Chen Yulu: Anchoring the Goals of a Leading Power in Science and Technology and a Leading Financial Power to Develop Technology Finance
Technology finance is a vital pillar for promoting the mutual advancement of science and technology (S&T) and finance. Within the "five major articles" [1] of finance, technology finance occupies the primary position. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "We must write the article of technology finance well, guiding financial capital to invest early, invest small, invest for the long term, and invest in hard tech [2]." Currently, China's economy is at a critical juncture of "scaling the heights and overcoming hurdles" in high-quality development. Accelerating high-level S&T self-reliance and strength, and leading the development of new quality productive forces, has become a strategic choice for transforming the development mode, pushing the industrial system toward higher-order forms, and shaping future international competitive advantages. The "Proposal" of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee [3] requires the vigorous development of technology finance. The Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year required financial institutions to increase support for key areas such as expanding domestic demand, S&T innovation, and small, medium, and micro enterprises (SMMEs). It listed "persisting in innovation-driven development and accelerating the cultivation and strengthening of new kinetic energy" as a priority task for this year's economic work, explicitly demanding innovation in technology finance services to clarify the direction for accelerating the development of technology finance. During the "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026–2030), we must profoundly understand and grasp the strategic significance of technology finance for accelerating high-level S&T self-reliance and strength and supporting Chinese-path modernization through S&T modernization. We must accelerate the construction of a technology finance system that is compatible with S&T innovation and capable of providing powerful support.
The Rich Connotations and Strategic Attributes of Technology Finance
General Secretary Xi Jinping noted: "Science and technology are the primary productive forces, providing inexhaustible momentum for the progress of human civilization," and "Finance is the core of the modern economy." Throughout the history of successive industrial revolutions, S&T innovation has consistently been the fundamental driving force for the development of productive forces. Simultaneously, every breakthrough in scientific innovation and technological change has been inseparable from financial support. As the key link connecting S&T innovation with financial resources, technology finance is not only an important component of the modern financial system but also a vital pillar of a nation's innovation ecosystem and an important carrier for the modernization of the national governance system. This is primarily reflected in three aspects. From a functional dimension, technology finance continuously empowers S&T innovation activities through multiple channels such as capital supply, asset valuation, and risk management. From a spatial dimension, technology finance relies on knowledge networks, technology diffusion, and industrial agglomeration effects to promote the cross-regional flow of innovation elements, thereby enhancing overall innovation performance. From a temporal dimension, S&T innovation—especially original innovation—has long R&D cycles and high uncertainty, while also possessing significant cumulative effects; the financial system can effectively mitigate risks in the process of technological progress by improving risk-sharing mechanisms, strengthening integrated innovation, and cultivating and expanding patient capital [4].
As a proactive and fundamental institutional construction for the deep implementation of the innovation-driven development strategy and the accelerated building of a financial powerhouse, technology finance carries a mission that transcends traditional financial functions and possesses rich connotations. Technology finance is a financial form that adapts to the laws of S&T innovation and powerfully supports the cultivation of new kinetic energy and the construction of a modern industrial system. It can drive a historic transformation of China's comparative advantage from factor-cost advantages to innovation and knowledge advantages, ensuring that the innovation-driven development strategy shifts from a blueprint into reality and achieving the transition and upgrading of economic development's old and new kinetic energy. Technology finance is also an important institutional arrangement that balances market laws with national development strategies. By organically combining the national will with patient capital for long-term investment and continuous advancement, it builds a high-level innovation ecosystem. Developing technology finance is a systemic project under the guidance of top-level design, involving cross-departmental synergy and the extensive participation of market entities. It can clear the bottlenecks in S&T R&D, the transformation of achievements, and industrial upgrading, leveraging financial resources to precisely empower the efficient linkage of the innovation chain, industrial chain, and talent chain.
Precisely for these reasons, technology finance possesses strategic attributes, facilitating the use of the national will to provide strategic and directional traction for social resources, especially financial resources. Against the current backdrop of the accelerated evolution of changes unseen in a century, increasingly complex major-power competition, and unprecedented global S&T competition, anchoring the development of technology finance to the goals of becoming an S&T powerhouse and a financial powerhouse and constructing a high-level "S&T–Industry–Finance" circular ecosystem has become a vital lever in strategic competition among major powers. This can both effectively integrate and efficiently mobilize financial forces to guide financial capital more precisely toward key core technology fields, and better leverage the institutional advantages of the new-type whole-of-nation system [5] in the field of S&T innovation to promote the modernization of national governance.
The Situation Facing China's Technology Finance Development During the "15th Five-Year Plan" Period: Coexistence of Opportunities and Challenges
The "15th Five-Year Plan" period is a critical stage for laying a solid foundation and taking full action to basically realize socialist modernization. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "To advance Chinese-path modernization, science and technology must lead the way. S&T innovation is the only path." China's technology finance development has made significant progress, but it also faces a situation where opportunities and challenges coexist.
In terms of opportunities, S&T and finance empower each other, and China's technology finance development has broad prospects. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period (2021–2025), under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee, the top-level design of China's technology finance policy became clearer, forming a multi-level policy system coordinating special policies, comprehensive policies, and local policies. For example, seven departments, including the People's Bank of China, issued the Work Plan on Solidly Doing a Good Job in the Great Article of Technology Finance, promoting the construction of a policy framework and working mechanism featuring departmental synergy and central-local linkage. The Ministry of Science and Technology and other departments jointly released the Several Policy Measures to Accelerate the Construction of a Technology Finance System to Powerfully Support High-Level S&T Self-Reliance and Strength, providing full-lifecycle and full-chain financial services for S&T innovation. These measures clarified the top-level design, guiding direction, and developmental priorities of technology finance, providing both a favorable policy environment for innovation and important support for the national innovation system and the construction of the new-type whole-of-nation system. With the implementation of these policies, the ability, intensity, and level of financial support for S&T innovation have continuously improved, striving to meet the financing needs of technology-based enterprises at different stages of their lifecycle, achieving positive results and laying a solid foundation for doing a good job in the "great article" of technology finance during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.
The "Proposal" of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee stated that "Chinese-path modernization must rely on S&T modernization for support," requiring the enhancement of the overall efficiency of the national innovation system, the comprehensive strengthening of autonomous innovation capabilities, and the seizing of the commanding heights of S&T development. Whether it is strengthening original innovation and breakthroughs in key core technologies, promoting the deep integration of S&T innovation and industrial innovation, or building a modern industrial system and advancing the "Digital China" initiative, all require the better utilization of the role of finance. This demands that financial forces anchor themselves to the "four orientations" [6], start from the financial needs of S&T innovation, and optimize technology finance institutional arrangements and service systems to provide robust financial service guarantees. This will provide even broader space for the development of technology finance.
In terms of challenges, a gap remains between China's technology finance and the requirements of high-quality development; it faces both general problems in global technology finance development and certain unique, stage-specific constraints. From the perspective of general laws, a major common challenge in global technology finance practice is market failure. This is primarily because S&T innovation has significant knowledge-sharing and social spillover effects, leading to returns for innovation subjects that are lower than the total social benefit; the market alone cannot ensure that innovation investment reaches the socially optimal level. Meanwhile, because intangible assets such as intellectual property and human capital are difficult to value accurately, innovation subjects lack sufficient collateral, making financing constraints prominent. Additionally, frontier S&T R&D is characterized by long cycles, high risk of failure, and uncertainty in the transformation of results, which places higher demands on constructing an institutional framework that balances incentive intensity with risk-sharing mechanisms.
Regarding China's developmental reality, the existing financial system is highly compatible with large-scale, standardized industrial production, but a gap exists compared to the requirements for meeting S&T innovation activities characterized by high uncertainty and light assets. For example, the laws, regulations, and policy systems related to technology finance are not yet complete, the institutional framework supporting market entities in carrying out innovation is still imperfect, and some financial institutions face problems such as a lack of professional talent and technical means, as well as incomplete organizational structures when conducting technology finance business. This results in a low proportion of financial resources being "invested early, small, for the long term, and in hard tech." Furthermore, the development of technology finance involves multiple dimensions such as technology, institutions, markets, and talent, making it highly complex. All of this requires forging a consensus among policymakers, regulatory agencies, research institutions, market entities, and all sectors of society to provide full-lifecycle financial support for S&T innovation through top-level design and coordinated advancement.
Grasping the Strategic Priorities for Promoting the High-Quality Development of Technology Finance
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Technology finance must rise to the challenge and focus on priorities. Guide financial institutions to improve incentive and constraint mechanisms, coordinate the use of equity, debt, insurance, and other means, provide full-chain and full-lifecycle financial services for technology-based enterprises, and support the strengthening of the manufacturing industry." This important discourse clarifies the strategic goals of China's technology finance development. In recent years, with the in-depth development of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, S&T innovation has increasingly become the main battlefield of major-power competition, and technology finance has become an important force determining national competitiveness. Both the Third and Fourth Plenary Sessions of the 20th CPC Central Committee made explicit deployments for the development of technology finance, outlining a strategic blueprint while clarifying strategic priorities, powerfully strengthening the function of technology finance in supporting high-level S&T self-reliance and strength.
To implement the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important speeches and the decisions of the Party Central Committee, we must grasp the strategic attributes of technology finance and the challenges facing China’s development. We must transcend the single goal of traditional finance, which overemphasizes efficiency, and achieve a better combination of an effective market and a proactive government. By strengthening forward-looking top-level design and systemic institutional innovation, we must form a modern technology finance system that fits China's national conditions, conforms to the laws of S&T innovation, and can efficiently promote high-level S&T self-reliance and strength, achieving a dynamic balance of "efficiency–equity–security" during development. On the efficiency dimension, we should synergistically leverage the high efficiency of an effective market in risk pricing with the role of a proactive government in risk compensation and institutional supply, strengthen digital infrastructure construction, improve the allocation efficiency of financial resources in S&T innovation, and enhance the transformation efficiency of S&T achievements. On the equity dimension, we should optimize the implementation of structural monetary policy and the use of policy-based financial tools to ensure that small, medium, and micro technology enterprises have fair access to innovation capital, prevent the excessive concentration of financial resources in leading enterprises, and promote the coordinated development of different innovation subjects. On the security dimension, we should maintain financial stability, safeguard S&T security, and enhance the resilience and security levels of industrial and supply chains in a coordinated manner, establishing and improving risk monitoring and early warning mechanisms throughout the entire lifecycle to effectively prevent potential risks—such as technology bubbles and capital arbitrage—from evolving into systemic risks.
In this process, leveraging the advantages of the new-type whole-of-nation system provides vital support for improving the operational efficiency of the technology finance system. Under the new-type whole-of-nation system, the government can achieve breakthroughs in key core technologies and the cultivation of new quality productive forces—areas vital to national security and long-term development—by concentrating resources and coordinating forces. It can effectively fill the gap in investment by innovation subjects in major original innovation caused by market failure, improving S&T innovation efficiency. It can also promote policy, market, technology, talent, and other elements to pull in the same direction and form a synergy by improving multi-level, networked coordination mechanisms between departments. Furthermore, efforts can be focused on the following areas:
Constructing a financial service system consistent with the laws of S&T innovation. Strengthening overall coordination and promoting the synergy of innovation subjects, the aggregation of resources, and the coordinated application of policy tools will help better facilitate the free flow and efficient allocation of innovation elements, aiding the deep integration of the innovation, industrial, capital, and talent chains. To this end, we can promote information sharing and business cooperation among banks, insurance companies, securities firms, funds, financing guarantee agencies, and financial asset management companies—provided that cross-sector financial risks are prevented and customer privacy is protected—to guide more financial resources toward S&T innovation. We should encourage financial capital to focus on "investing early, small, for the long term, and in hard tech," solving the bottlenecks that have long plagued the development of technology finance. Given that banking assets account for a high proportion of China's total financial assets, promoting the deep integration of commercial banks with S&T innovation is crucial. Therefore, we can encourage and guide state-owned commercial banks to comprehensively increase support for technology finance and act as the mainstay in serving the real economy, while small and medium banks choose fields consistent with their own positioning and capabilities to provide specialized and refined financial services.
Effectively solving the market failure problem in technology finance development. Coordinated use of tools such as fiscal interest subsidies, awards and subsidies, policy-based financing guarantees, and policy-based finance should be employed to leverage fiscal funds...
The "leveraging effect" [7] of fiscal funds should be fully utilized to guide financial resources toward key areas such as technological innovation. This can inject "financial living water" [8] into national strategic technological innovation, effectively resolve market failure issues in the development of technology-finance, and promote a high-level virtuous cycle between technology, industry, and finance. To this end, we must improve the policy support system for technology-finance development, encouraging financial institutions to comprehensively utilize financial instruments such as the issuance of special bonds and ultra-long-term special treasury bonds to enhance the resilience and vitality of the technological innovation ecosystem. Following the operational laws of fund investment, we should tolerate normal investment risks and encourage government funds to optimize evaluation systems across the entire chain and life cycle. This entails creating a favorable atmosphere that encourages innovation and tolerates failure, as well as encouraging the establishment of fault-tolerance mechanisms centered on exemptions from liability for those who have performed their duties with due diligence and compliance, rather than simply using the profit and loss of a single project or a single fiscal year as the basis for assessment.
The pivotal role of the capital market must be leveraged. As a critical hub for the "living water" of technological innovation, the capital market can effectively match the high-risk, high-reward, and long-cycle characteristics of technological innovation enterprises. It provides a support model distinctly different from traditional finance and plays a crucial role in promoting the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial upgrading. To achieve this, we must continue to deepen capital market reforms, expand long-term investment forces such as equity-based public offering funds, insurance funds, and various types of pension funds, and improve the precision and effectiveness of services for technological innovation. We should steadily advance the reform of the registration-based IPO system [9], unblock channels for direct financing, and provide full-chain, full-life-cycle services for technological enterprises. The counter-cyclical adjustment mechanism for new share issuances should be refined, and efforts to support eligible technology-based enterprises in listing and financing should be intensified, prioritizing those technology-based enterprises that have achieved breakthroughs in key core technologies. Furthermore, we must improve the construction of the market ecosystem, including strengthening investor protection and optimizing the legal environment, to cultivate a culture of long-term rational investment and enhance the vitality of the technology-finance sector.
At the same time, the service functions of financial markets and digital infrastructure must be strengthened. We should reinforce technological consulting, intellectual property transactions, and the construction of credit information systems, and promote the "Innovation Credit Score System" [10] to create precise profiles of technological enterprises, thereby increasing the convenience with which financial resources serve technological innovation. We must deepen disciplinary integration and collaborative education between industry, academia, and research institutes to cultivate high-quality, interdisciplinary technology-finance talent. Finally, we should accelerate research into the basic theories of technology-finance, guiding research forces from universities and the industrial sector to jointly promote basic theoretical and empirical research, providing scholarly support for the construction of the technology-finance system.
(The author is the President of Nankai University) Source: People's Daily (February 3, 2026) Editor: Huihui