He Weijun: Accelerating the Development of Green Productive Forces [1]
On January 31, 2024, during the eleventh collective study session of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered a speech emphasizing: "Green development is the defining feature of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces." This significant new thesis breaks through existing cognitions and traditional understandings of productive forces, proposing new insights into the characteristics and regularities of the development of productive forces in the New Era. It profoundly elucidates the inherent complementary relationship between green productive forces and new quality productive forces, enriches the new categories of the concept of productive forces, clarifies the new direction of their development, expands the new pathways for their progress, and embodies the theoretical innovation of Marxist productive force theory within the context and practice of Chinese-path modernization. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee incorporated "focusing on building a Beautiful China, accelerating the overall green transition of economic and social development, improving the ecological environment governance system, promoting ecological-priority, power-saving, intensive, green, and low-carbon development, and promoting the harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature" into the "Seven Focuses" of the general objectives for further comprehensively deepening reform. This clearly defines the "green" characteristics and identity of Chinese-path modernization in the New Era.
Deepening the understanding and grasp of the connotation and value-significance of "green productive forces" is essential. It encourages regions to actively seek support points, leverage points, and entry points in the new competitive arena of green productive force development. By taking the lead in strategic planning and layout, regions can accelerate their entry into the "fast lane" of comprehensive green and low-carbon transition, cultivate new competitive advantages, accumulate new developmental momentum, and seize the initiative in development. This is an inherent requirement [1] for promoting the construction of a new pattern of Chinese-path modernization where humanity and nature coexist in harmony.
Profoundly Understanding the Connotation and Requirements of Green Productive Forces
"Green productive forces" take green innovation as their source, environmental protection as their premise, and high-quality development as their goal. They represent the key point of adaptation between the relations of production and the productive forces under new circumstances. Green productive forces represent an enrichment and expansion of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era; they are an innovative development of Xi Jinping thought on ecological civilization and are organically integrated with Xi Jinping economic thought.
First, green productive forces incorporate elements such as ecology, resources, and the environment into the category of productive forces. This embeds the significant connotations of the "green foundation" and "innovative character," implying a transformation and optimization of the traditional production function. This requires that the ecological environment be treated as a core factor in production and development. It necessitates increasing the proportion of "greener" instruments of labor, promoting the effective input, innovative allocation, and optimized combination of green factors of production. This achieves a green revolution of the elements of productive forces, forming a leapfrooging state of productive forces led by a new round of green technological revolution, thereby empowering "monetary value" by increasing "green value."
Second, green productive forces achieve a win-win for economic growth and environmental protection through technological innovation, efficiency enhancement, and developmental transition, implying a shift away from traditional economic growth models. This requires abandoning short-term pursuits of "visible achievements" [2] that sacrifice the ecological environment for economic growth. It means reversing development models that rely on resource consumption, extensive expansion, and additional inputs to exchange "quantity" for "incremental growth." From the dual dimensions of the "entire life cycle" and "total factor productivity," we must comprehensively evaluate the energy and resource consumption costs and ecological environmental impacts of growth and development. This will force "three-high" [3] enterprises to exit the market in an orderly manner, achieving a transition from a growth paradigm driven by factor quantity inputs to one driven by green development. It promotes the decoupling and "circuit-breaking" of economic growth from environmental pollution, steadily crossing the inflection point of the "Environmental Kuznets Curve" and opening up the key links of high-quality development.
Finally, green productive forces drive the removal of obstacles to realizing the value of ecological products and enhance the capacity to convert ecological value. This implies a significant increase in the supply and consumption of green, low-carbon ecological products. This requires driving through scientific and technological innovation, the ecological allocation of factors, and the ecological upgrading of industries to promote the dual development of industrial ecologization and ecological industrialization. These should gradually extend toward the mid-to-high-end segments of the value chain. Ecological resources should be transformed into new supplies of ecological products and services that possess high green added-value and market premiums recognized and sought after by the market. By using ecology to "incubate" industry, ecological advantages are converted into economic and developmental advantages. This builds a new green, low-carbon, and circular economic system, boosts green market confidence, stimulates green market vitality, and creates an atmosphere of "pursuing green for new prosperity," promoting explosive growth in the supply and consumption of green ecological products throughout society.
The Necessity and Importance of Developing Green Productive Forces
Green productive forces embody the green orientation and low-carbon transition of the entire country's economic and social development, marking a new height and stage in the development of human social productive forces.
First, green productive forces are a fundamental requirement for achieving Chinese-path modernization characterized by the harmonious coexistence between humanity and nature. General Secretary Xi Jinping noted: "We must not only create more material and spiritual wealth to meet the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life, but also provide more high-quality ecological products to meet the people’s ever-growing needs for a beautiful ecological environment." By developing green productive forces, we assist in achieving the "dual carbon" goals [4], move forward the construction of material and ecological civilizations in tandem, and gradually expand the supply of high-quality ecological products. Only by creating more abundant, equitable, and sustainable green signals of well-being can we better demonstrate the distinctive "green development" features of Chinese-path modernization.
Second, green productive forces are a universal requirement for achieving high-quality development. Green and low-carbon development are key links and the defining background of high-quality development. By developing green productive forces, we comprehensively reduce the resource and environmental costs of development, accelerate the transition to green and low-carbon development, and properly handle the relationship between high-quality development and high-level protection. By accelerating the realization of reasonable growth in quantity and effective enhancement in quality, we can gradually shift from "whether it exists" and "whether it is enough" to "whether it is excellent," "whether it is beautiful," and "whether it is high-quality."
Finally, developing green productive forces is an inevitable requirement for China to contribute to global green development. By developing green productive forces, accelerating green and low-carbon technological innovation and application, and promoting industries to move toward the mid-to-high end of global value chains, China can extend a "green olive branch" for international cooperation amidst the accelerated restructuring of global industrial and supply chains. By expanding the "green circle of friends," smoothing the international circulation [5], and enhancing "green" influence and discourse power in global environmental governance and the building of a community with a shared future for humanity, China can transform from a "learner" to a "demonstrator," and from a "participant" to a "leader" in global green development.
Institutional and Technological Innovation to Promote Green Productive Forces
First, we must accelerate the improvement of top-level institutional design for green productive forces. Institutional design is a major driver and guarantee for the development of green productive forces. We must establish a natural resource property rights system with clear ownership, well-defined rights and responsibilities, and effective supervision. We must clarify the property rights of resource and environmental factors such as carbon emission rights, energy use rights, water use rights, and pollution discharge rights. This will form market signals and price mechanisms that cover full costs, promoting the construction of a national unified carbon market, a product carbon footprint management system, and a carbon labeling certification system. We should improve the construction of a 3D spatial-temporal database of natural resources to ascertain the "ecological baseline" and promote the construction of a green and low-carbon market trading system. We must establish cross-regional ecological consultation and dialogue mechanisms to seek the "greatest common divisor of interests" [6] among multiple stakeholders, reducing the "friction" costs of institutional implementation and lowering institutional "transaction" costs. This provides the institutional basis for the cross-regional free flow and market allocation of green production factors. Simultaneously, through fiscal transfer payments, horizontal ecological compensation, green tax reductions, and fiscal rewards/subsidies, we should create positive incentives—where "ecology has value, protection is rewarded, and development is incentivized"—to correct market failures regarding ecological "public goods." We should build an EOD (Ecology-oriented Development) mechanism where ecological construction and economic development promote each other, and economic development feeds back into ecological protection. This will attract patient capital toward advantageous green and low-carbon industries, forming a dual-channel for transforming "Two Mountains" [7] and a closed-loop cycle for ecological product value conversion. This achieves a new development model of harmonious coexistence between regional ecology and economy—moving "from mutual exclusion to cooperation" and "from linear to circular"—thereby stimulating the endogenous drive for green productive force development. Furthermore, we must strengthen environmental supervision and information disclosure systems, achieving comprehensive, real-time, and precise monitoring. We must promote the reform of green development performance evaluations and target assessments. While pursuing stable regional economic growth, the negative externalities of production and development must be incorporated into the comprehensive assessment system, making ecological environmental protection a hard constraint. This will enhance and protect the "potential" and "stamina" of sustainable economic and social development, correctly assessing the "potential achievements" and "hidden merits" [8] of local development. Adhering to the principle of emphasizing both constraints and incentives, we should guide local governments from "passive response" to "proactive action" regarding environmental regulation, shifting from a "race to the bottom" to a "race to the top."
Second, we must vigorously enhance green technological innovation capabilities. Green technological innovation is the key variable and core element of green productive force development. We should accelerate the construction of a technological support and innovation system compatible with green productive forces, promoting the construction of typical application scenarios for carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. We should establish strategic alliances for green industrial technological innovation, national-level green and low-carbon technology R&D laboratories, and ecological security technological innovation centers. We should build a regional collaborative innovation community for green and low-carbon technologies and support green technology innovation entities in participating in decision-making consultations for major scientific and technological projects on a preemptive and normalized basis. We should continue to use methods such as "open competition to select the best candidates" [9] and "horse racing" [10] to support various research institutes and different types of enterprises in "stepping into the spotlight" and "showing their mettle" during the innovation of key technologies in green manufacturing and clean production, as well as in tackling difficult problems and transforming achievements. This will create an "active cluster" and "heat map" of green technological innovation. We must actively use digital and green technologies to transform and upgrade traditional industries, increase the cultivation of carbon-negative technologies, and promote the deep integration and chain-like restructuring of green technology and industrial development. By expanding the use of digital labor instruments, we can reduce economic development's reliance on resources, land, and other factors, promoting "digital-real integration" and "digital-green integration." This will achieve breakthroughs in key disruptive technologies, driving the growth of pollution-reduction, carbon-reduction, and green environmental protection industries, alongside the development of new services, new consumption, and new business formats represented by ecological and technological innovation. By "promoting intelligence to cultivate the new," we can expand the production possibility frontier and accelerate the transformation of the "key variable" of technological innovation into the "significant incremental growth" of high-quality development.
Finally, we must fully stimulate the vitality of practical innovation. Practical innovation is where the vitality and effectiveness of green productive force development are manifested. We should encourage all regions to fully tap into their green competitive advantages and potential based on national functional zoning, achieving an upgrade in comprehensive energy levels. Simultaneously, through green transition and low-carbon development, we can empower remote and underdeveloped areas, central regions, traditional resource-rich areas, key ecological functional zones, and major agricultural production areas, releasing comparative advantages and seizing "green opportunities." By "getting a head start" in the new green and low-carbon arena, we can effectively bridge regional development "gaps" and promote common prosperity. We should establish negative lists for "land-industry-environment" access, explore resource-saving and environment-friendly production models, and promote the construction of "zero-carbon cities," "zero-carbon parks," and "zero-carbon factories." We should build a "Six-Green" system (green products, management, supply, technology, etc.), promote the development of "Six-New Industries," and facilitate the construction of "Four-New Infrastructure." We should explore new models where ecology and the economy take flight together—becoming "beautiful because of green," "prosperous because of green," and "strong because of green." We should vigorously promote "Four-Reservoirs" [11] economy demonstrations, "Dual Control of Carbon Emissions" [12] development demonstrations, and "High-Level Watershed Protection" demonstrations, forming a development pattern of "benchmarks leading, and multiple regions chasing," accumulating local experience and programmatic wisdom for the construction of Beautiful China pioneer zones. We should make good use of national policies for "Two-News" [13] and "Two-Heavies" [14], continue to promote industrial structural adjustment and layout optimization, proactively deploy industrial and innovation chains, and promote optimized resource allocation and cross-regional cooperation. By providing "new samples" for the development of regional green productive forces and actively integrating into global green industrial and supply chain competition and cooperation, we can make original contributions to the practice of ecological economy in Chinese-path modernization and the building of a community with a shared future for humanity. Thus, we shall achieve the shift from "green constraints" to "green breakthroughs," and from "green response" to "green paradigms."
(The author is the Party Secretary and Professor of China Three Gorges University) Source: Guangming Daily February 18, 2025