Yu Rongjian and Cen Jie: Accelerating the Construction of China's Industrial Chain Policy System
Our country possesses a complete range of policy categories oriented toward industries and enterprises, yet lacks a specialized policy category directed specifically at industrial chains. Accelerating the construction of a new development pattern [1], fundamentally ensuring the security of our country’s industrial and supply chains, and forming new advantages for participating in international cooperation and competition all require the accelerated formation of an industrial chain policy system that is comprehensive, forward-looking, and precise in implementation. It is necessary to accelerate the construction of our country's industrial chain policy system through five dimensions—"ensuring security, promoting innovation, improving efficiency, expanding opening-up, and optimizing governance"—to build autonomous, controllable, safe, and reliable industrial chains and promote the modernization of our country's industrial chains.
Two Major Developmental Contexts
Since the reform and opening-up, our country's economic development has been rapid, and various industries have continuously expanded. In sharp contrast, the development of our country's industrial chains remains insufficient. Under the new international situation characterized by anti-globalization, many "short boards" [2] in our industrial chains have been exposed. Prominent problems include: key technologies, resources, and components at the source of the industrial system being "chokepoints" [3]; the strength of "chain leader" [4] enterprises being relatively weak; weak linkages between upstream and downstream segments; and a lack of backups in key links of the chain. Overall, the autonomy, controllability, and resilience of our country's industrial chains are insufficient, and chain security is under threat. Simultaneously, the synergy between the industrial chain and the innovation chain needs further improvement; the overall innovation capacity of the chains is relatively weak, operational efficiency needs to be raised, and the collaborative governance of the industrial and innovation chains requires further perfection.
Currently, our country's relevant policies are mostly formulated around strategic emerging industries and foundational industries like agriculture, targeting enterprises—especially large enterprises—thereby forming a complete policy system at the "surface" level of industries and the "point" level of enterprises. While these policies have made outstanding contributions to the development of our industrial economy, they lack sufficient focus, systematicity, and foresight. They find it difficult to systematically solve the prominent problems of industrial chains and have not yet formed a policy category specifically oriented toward the industrial chain. Furthermore, the problem of "nine dragons managing the water" [5] regarding policies for different links of the industrial chain is quite prominent. There is an urgent need to form a policy system at the "chain" level.
Presently, major developed countries have implemented a series of policy measures and formulated multilateral rules centered on industrial chain security and efficiency. The United States has formulated Section 301 (Trade Act of 1974), Section 337 (Tariff Act of 1930), the Export Control Act of 2018, Section 889 (National Defense Authorization Act of 2019), and "TRIPS-Plus" in the field of intellectual property governance. It has also led the formulation of international multilateral rules such as the Wassenaar Arrangement to constrain our country's industrial chains. In 2020, the United States and Japan also issued a series of cost-support policies to encourage their manufacturing enterprises to reshore, attempting to drive the contraction of globally deployed industrial chains toward "near-shore" and "friend-shore" regions as well as their domestic territories to maintain their own industrial chain security. Against this international backdrop, the importance of accelerating the construction of our country's industrial chain policy system has become increasingly prominent.
Five Points of Focus
To accelerate the construction of the industrial chain policy system, our country can focus on five aspects: "ensuring security, promoting innovation, improving efficiency, expanding opening-up, and optimizing governance," accelerating the construction of an organically coordinated and precisely implemented industrial chain policy system to advance the modernization of our industrial chains.
Ensuring security. We can start from the five aspects of "extending long boards, fixing short boards, strengthening linkages, increasing resilience, and building barriers" to accelerate the formation of multi-dimensional, linked industrial chain security policies and build safe, reliable, autonomous, and controllable industrial chains. First, extend long boards: identify and comb through industrial chain advantages, strengthen the new demand-creation functions of advantageous chains, and enhance their international discourse power [6]. Second, fix short boards: compile a list of "short boards" such as key technologies, resources, and components; systematically analyze their current status, causes, impacts, and trends; and formulate differentiated strategies to fix them. Third, strengthen linkages: reinforce upstream and downstream connections, promote joint innovation, and create strong local industrial chain links. Fourth, increase resilience: accelerate the construction of technological backups and industrial ecosystems to systematically enhance the chains' ability to cope with instability and uncertainty. Fifth, build barriers: predict security risks in a timely manner, build early-warning and emergency mechanisms for major risks, and construct a rigorous institutional firewall.
Promoting innovation. We can accelerate the construction of an industrial chain innovation policy system from four aspects: "fundamental driver, market orientation, technological source, and innovation method." First, shift the fundamental driver of industrial chain development toward being innovation-driven. Formulate innovation policies for the entire chain, leveraging the leading role of "chain leader" enterprises while supporting the development of specialized, refined, unique, and innovative [7] enterprises in all links. Second, shift the market orientation of innovation toward domestic demand. To transform our industrial chains into domestic demand-led chains, we should encourage the launch of new products and services focused on the domestic market and develop productive service industries such as industrial design. Third, shift the primary technological source toward self-reliance and self-strengthening. Properly handle the relationship between independent innovation and international technology introduction, striving to achieve the localization of primary technologies and neutralizing potential risks in international technology imports. Finally, shift the primary method of innovation toward digitalization and intelligence. Accelerate the development of the "digital-intelligent" [8] industry and chain-wide digitalization, promoting digital-intelligent engineering and creating a group of demonstration zones for digital-intelligent industrial clusters.
Improving efficiency. We can accelerate the formation of efficiency policies from three aspects: "operational rules, spatial layout, and green development" to build green and efficient industrial chains. First, improve operational rules, especially competition-cooperation (coopetition) rules, to promote orderly cooperation and healthy competition while reducing operational costs. Simultaneously, strengthen supervision of legal and regulatory compliance and utilize new technologies for credit governance within the chain. Second, optimize spatial layout, promoting the transformation of traditional industrial clusters into innovation clusters and developing full-chain clusters relying on the seven major city clusters. On this basis, gradually promote the integration of regional industrial policies to form unified national operational rules. Third, promote green development, optimize top-level design, establish ecological compensation mechanisms between enterprises and regions, and develop new monitoring means based on new technologies to promote "greening" through digital-intelligent technology.
Expanding opening-up. We can accelerate the formation of opening-up policies from four aspects: "creating a power engine for 'home-field globalization,' expanding international market and rule space, expanding imports and the introduction of high-quality foreign investment, and promoting diversified opening-up based on different chain characteristics." First, create opening-up agglomeration zones in Free Trade Zones (FTZs) for foreign-invested chain landings, local chain exports, and Sino-foreign hybrid chains, turning FTZs into engines for "home-field globalization." Second, actively participate in the formulation of international economic and trade rules, accelerating the construction of global industrial chains where our country has sufficient discourse power and practices co-creation and sharing. Third, perfect the institutional system for investment facilitation and trade liberalization, expanding imports and continuously introducing high-quality foreign enterprises to help them take root. Finally, plan differentiated development patterns for major industrial chains based on their characteristics and implement targeted opening-up policies.
Optimizing governance. Governance needs to accelerate the transition from "matters" to "institutions" and finally to "governance," comprehensively enhancing efficacy. First, innovate the "Chain Leader System" [9] (Lianzhangzhi) mechanisms. Construct a three-level organization: "National-level Lead Group — Regional-level Joint Meeting — Grassroots Chain Leaders." On this basis, increase the number of chain leaders and appoint heads of scientific research institutions or chambers of commerce as chain leaders. Expand their responsibilities from industrial chain governance to innovation chain governance. Second, optimize digital innovation governance. Develop large-scale scenario models for industrial chains, building an eco-system of upstream (computing power, data services, algorithms), midstream (R&D manufacturers), and downstream (vertical applications) to achieve a new "intelligent governance" (zhizhi) mode driven by data and wisdom. Third, enhance the synergy between four mechanisms: "chain leaders," "chain leader" enterprises, upstream-downstream enterprise communities, and intelligent governance platforms.
Three Guarantee Mechanisms
First, strengthen the top-level design of policy formulation. Establish an Industrial Chain Work Leading Group at the national level to plan development strategies and identify relevant government departments at both national and provincial levels to enhance cross-departmental collaboration. Select representative chains of vital importance, such as chips and high-end equipment manufacturing, for pilots. The Ministry of Science and Technology and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in coordination with provinces, should build complete policy systems tailored to these chains' characteristics. Promote successful, replicable policies and launch demonstration projects.
Second, establish a decision-making and execution mechanism. Open channels for enterprises, industry associations, and industrial think tanks to participate in policy formulation, raising the level of scientific, democratic, and law-based decision-making. Establish performance management mechanisms for policy execution and conduct comprehensive evaluations. Additionally, design a dynamic optimization mechanism, commissioning think tanks to assist in "assessment, monitoring, evaluation, and adjustment" to improve the institutionalization of policy practice.
Third, carry out monitoring and evaluation. Establish a dynamic monitoring center to conduct investigations and build a big data warehouse for industrial chain development. Use AI and big data to identify, monitor, and evaluate development status, and formulate an index system (security, innovation, credit, and governance indices) to provide information support for optimizing the policy system.
(The authors are respectively Dean/Professor and Vice Dean/Professor of the School of Business Administration (MBA School) at Zhejiang Gongshang University, and researchers at the "Important Window" Research Institute.) Source: Guangming Daily, February 25, 2025