Chen Xu: Deep Impact of New Quality Productive Forces Development on Cultural Construction and Practical Priorities for Attention
Advancing the great cause of building a powerful country and achieving national rejuvenation on all fronts through Chinese-path modernization is the central task of the whole Party and the people of all ethnic groups throughout the country. The Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese-path Modernization, adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, explicitly points out: "Chinese-path modernization is the modernization of both material and cultural-ethical civilization. We must strengthen confidence in our culture, develop advanced socialist culture, promote revolutionary culture, and carry forward fine traditional Chinese culture. We must move faster to adapt to the new situation of rapid development in information technology, nurture a large-scale team of outstanding cultural talent, and stimulate the vitality of the entire nation for cultural innovation and creativity." Along with the rapid development of new quality productive forces, a profound and lasting economic, social, and ideological transformation will be triggered, and the cultural field will inevitably undergo major changes within this profound transformation. To effectively respond to this transformation and the deep changes it produces, it is necessary to fully grasp the historical, theoretical, and practical logic inherent within it. As a province with a strong economy, culture, and technological innovation, Guangdong should actively immerse itself in this transformation and open up new horizons for cultural construction.
I. Fully, Accurately, and Comprehensively Grasping Xi Jinping Thought on Culture and the Spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s Important Discourses on New Quality Productive Forces
First, we must take Xi Jinping Thought on Culture as our guide to better shoulder the new cultural mission in the New Era. On June 2, 2023, at a symposium on cultural inheritance and development, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Continuing to promote cultural prosperity, building a leading country in culture [1], and developing a modern Chinese civilization from a new starting point is our new cultural mission in the New Era." From October 7 to 8, 2023, the National Conference on Public Communications and Cultural Work was held in Beijing, where Xi Jinping Thought on Culture was formally proposed. This thought is characterized by the integration of "substance" and "application" [2], clarifying the roadmap and task list for cultural construction in the New Era, and marking a new height in our Party's understanding of the laws governing the development of socialist culture with Chinese characteristics. Currently, the world is undergoing accelerated changes unseen in a century. Culture, as the soul and spirit of a country, is the most fundamental, profound, and lasting supporting force. Without the active guidance of advanced culture, the great enrichment of the people's spiritual world, the continuous strengthening of the nation’s spiritual power, and high confidence in our culture, it is impossible for a country or a nation to stand tall in the world. The rejuvenation of a nation and the prosperity of a country are always powerfully supported by the flourishing of culture. The progress of an era is always clearly marked by the prosperity of culture. Therefore, to shoulder the new cultural mission of the New Era, we must always adhere to Xi Jinping Thought on Culture as our guide for action and fundamental follow-up, deeply understand its rich connotations, continuously reform and innovate in practice, and show new actions and make new contributions to promoting cultural prosperity, building a leading country in culture, and developing a modern Chinese civilization.
Second, we must take the spirit of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important discourses on new quality productive forces as our guide to promote cultural construction across the board. General Secretary Xi Jinping’s important discourses on new quality productive forces are rooted in the practice of economic development in the New Era. By accurately grasping the contemporary characteristic of "innovation," particularly "technological innovation," these discourses further deepen our understanding of the laws of development of the productive forces. They represent a major innovation and development of Marxist productive force theory, providing scientific guidance and injecting powerful ideological and active force into the promotion of high-quality development. Driven by innovation, new quality productive forces are characterized by high technology, high efficiency, and high quality. They are birthed by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, the innovative allocation of factors of production, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading. Their basic connotation is the leap in workers, means of labor, objects of labor, and their optimal combination, with a substantial increase in total factor productivity as the core indicator. Their hallmark is innovation, the key lies in high quality, and their essence is advanced productive forces. The rapid development of new quality productive forces impacts cultural construction in an all-around and deep-seated way. This is reflected not only in the continuous innovation and optimization of concepts, practices, factor allocation, and market environments but also in the integration of culture and technology, the innovation of industrial products, the reform of management systems and mechanisms, the enrichment of transmission paths, and the enhancement of means to ensure ideological security. Therefore, cultural construction must take the development of new quality productive forces as an opportunity, persist with innovation as the lead, and continuously promote the development of cultural productive forces. We must unceasingly advance technological, industrial, market, and institutional reforms in the cultural field, using a highly enriched cultural supply of high technology, high efficiency, and high quality to meet the people’s growing needs for a better life.
Third, we must identify the nexus for the deep, two-way integration of culture and technology. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "The integration of culture and technology has both birthed new cultural business formats and extended the cultural industry chain, while also gathering a large number of innovative talents. It is a sunrise industry with a bright future." Technology is the primary productive force, while culture is soft power. Culture and technology coexist and complement each other; technology empowers culture, while culture provides the soul for technology. Advanced cultural concepts provide the ideological source for technological innovation, while technological innovation provides the strong momentum for transforming cultural production methods and enhancing productive forces. Advanced culture can provide a soul for technology in terms of value orientation, moral judgment, thinking concepts, and innovative methods, creating a cultural environment conducive to technological innovation and thus driving technological development. In turn, the development of science and technology gives wings to the prosperity of culture, providing the core driving force, shaping new landscapes, and birthing new business formats. To fully, accurately, and comprehensively grasp Xi Jinping Thought on Culture and the spirit of his discourses on new quality productive forces, the key is to find the nexus of deep bidirectional integration, using innovation as the drive, high technology as the support, and high quality and efficiency as the guide. With cultural creation as the core content, we must forge new quality productive forces in the cultural field supported by high technology to promote cultural prosperity and development in all dimensions.
II. Analysis of the Major Impact of the Development of New Quality Productive Forces on Cultural Construction
First is technological transformation. New quality productive forces are advanced productive forces driven by key and disruptive technologies; they are "new qualitative state" productive forces birthed by revolutionary technological breakthroughs. Technological transformation is the key driver for their formation and development. Currently, a series of original, key, and disruptive technologies—such as artificial intelligence, life sciences, new industrial materials, new energy, and quantum communication—are emerging and developing rapidly. Their development and application in the cultural field will have a disruptive impact. The efficient and innovative combination of culture with key and disruptive technologies of the new quality productive forces—such as digitalization, networking, and intelligence—will birth new business formats and ecosystems, driving revolutionary development and enrichment in application scenarios, work efficiency, and transmission methods within cultural construction.
Second is the transformation of factors of production. The efficiency enhancement and optimal combination leap of the three elements of productive forces—workers, means of labor, and objects of labor—are necessary conditions for the leap of productive forces and the formation of new quality productive forces. New quality productive forces have given birth to new types of infrastructure, forming entirely new production and service systems. This promotes the low-cost flow, networked sharing, systematic integration, collaborative development, and high-efficiency utilization of production factors. It leads to the continuous enrichment of the connotations of production factors, the expansion of their types, the transformation of their structures, and the optimization of their combinations, significantly increasing total factor productivity. Henceforth, the barrier where "different trades are like separate mountains" [3] will be continuously broken. For a specific field or industry to develop rapidly, it will instead need to break down walls and achieve deep integration with high-tech and new technologies. The enhancement of total factor productivity brought by the development of new quality productive forces to cultural construction is revolutionary for advancing cultural innovation, development, and popularization, holding immense developmental potential.
Third is the transformation of production modes. New quality productive forces extend the physical and intellectual power of workers, deeply expanding their capabilities and significantly increasing labor efficiency. Simultaneously, the space for labor has expanded to almost all fields, and the varieties and scopes of the means of labor have become extremely rich. The way workers, means of labor, and objects of labor are combined has undergone a massive change, bringing about a major transformation in production modes. In cultural construction, this is directly manifested in the "prosumerist" [4] co-creation and integration of subjects. The production and consumption of cultural products or services achieve a state of being disintermediated and instantaneous. Real-time interaction between production and consumption, relying on big data and intelligence, forms the automatic co-creation and optimization of products or services. In some scenarios, an integrated phenomenon emerges where one is both producer and consumer, leading to a fundamental blending of identity differences and revenue mechanisms between the two. The identities of cultural content producers, consumers, and beneficiaries overlap; cultural production not only produces cultural products for consumption but also produces the subjects who consume those cultural products.
Fourth is the transformation of business formats. The profound transformation of production modes, organizational structures, and management models facilitated by the development of new quality productive forces has greatly increased collaborative productivity and promoted the emergence of new business formats. This is directly manifested in the digitalization of production systems, the fusion of industrial development, the intelligentization of production processes, the cross-pollination of complex technologies, and the networking of multi-chain coordination. This transformation of formats requires cultural construction to innovate and reform in areas such as technological empowerment, content creation, talent aggregation, industrial upgrading, production technology, and management systems. It necessitates promoting the deep integration of the cultural and technology industries, continuously creating new production, operation, and transmission models, and driving the cultural industry to extend into high-tech fields to ensure a high-quality, high-efficiency supply of cultural products.
III. Practical Priorities for Promoting Cultural Construction in Guangdong in Adaptation to the Development of New Quality Productive Forces
First, Guangdong must shoulder its responsibility in the new cultural mission of the New Era. Since the reform and opening up, Guangdong Province has always been at the forefront of national economic development, ranking first in total economic volume for 35 consecutive years. In 2023, Guangdong's comprehensive regional innovation capability ranked first in the country for the seventh consecutive year, and the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou" technology cluster ranked second in the Global Innovation Index for four years running. In the same year, the operating income of cultural and related industrial enterprises above designated size in Guangdong reached 2.25 trillion yuan, accounting for more than one-sixth of the national total, with the total scale of the cultural industry ranking first in the country for 20 years. As a province strong in economy, technological innovation, and culture, Guangdong must shoulder its new cultural mission with a high sense of political responsibility, historical urgency, and spirit of accountability, striving to write Guangdong’s chapter in promoting cultural prosperity, building a leading country in culture, and developing a modern Chinese civilization.
Second, Guangdong must base itself on its resource endowments and plan comprehensively through system integration. Guangdong possesses unique cultural resource endowments: the three major cultural systems of Guangfu [5], Hakka, and Chaoshan are magnificent and colorful; its fine traditional culture and revolutionary culture are rich and deep; its maritime culture has a long history; and its reputation for "daring to be the first" in reform and opening up is world-renowned. We must uphold Guangdong's cultural resource endowments and plan deeply for comprehensive reform and development through system integration, highlighting Guangdong's characteristics, style, and strength. In particular, we should leverage Guangdong's advantage of having a developed market economy, ensuring that the application of technology in the cultural field is fast and efficient, allowing various factors of production to be optimally combined in the market, and giving full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation. Next, we must break through institutional and mechanism obstacles with the courage to be the first, carrying out bold reforms of the cultural system to ensure that the development of new quality productive forces in the cultural field yields tangible results. Third, we must become a high-ground for the aggregation of cultural talent. Guangdong's solid cultural industry foundation is conducive to gathering talent. We must attract talent and wisdom through various means, creating a "strong magnetic field" for cultural talent, and use talent as a support to develop the cultural industry into a promising sunrise industry, achieving a "double harvest" of both economic and social benefits.
Third, we must do a great job in the "big article" [6] of the bidirectional integration of technology and culture. In recent years, Guangdong has anchored itself to the goal of creating a global industrial technology innovation center and building a modern industrial system with greater international competitiveness. It has accelerated the construction of a whole-process innovation chain of "basic research + technical bottlenecks + achievement transformation + technology finance + talent support," allowing technology and industry to further form a synergy. The deep integration of new quality productive forces and cultural construction must always grasp the nexus of technology-culture fusion, adhering to empowering through technology and providing a soul through culture. We must accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional cultural industries, continuously improve the digitalization, intelligentization, and networking of cultural construction, and enhance the vitality of innovation and creation in cultural industry products, allowing new quality productive forces to flourish in the cultural field.
Fourth, we must leverage locational advantages and persist in "bringing in" and "going out." Guangdong should give full play to its advantages in geography and human connections, utilizing the overseas transmission advantages of dialects such as Cantonese, Hakka, and Teochew. We must focus on telling the stories of China, the Greater Bay Area, and Guangdong, innovating discourse systems and modes of expression. We must exert effort in both "bringing in" and "going out" [7], promoting the affinity and connection between people through cultural exchange and mutual learning. Using Guangdong as a window, we can showcase the beauty of Chinese civilization and the Chinese nation, continuously enhancing the dissemination, influence, and radiation of fine traditional Chinese culture, Chinese civilization, and modern Chinese civilization. We must continue to consolidate the dominant position of mainstream ideology, mainstream values, and mainstream culture, presenting to the world a China that is credible, lovable, and respectable, and a Guangdong that is full of vitality, daring to be the first, and thriving.
(The author is the Secretary of the Discipline Inspection Committee and Deputy Director of the Culture Development Promotion Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)