Sun Cunliang and Cui Huabin: Persist in Closely Integrating Investment in Physical Assets with Investment in People
General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized at the second plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee [1]: "We must persist in the strategic pivot of expanding domestic demand, and persist in the close integration of improving people's livelihoods with promoting consumption, and investing in things with investing in people." The Central Economic Work Conference held in December 2023 [2] proposed: "We must persist in the close integration of investing in things and investing in people." Persisting in this close integration means grounding ourselves in the overall situation of Chinese-path modernization and profoundly grasping the laws of economic and social development. It represents a historic shift in the development mode from "prioritizing things" to "coordination between things and people." This is a strategic measure for advancing Chinese-path modernization in the New Era, providing fundamental guidance for development during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026–2030) and even longer stages. It demonstrates the sublimation of the Party's development concepts and the innovation of investment practice paths in the New Era. We must profoundly recognize the significance of closely integrating investment in things and people, accurately grasp its scientific connotation and essential requirements, actively explore effective paths, continuously optimize investment structures, increase the intensity of investment in people, strengthen institutional supply, and focus on overall coordination. We must integrate the mutual promotion and collaborative development of investing in things and people into all fields and the entire process of economic and social development, laying a solid foundation for basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035, and striving to create a new situation for comprehensively advancing the great cause of building a strong country and national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization.
The Epochal Value of Persisting in the Close Integration of Investing in Things and Investing in People
The close integration of investing in things and investing in people is an elevation and optimization of our country’s investment philosophy, direction, and focus. Deeply practicing this major concept is of great and far-reaching significance for enhancing developmental momentum, expanding domestic demand, achieving common prosperity, and gaining strategic initiative in global competition.
An important engine for achieving high-quality development: making developmental momentum more abundant. High-quality development is the theme of economic and social development during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period. Its essence lies in relying on the improvement of total factor productivity to achieve effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth. In the past, through large-scale investment in things, we achieved historic accomplishments in areas such as infrastructure construction and the establishment of industrial systems, pushing China's total economic output to the second largest in the world. As our country enters a new stage of development, the traditional factor-driven model faces bottlenecks, and the diminishing marginal returns of material investment have become increasingly evident. High-quality development fundamentally depends on the accumulation and leapfrogging of human capital. Only by closely combining the material support of investing in things with the cultivation of momentum from investing in people—improving the modernized infrastructure system while enhancing population quality through investment in education, training, and health—can we drive the shift of economic development from a model focused on scale and speed to one focused on quality and efficiency. This shift is both a respect for the laws governing the development of productive forces and an inevitable requirement for enhancing developmental momentum and achieving high-quality development.
A key grasp for constructing the new development pattern: making domestic demand stronger. The Recommendations of the 20th CPC Central Committee propose: "A powerful domestic market is the strategic support for Chinese-path modernization." Building a strong domestic market is an important support for constructing the new development pattern. From 2021 to 2024, the average contribution rate of domestic demand to China's economic growth reached 86.4%, demonstrating the powerful resilience of an ultra-large-scale market. The close integration of investing in things and people is precisely the key grasp for expanding domestic demand and activating the momentum of the domestic macro-circulation. Investing in things and people are like "hardware" and "software," together constituting the twin wheels driving domestic demand. Investing in things focuses on infrastructure improvement and industrial supply upgrades, providing the "hardware" support to consolidate the domestic macro-circulation by building a modernized infrastructure system and developing advanced manufacturing. Investing in people, through increased investment in fields such as education, healthcare, and elderly care, improves residents' income levels, enhances consumption capacity, and releases consumption potential, injecting "software" momentum into the formation of a powerful domestic market demand. By persisting in the close integration of the two, we promote a virtuous cycle where new supply creates new demand and new demand leads new supply, thereby enhancing the endogenous power and reliability of the domestic macro-circulation and fortifying the foundation for the new development pattern.
An inevitable requirement for realizing common prosperity: making development more inclusive. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Closely integrate 'investing in things' with 'investing in people,' doing our utmost within our means to establish and improve a population service system covering the entire population and the full life cycle, considering marriage, childbirth, upbringing, education, employment, healthcare, housing, and elderly care as a whole, to effectively promote the well-rounded development of the individual and common prosperity for all." Realizing common prosperity requires both a solid accumulation of material wealth as a foundation and the equalization of basic public services as support to promote substantial progress in well-rounded human development. Investing in things is an important measure for consolidating the material foundation of common prosperity, while investing in people is the core path for promoting the improvement of livelihoods and social fairness; the two are organically unified under the people-centered philosophy of development. In recent years, our country has insisted on making the protection and improvement of livelihoods the priority for fiscal expenditure, with fiscal investment in the livelihood sector accounting for more than 70% of the national general public budget expenditure, fully demonstrating the policy orientation of investing in people. This practice of investing in people focuses both on skill enhancement—building an education system that covers the whole population and lasts a lifetime to continuously cultivate laborers' ability to adapt to industrial transformation—and on welfare protection, satisfying the people's ever-growing needs for a better life by improving a multi-level social security system that coordinates urban and rural areas. Practice fully proves that closely integrating investing in things and people is an inevitable requirement for achieving the organic unity of social value appreciation and well-rounded human development.
A strategic measure for winning global competition: making our confidence more robust. In the current era, the global innovation landscape is accelerating its reconstruction, and industrial and supply chains are undergoing profound adjustments. Global industrial competition has shifted from capital-intensive competition to talent-intensive competition. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Comprehensive national strength competition is, in the final analysis, a competition for talent. Talent is an important indicator for measuring a country's comprehensive national strength." Whoever gains an advantage in human capital accumulation will seize the initiative in global value chains. Investing in things provides the material carrier for scientific and technological innovation; by building innovation platforms such as laboratories and new types of infrastructure, we fortify the material basis for high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening. Investing in people focuses on the cultivation and introduction of innovative talents, forming a "human capital dividend" and stimulating the vitality of innovation and creation. When investing in things and people work in synergy, it can both promote high-level technological self-reliance and self-strengthening and cultivate a massive, reasonably structured, and high-quality talent pool, thereby enhancing national core competitiveness, seizing the commanding heights in international competition, and providing strategic support for national rejuvenation.
Accurately Grasping the Core Essence of the Close Integration of Investing in Things and Investing in People
Investing in things is the material basis for investing in people, while investing in people is the guarantee of efficiency for investing in things. The accumulation of things is the material prerequisite for human development, and human development is the fundamental purpose of the accumulation of things. The core essence of the close integration of the two lies in achieving the dialectical unity of the accumulation of things and human development through a scientific grasp of practical requirements.
Optimizing the investment structure to "bridge the gaps" [3], allowing "things" and "people" to act in synergy. Optimizing the investment structure is the foundational project for achieving the coordinated development of material and human investment; it requires establishing a scientific allocation mechanism between material capital and human capital. Regarding investment in things, we must persist in the directions of intelligence, greening, and integration, focusing investment on advanced manufacturing, new infrastructure, and other fields, while resolutely breaking through the bottlenecks [4] and obstacles in the construction of a unified national market to improve investment precision. Regarding investment in people, we must strengthen the strategic focus on human capital investment, building a full-life-cycle support system that vertically covers the ability cultivation chain from preschool education to lifelong learning, and horizontally coordinates diverse fields such as education, healthcare, and employment. This structural optimization is not a zero-sum substitution but rather a way to let the input of things serve human development and let human progress feed back into the upgrading of things through the balanced development of livelihood-oriented and productive investment, forming a favorable ecosystem of mutual promotion and coordinated development.
Strengthening institutional supply to "build the foundation," making the guarantee for coordinated investment in "things" and "people" more solid. Strengthening institutional supply is key to ensuring that the close integration of investing in things and people yields practical results. We must accelerate the construction of a high-level socialist market economy system, better utilize the leading role of economic structural reform, and improve the macroeconomic governance system to create a favorable institutional environment for investing in things and people. We must establish and improve a policy system conducive to this close integration, using fiscal, tax, and financial policy tools to guide resources toward key areas and critical links. We must fully stimulate the vitality of various types of market entities, encouraging enterprises to increase investment in technological innovation and talent cultivation. We must accelerate the improvement of the system and mechanism for market-based allocation of factors, promoting the rational flow and efficient allocation of capital, talent, and technology. We must improve the talent evaluation and incentive mechanisms, perfecting an evaluation system and remuneration system oriented toward ability and centered on contribution, and establishing a long-term mechanism for investing in people. Simultaneously, we must strengthen intellectual property protection and create a social atmosphere that respects talent and values innovation, allowing the value of human capital to be fully manifested.
Persisting in a systems concept [5] to "plan for the whole," ensuring steadier development through holistic coordination. The close integration of investing in things and people involves multiple interest relationships and must be advanced consistently with a systems concept. We must properly handle the relationship between the government and the market, allowing the market to play its decisive role in resource allocation and guiding social capital to participate in livelihood sectors and new infrastructure construction, while also letting the government play its role better by leading through planning and providing policy guarantees for the basic livelihood bottom line, achieving an organic combination of an effective market and a proactive government. We must coordinate the relationship between the present and the long term, focusing on short-term stable growth by increasing investment in key infrastructure and livelihood protection, while more importantly looking toward long-term development by increasing investment in basic research, frontier technology R&D, and basic education to accumulate momentum for basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035. We must handle the relationship between the local and the whole, leveraging the overlapping effects of regional coordinated development strategies to promote the optimal configuration of resources nationwide, avoiding repetitive construction and resource waste, and achieving balanced development of coordinated investment in things and people across regions.
Actively Exploring Practical Paths for the Close Integration of Investing in Things and Investing in People
Deeply practicing the concept of closely integrating investment in things and people requires grounding ourselves in the development goals of the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, identifying entry points and breakthroughs, and exploring actionable and implementable paths to promote a dynamic situation where investing in things and people promote each other and generate synergistic efficiency.
Taking industrial upgrading as the lead to promote the deep integration of "things" and "people." Industrial upgrading is an inevitable trend of economic development and an important entry point for realizing the close integration of investing in things and people. Centering on building a modernized industrial system, we must increase investment in the intelligent and green transformation of manufacturing, while strengthening the cultivation and introduction of relevant industrial talent to promote the precise alignment of material investment and human capital investment. For example, in the process of developing advanced manufacturing, we must both invest in the construction of material infrastructure such as intelligent factories and digital workshops and cultivate a group of high-quality talents who master advanced manufacturing technologies and possess innovative capabilities through the integration of industry and education and school-enterprise cooperation. The Recommendations of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed to advance the development of education, technology, and talent as an integrated whole, which points the way for coordinated investment in things and people during industrial upgrading. We must encourage universities, research institutions, and enterprises to establish innovation unions to train talent specifically according to industrial needs and accelerate the transformation of scientific and technological achievements. For instance, in strategic emerging industries such as artificial intelligence and new energy, we can achieve "resonance" between material and human capital by combining "order-based" [6] talent cultivation with the construction of platforms for tackling key technologies.
Focusing on the improvement of people's livelihoods to promote...
Achieving a balanced coordination between "things" and "people." General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Adapting to the changing needs of the masses, striving to manage all livelihood undertakings well, and making the lives of the common people better and better is the fundamental purpose of socialist production." The field of people's livelihoods [7] is the core direction for investing in people, and it is a key lever for improving the quality of people's lives and maintaining social equity and justice. Compared to investing in things, China's investment in areas such as improving livelihoods and nurturing human capital still has shortcomings. Increasing the intensity of investment in people during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period and even longer is both important and urgent. The 2025 Government Work Report pointed out the need to drive more funds and resources to "invest in people" and serve people's livelihoods, support the expansion of employment, promote residents' income growth and burden reduction, strengthen consumption incentives, and form a virtuous cycle of economic development and livelihood improvement. We must focus on the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems [8] of the masses, increase the proportion of government investment in livelihood categories, and ramp up public investment in fields such as childbirth and child-rearing, education and medical care, inclusive elderly care, and culture and sports. We must strengthen the construction of inclusive, basic, and bottom-line [9] livelihoods, expanding effective investment that covers the entire population and the full life cycle. Employment is the foundation of people's livelihoods; we must implement vocational training actions such as "Skills Lighting the Future" to help college graduates, migrant workers, and other groups achieve high-quality and full employment. It must be clarified that investments in "things" related to livelihoods, such as digital village construction and the renovation of old urban residential communities, are important supports for guaranteeing and improving people's livelihoods. Increasing the intensity of investment in people is by no means replacing "things" with "people," but rather using the improvement of livelihoods as an anchor to promote the synergistic development and balanced coordination of investing in things and investing in people.
Taking innovation and entrepreneurship as the driving force to fully release the vitality of "things" and "people." Innovation and entrepreneurship are important drivers of economic development and social progress, as well as effective ways to stimulate the vitality of the close integration of investing in things and investing in people. We must strengthen investment in human resource development and the well-rounded development of the person, create a favorable environment for innovation and entrepreneurship, and increase policy support and financial investment for these activities. We should strengthen the construction of innovation and entrepreneurship carriers, improve hardware facilities such as incubators and makerspaces, and simultaneously provide software support such as entrepreneurial training and intellectual property services. By holding entrepreneurship competitions and establishing entrepreneurship funds, we encourage scientific and technological personnel, university students, migrant workers, and other groups to innovate and start businesses, realizing the full release of the value of human capital. We should guide social capital to participate in the construction of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem, both investing in the material conditions required for innovation and entrepreneurship and supporting the cultivation and introduction of innovative and entrepreneurial talent. We must improve the fault-tolerance and correction mechanisms [10], creating an atmosphere that encourages exploration and tolerates failure, so that all types of market entities dare to invest and have the courage to innovate. Through innovation and entrepreneurship, we can drive the iterative upgrading of material capital and the accumulation and value-added of human capital, forming a virtuous cycle of "investment—innovation—appreciation."
Taking digital transformation as an aid to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of "things" and "people." Digital transformation is a major trend in economic and social development, and it provides new opportunities and pathways for the close integration of investing in things and investing in people. We must accelerate the construction of a Digital China, promote the deep integration of digital technology with the real economy, and improve the levels of digitalization and intelligence in both investing in things and investing in people. Regarding investment in things, we should use big data, artificial intelligence, and other technologies to optimize investment decision-making, improve the precision of infrastructure and industrial projects, and enhance the operational efficiency of material capital. At the same time, we should use digital technology to improve the efficiency of investing in people—for example, by developing online education and telemedicine to break through the limitations of time and space, allowing high-quality educational and medical resources to benefit the masses more widely. We should build integrated digital service platforms to consolidate livelihood data on education, healthcare, and employment. By constructing talent demand forecasting models, we can accurately identify talent gaps in different industries and regions, achieving the intelligent matching and targeted allocation of human capital investment demand and supply. At the same time, we must strengthen the training of digital talent, building a team of composite talent who both understand digital technology and industrial needs, providing human support for digital transformation.
(The author is a specially invited researcher at the Beijing Center for the Study of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era) Source: People's Daily (January 19, 2026) Web Editor: Hui Hui