and potential for the real economy and fostering the continuous emergence and development of new quality productive forces.
As an extension and expansion of digital-real integration, industrial integration can promote industrial structural optimization and upgrading, advance industrial synergy, and form a modern industrial system, thereby boosting new industries and business formats related to new quality productive forces. To this end, first, we must promote the fusion of digital industries and traditional industries. We should persist in a multi-pronged approach involving the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries alongside the transformation of traditional industries. On one hand, we must give full play to the leading digital role of advanced industries; on the other, we must utilize advanced and applicable technologies to transform traditional industries across the board and throughout the entire chain. We should leverage the amplifying, superimposing, and multiplying effects of digital technology on the real economy, while continuously strengthening the fundamental and supportive role of traditional industries for advanced industry development. Second, we must accelerate the cross-sector integration of existing business formats with digital ones. We should speed up the mutual penetration and integration of resources, technologies, and services across various industries and formats, explore new links, chains, and models of production and consumption emerging from cross-sector integration, and promote the development of new industries and formats for new quality productive forces to better meet and create new demands. Third, we must promote synergistic industrial development and build a modern industrial system. With the digital economy at the core, we must strengthen cross-industry cooperation and synergy between the digital and real economies, building a region-wide modern industrial system to achieve resource sharing, complementary advantages, and collaborative innovation.
Optimizing the Ecosystem for New Quality Productive Forces through Deep Institutional Integration
Digital-real integration has given birth to new industries, business formats, and models, providing essential industrial support and economic carriers for the development of new quality productive forces. This process has profoundly changed economic production models, driving the transformation of production organization and the social division of labor toward networked and flattened structures. This provides conditions and space for innovation in industries and enterprises, nurturing many cross-sector business formats and models. By forming new "racing tracks" [8] for the development of new quality productive forces through industrial digitalization, it effectively leads the development of other fields and industries. Furthermore, the deep integration of the digital and real economies has spawned innovative enterprises, improving their production efficiency and enhancing their market competitiveness through the wide application of digital technology. These new fields, formats, models, and development subjects call for the accelerated formation of relations of production that are better adapted to new quality productive forces.
Institutional integration is the vital systemic and mechanistic guarantee for digital-real integration. Establishing and improving the institutional system for digital-real integration can provide a stable institutional environment and policy support for the formation of new quality productive forces. First, the government should take the lead in formulating a standardized roadmap for digital transformation. This includes the coordinated deployment of integrated government systems, strengthening planning and investment in both traditional infrastructure digitalization and digital infrastructure. By improving the processing and storage of basic data in the real economy, we can drive digital technology to penetrate deeply into all major stages of product manufacturing, leveraging digital technology to boost start-up enterprises. Second, we must adopt a market-led approach to promote the coordinated efforts of both the digital supply and demand sides. On one hand, we should continue to implement the strategy of expanding domestic demand, promoting the sustained growth of public digital consumption demand from the government, demand for data asset circulation within industrial clusters, and digital consumption demand from end-consumers. On the other hand, we should take the construction of the industrial digital finance system as an opportunity to bring new economic benefits to enterprises through the transition from "assets to data" and "data to assets." Simultaneously, we should focus on fields such as agriculture, manufacturing, and logistics to build new economic platforms for the Industrial Internet, forming a new industrial model of "digital production services + digital business models + digital financial services." Third, with enterprises as the main subjects, we must integrate business and management processes. We should construct major business processes using digital communication and transmission as bridges, use data warehouses to form technical loops that interface with all business sub-processes, and achieve large-scale integrated synergy of production systems. This will build a unified and efficient digital-real integration ecosystem for the development of new quality productive forces.
(Authors: He Jianfeng and Chen Xiru. He is a professor at the School of Economics and Finance, South China University of Technology; Chen is a lecturer at the School of Financial Mathematics and Statistics, Guangdong University of Finance.)
Source: Guangming Daily (January 24, 2025, Page 06) Web Editor: Hui Hui