Yang Xinming: New Quality Productive Forces are Themselves Green Productive Forces
The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee proposed to "accelerate high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology, and lead the development of new quality productive forces" and to "accelerate the comprehensive green transition of economic and social development to build a Beautiful China." In January 2024, during the 11th collective study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping systematically elucidated the scientific connotation of new quality productive forces, profoundly pointed out the major significance of developing them, and put forward the major judgment that "new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces." By integrating the characteristics of the era, guiding ideology, internal meaning, and practical requirements, it is of great practical significance to accurately grasp the internal consistency between new quality productive forces and green productive forces in terms of development stages, development concepts, development connotations, and development paths.
Consistency of Development Stages
Correctly recognizing the historical orientation and development stage of the cause of the Party and the people is the fundamental basis for our Party to define the central tasks of specific stages and to formulate lines, principles, and policies. It is also an important experience through which our Party has led the revolution, construction, and reform to continuous victory. To accurately grasp the relationship between new quality productive forces and green productive forces, one must first understand the characteristics of the era in which these two important concepts were proposed. After more than 40 years of development since reform and opening up, China’s economic development has achieved grand successes, realizing a stage-specific leap from scale expansion to quality enhancement. In the New Era, the principal contradiction in Chinese society has evolved into the contradiction between the people's ever-growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. A better life is multidimensional, encompassing the economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological dimensions. The key to meeting the people's need for a better life lies in solving the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development. This requires that, while ensuring a certain rate of economic growth, we shift more toward improving the quality of economic growth. By transforming the mode of development, optimizing the economic structure, and shifting the drivers of growth, we must promote changes in the quality, efficiency, and drivers of economic development to achieve high-quality development.
General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "High-quality development needs to be guided by new theories of productive forces. Since new quality productive forces have already formed in practice and demonstrated a strong driving and supporting force for high-quality development, we need to summarize and generalize them theoretically to guide new developmental practices." The emergence of new quality productive forces meets the objective needs of China’s current stage of economic and social development; they were proposed and systematically demonstrated based on a full grasp of the laws governing economic and social development. General Secretary Xi Jinping noted that "green development is the defining feature of high-quality development, and new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces." It is thus evident that new quality productive forces and green productive forces are unified within the new stage of development [1]; they represent the core path to achieving high-quality development and resolving the principal contradiction of society.
Consistency of Development Concepts
Development concepts are the precursor to developmental action. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has creatively proposed the New Development Philosophy of "innovation, coordination, green development, openness, and sharing." These five development concepts constitute an internally linked collective that scientifically answers the major questions of what kind of development to pursue and how to achieve it in the new stage. Among them, innovation is the primary driver of development; coordination is the internal requirement for sustained and healthy development; green development is a necessary condition for sustainable development and an important manifestation of the people’s pursuit of a better life; openness is the only way for a country to prosper; and sharing is the essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Both new quality productive forces and green productive forces are unified under the New Development Philosophy.
First, the theory of new quality productive forces is a deepening of the concept of innovative development. Guided by the concept of innovative development, China has continuously increased investment in scientific and technological innovation, with research and development (R&D) expenditures rising year by year. The growth momentum of scientific research output is strong, and the quantity and quality of patents have steadily improved. The capacity for industrial technological innovation continues to rise, with fruitful results emerging in fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, integrated circuits, and biomedicine. However, in the new stage of development, China still faces problems such as being subject to others in key core technologies [2], slow industrial upgrading, and the urgent need to move up the global value chain. To solve these problems, there is an urgent need for guidance from new theories of productive forces. New quality productive forces are a new state of productive forces catalyzed by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading. They place higher demands on the breadth, depth, precision, and integration of scientific and technological innovation, emphasizing the immense power generated by key disruptive technological breakthroughs. This is the implementation and deepening of the concept of innovative development and the key to breaking the current deadlock.
Second, green productive forces are the concretization of the concept of green development. The extensive development model promoted rapid economic growth through large-scale resource inputs and inefficient utilization, but it also caused serious environmental pollution, resource depletion, and ecological destruction, severely constraining sustainable economic development. The proposal of the concept of green development pointed the way for economic and social development in the New Era. It requires the mode of economic growth to shift from the traditional extensive type, which relies on large amounts of factor inputs, to an intensive type driven by innovation. In the process of development, it adheres to the developmental logic that "protecting the ecological environment is protecting productive forces, and improving the ecological environment is developing productive forces," promoting the developmental goal of synergy between economic and social development and ecological protection. Green productive forces directly incorporate elements such as the ecological environment into the category of productive forces. By accelerating the green empowerment of traditional industries and promoting green technological innovation, they improve energy efficiency, enhance the quality of the ecological environment, and assist in achieving the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. Therefore, green productive forces are the practical manifestation of the thorough implementation of the concept of green development throughout the entire process of economic and social development.
Third, new quality productive forces and green productive forces are unified in the people-centered philosophy of development. The five development concepts are a multidimensional whole, reflecting the commitment to a people-centered philosophy of development. New quality productive forces take green development as an internal requirement, and green productive forces take innovative development as their core driver. The two are symbiotic and mutually reinforcing; both are advanced states of productive forces that align with and are unified under the New Development Philosophy.
Consistency of Development Connotations
Althoughthe expressions for new quality productive forces and green productive forces differ, their theoretical connotations are consistent.
First, the goals pursued by both are consistent; namely, both are defined in opposition to traditional growth or development models. New quality productive forces break away from traditional modes of economic growth and paths of productive force development. Traditional growth modes involve high input, high pollution, and low output, whereas green productive forces precisely aim to change the traditional development model that relies excessively on increasing the consumption of material resources, excessive extensive scale expansion, and high-energy-consuming, high-emission industries.
Second, the core markers of both are consistent. "High technology, high efficiency, and high quality" are the characteristics of new quality productive forces, while "low energy consumption, low pollution, and low emissions" are the salient characteristics of green productive forces. Each emphasizes different aspects of the advanced state of productive forces: the former emphasizes the difference from traditional productive forces, while the latter emphasizes the impact on natural resources. However, both are definitions of improved efficiency—namely, low input and high output. Therefore, there is significant consistency between the two regarding the core marker of efficiency enhancement.
Finally, the sources of efficiency for both are consistent. The ways in which new quality productive forces improve total factor productivity (TFP) can stem from the quality enhancement of factors such as laborers, instruments of labor, and subjects of labor, or from the improvement of factor allocation efficiency through innovations in business models, management, and systems. The methods can include the use of new technologies, the reform of old systems that hinder efficiency, or the innovation of internal management methods. The sources of green productive forces are likewise diverse. They can come from emerging green industries like new energy and new materials catalyzed by green and low-carbon technological innovation, or from the green development of traditional industries empowered by new technologies. Green productive forces can also be achieved through the protection and restoration of the ecological environment, realizing a positive interaction between humanity and nature. In this sense, it can be said that new quality productive forces are themselves green productive forces.
Consistency of Development Paths
New quality productive forces and green productive forces possess an internal consistency in their development paths, as both take the realization of Chinese-path modernization as their ultimate goal.
Both new quality productive forces and green productive forces take revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep transformation of industrial structures as their development paths. Their basic paths are as follows: First, promoting revolutionary technological breakthroughs. New quality productive forces take scientific and technological innovation as their core driving force, relying especially on original and disruptive technological breakthroughs. Green productive forces are likewise advanced productive forces led by technological innovation, emphasizing the acceleration of green technological innovation and encouraging the promotion and application of advanced green technologies. Second, promoting the innovative allocation of production factors. New quality productive forces are reflected not only in the qualitative reshaping of various production factors but also in the optimized leap in the combination of production factors. Innovative allocation of factors is also an important path for the development of green productive forces. By incorporating energy, resources, and materials into the system of production factors and innovating the way these factors are combined, we can optimize the energy structure, effectively reduce the over-exploitation of natural resources, and improve the ecological environment. Clearing the channels for the circulation of green factors and actively promoting the establishment of market-based trading systems for discharge rights and carbon emission rights will facilitate the smooth flow of production factors toward green and low-carbon directions. Third, promoting deep industrial transformation and upgrading. The formation and development of new quality productive forces must take deep industrial transformation as the main direction of attack, including accelerating the upgrading of traditional industries, cultivating and strengthening strategic emerging industries, planning for future industries ahead of time, and optimizing the layout of industrial and supply chains. Transforming and upgrading industries toward green and low-carbon directions can cultivate and develop green productive forces. Using green technology to transform traditional industries can reduce corporate dependence on fossil fuels, decrease pollution emissions and resource waste, and improve energy efficiency; promoting the industrial development of emerging green technologies such as new materials and renewable energy can continuously cultivate new momentum for green development; and building green industrial and supply chains can promote the development of green productive forces by comprehensively constructing a green and low-carbon industrial system.
Both new quality productive forces and green productive forces are advanced states of productive forces aimed at realizing Chinese-path modernization. By fundamentally transforming modes of production and development to generate a continuous stream of new momentum, new quality productive forces can provide a solid material and technical foundation for Chinese-path modernization. Unlike Western modernization, Chinese-path modernization is a "parallel" development model characterized by the coordinated development of the "Four Modernizations" [3]. Among these, the harmony between humanity and nature reflects the essential difference between Chinese-path modernization and Western modernization. This requires that in the process of advancing Chinese-path modernization, we always adhere to the concept that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," [4] using green and low-carbon principles to construct new modes of production and development, and achieving positive interaction and synergy between socio-economic development and ecological protection.