Liu Hongda: Building Solid Foundational and Strategic Support for the Development of New Quality Productive Forces
The Proposal for the "15th Five-Year Plan," deliberated and adopted by the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, laid out a dedicated chapter on "accelerating high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology to lead the development of new quality productive forces," putting forward a series of clear requirements for the "integrated promotion of the development of education, science and technology, and talent." The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference emphasized "developing new quality productive forces according to local conditions" and "formulating a plan for the integrated promotion of the development of education, science and technology, and talent." Currently and for a period to come, how to coordinate the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent to solidify the foundational and strategic support for the development of new quality productive forces is a theoretical and practical issue that urgently needs to be addressed.
Productive forces are the fundamental driving force for the development of human society. At present, China is in an important period where the transition from old to new growth drivers is accelerating. A new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation is advancing in depth, and the global industrial system and the system of industrial and supply chains are accelerating their reconstruction, containing enormous development opportunities. In this context, General Secretary Xi Jinping creatively proposed the important concept of new quality productive forces and the major task of developing them. He has delivered a series of important expositions [1] centered on what new quality productive forces are and how to develop them, which possess great guiding significance and provide scientific orientation for promoting high-quality development.
High-quality development requires new theories of productive forces for guidance. New quality productive forces constitute an advanced state of productive forces that align with the new development philosophy. The process of cultivating new quality productive forces is also a process of upgrading laborers, instruments of labor, and subjects of labor, as well as their modes of combination. This involves the transition of laborers from "physical-strength types" to "intelligent types," the transformation of instruments of labor from "mechanical tools" to "digital-intelligent platforms," and the expansion of subjects of labor from "material resources" to "data elements." New quality productive forces are primarily brought about by revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, and scientific and technological innovation is the core element for developing new quality productive forces. This means that cultivating new quality productive forces must accelerate the promotion of original and disruptive technological innovations to achieve high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology. Historical experience shows that those countries that seized the opportunities of technological revolutions to move toward modernization were all countries with solid scientific foundations; those that seized such opportunities to become world powers were all in the leading ranks of important scientific and technological fields. Currently, new quality productive forces have already taken shape in practice and have demonstrated strong impetus and support for high-quality development, driving the development and incubation of a group of emerging and future industries.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must smooth the virtuous cycle of education, science and technology, and talent in accordance with the requirements for developing new quality productive forces." Education is an important foundation for developing new quality productive forces, providing intellectual support for self-reliance and strength in science and technology by cultivating innovative talent. Science and technology are the core elements for developing new quality productive forces, driving the leap in productive forces through original innovation and breakthroughs in key core technologies. Talent is the primary resource for developing new quality productive forces, and its creativity directly determines the depth and breadth of technological innovation. It must be recognized that there is currently a systemic fragmentation between the innovation chain, the industrial chain, and the talent chain. There remain some pain points and difficulties in the deep integration of education, science and technology, and talent, making it difficult to form a highly efficient, closed-loop innovation ecosystem. This is specifically manifested in: barriers to the flow of innovation elements, where the flow of key resource elements such as talent, knowledge, technology, and data is obstructed and cross-domain synergy is insufficient; mechanisms for resource integration and sharing are incomplete; the integration of industry and education lacks depth, as the setting of disciplines and majors is decoupled from the needs of industrial development; the construction of the talent chain still finds it difficult to meet the needs of industrial innovation; the leading role of enterprise innovation has not yet been fully exerted, and most school-enterprise cooperation remains at the project level, failing to form long-term synergistic mechanisms for cultivating talent; and a disconnect exists between scientific and technological achievements and industrial demands. The channels for transforming achievements are not smooth, and there are bottlenecks and "stuck points" [2] from basic research to technological development and then to industrial application. A large number of scientific research achievements find it difficult to achieve industrialization due to a lack of pilot scale-up platforms [3], market linkages, and capital support.
In practice, we must fully recognize and closely align with the connotative characteristics of new quality productive forces. We must continuously enhance the consistency of goals and the coupling of elements in the development of education, science and technology, and talent. We must transform the fragmented, decentralized, and singular development models of these three areas and coordinate the building of a leading country in education, a leading country in science and technology, and a leading country in talent. We must persist in the integrated promotion of education, science and technology, and talent to drive the formation of a virtuous cycle of "education cultivating talent—talent promoting innovation—innovation driving development," jointly supporting the growth and strengthening of new quality productive forces.
First, improve top-level design. Strengthen forward-looking thinking, overall planning, strategic layout, and holistic advancement of the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent. Coordinately implement the strategy for invigorating China through science and education, the strategy on developing a quality workforce, and the innovation-driven development strategy. Establish and improve coordination mechanisms for the integrated promotion of education, science and technology, and talent development, and promote the establishment of deliberative and coordinative bodies for related work. Strengthen policy support and project funding, and build an innovation service system with integrated allocation of elements such as funds, talent, projects, and platforms. Attract more social capital into the fields of education, science and technology, and talent to help form a development pattern where the three promote each other. Accelerate the legislative process in key areas to clarify responsibilities and obligations in innovation platform construction, innovation subject cultivation, and the transformation of innovation achievements.
Second, strengthen synergy and integration. Support and encourage institutions of higher learning, scientific research institutes, and leading enterprises to form innovation consortia. Create a synergistic innovation ecosystem for the integrated development of education, science and technology, and talent by conducting cooperative schooling and jointly building joint laboratories and R&D centers. Make full use of mechanisms such as "open competition to select the best candidates" [4] and the "horse racing system" [5]. Through cross-departmental, cross-system, and cross-level organizational coordination, reasonably and orderly delegate the power to determine technical routes, the power to allocate scientific research funds, and the power to schedule resources to fully stimulate the initiative and creativity of innovation subjects. Establish a dynamic mechanism for disciplinary adjustment, strengthen the construction of basic, emerging, and interdisciplinary subjects and the cultivation of top-tier talent. Deepen the construction of "New Engineering, New Medical Science, New Agricultural Science, and New Liberal Arts," and strengthen the coordination between science and technology education and humanities education. Broaden the channels for the flow of talent in the fields of education and science and technology, and build a "pyramid-style" talent echelon of "young scientific and technological talent—leading scientific and technological talent—strategic scientists," and improve the mechanism for synergistic talent cultivation.
Third, optimize evaluation models. Promote the establishment of a multi-subject evaluation mechanism that combines government evaluation, peer review, enterprise evaluation, and social supervision. Refine classification standards for research-oriented, application-oriented, skill-oriented, and characteristic-oriented types. Focus on functions such as talent cultivation, scientific research, social service, and cultural inheritance and innovation to formulate evaluation indicators separately, generating various results such as comprehensive evaluation, efficiency evaluation, and value-added evaluation. Resolutely overcome the phenomenon of "the five onlys" [6] (only scores, only further education, only diplomas, only papers, and only titles). Highlight an evaluation orientation centered on ability, quality, contribution, and performance. Focus on evaluating major achievements, research quality, original breakthroughs, and actual contributions. Integrate process evaluation with result evaluation, and combine short-term evaluation with long-term evaluation, and qualitative evaluation with quantitative evaluation, to achieve the maximum goal of ensuring that people can make the best use of their talents, that talents are put to their best use, and that their use leads to success.