BEIJING: China’s commitment to cultivating new quality productive forces through scientific and technological innovation, as reiterated by President Xi Jinping, will help the country gain a competitive edge in strategic emerging fields and tech frontiers, and contribute to global economic growth, said experts and company executives.
Highlighting that fostering new growth drivers has been high on China’s development agenda, they called for accelerating efforts to achieve breakthroughs in crucial technologies by investing more in fundamental research, reinforcing the dominant position of enterprises in boosting technological advancements, and intensifying financial support for innovation-oriented tech companies.
First put forward by Xi, who is also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, during his inspection tour of Heilongjiang province in September 2023, the term “new quality productive forces” has been highlighted at several high-profile meetings.
New quality productive forces are driven by revolutionary technological breakthroughs, the innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading, Xi said while presiding over a group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in January last year.
He pointed out that sci-tech innovation can generate new industries, new models and new growth drivers, which are the core elements of the development of new quality productive forces.
The tone-setting Central Economic Work Conference held in December called for more efforts to make sci-tech innovation drive the development of new quality productive forces and build a modern industrial system.
Huang Hanquan, head of the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research, said, “Developing new quality productive forces is an intrinsic requirement for promoting China’s high-quality development and will inject fresh momentum into global economic growth.”
Huang said that China has favorable conditions for fostering new quality productive forces, given its ever-increasing innovation capacities, complete industrial systems, ultra-large domestic market, high-caliber talent pool and massive data resources.
To gain an upper hand in a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, he stressed that more efforts should be made to bolster sci-tech innovation, especially innovation in cutting-edge and disruptive technologies, and to accelerate the industrial application of innovative achievements, further deepen reforms in technology and education mechanisms, and expand high-level opening-up.
A meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on July 30, which was presided over by Xi, called for accelerating the cultivation of emerging pillar industries with global competitiveness and promoting the deep integration and development of sci-tech innovation and industrial innovation. –The Daily Mail-China Daily news exchange item
