Studying and implementing the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress is the primary political task of the entire Party and the Chinese people now and in the future. The Shanghai Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, the Shanghai Party Institute of CPC and the Jiefang Daily Press have launched a special issue, Interpretation of Keywords of the Spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, to comprehensively expand on the rich connotation and historical significance of the Report to the 20th CPC National Congress, focus on 20 keywords including the “two establishes” (establishment of both Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and establishment of the guiding role of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era), “milestone”, and “Chinese modernization”, and interpret the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress in depth.

Professor Chen Qiang from the Department of Management Science and Engineering, Tongji SEM has recently published an article in Jiefang Daily to interpret “invigorating China through science and education”, one of the keywords of the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, and express his views around enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system through “three-primary” and the mutual contributive and promotive relationships between sci-tech progress, education development and economic and social advancement.

The function of the sci-tech subsystem is to ensure the effective supply of the “primary productive force”, i.e., continuing to promote high-quality scientific research and technological inventions; the goal of the education subsystem is to cultivate the “primary resource”, i.e., continuously and stably providing various talents for sci-tech innovation as well as economic and social development; the function of the economic and social subsystem is to drive the transformation of sci-tech achievements through innovation as the “primary driver of growth”.

In the face of a string of profound changes in the international political and economic situation that have occurred in recent years, the Party Central Committee has fully assessed the situation, put innovation at the heart of China’s modernization drive, and regarded self-reliance and strength in science and technology as the strategic support for national development. Against the backdrop of severe challenges and major opportunities, the national innovation system must have more resilience, tension, dynamics, elasticity and viscosity.

In the new development stage, the purposes of enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system are clear: to set sights on the global frontiers of science and technology, national economic development, the major needs of the country, and the health and safety of the people, continue to generate and apply the original achievements of basic research, make breakthroughs in “bottleneck core technologies”, and improve the necessary responsiveness and supply quality in aspects of guaranteeing overall national security, promoting high-quality economic and social development, and meeting the growing desire of people for a better life.

Firstly, the “primary productive force”, “primary resource” and “primary driver of growth” should interact and interconnect with each other closely; secondly, the effective supply of the “primary productive force” should be constantly strengthened; thirdly, support from the “primary resource” should be constantly enhanced; fourthly, the transformation efficiency of the “primary driver of growth” should be accelerated. In enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system, the continuous consolidation of the effective supply of the “primary productive force” is the basis and prerequisite; the continuous enhancement of support from the “primary resource” is fundamental; the acceleration of the transformation efficiency of the “primary driver of growth” is the purpose. Therefore, these three points are highly related. By promoting the coordinated development of science and technology (primary productive force), talents (primary resource) and innovation (primary driver of growth), the national innovation system will have richer elements, a more reasonable structure, and more powerful functions to make greater contributions to the realization of the Second Centenary Goal.