The 8th China Manufacturing Power Forum themed “Promote New Trend of Industrialization, Cultivate New Productive Forces” has recently been held in Hebei. Its goals are to create world-class advanced manufacturing clusters, and accumulate strength to empower the solid advancement of new industrialization and accelerate the boost of China’s strength in manufacturing. During his research in Heilongjiang in September this year, General Secretary Xi Jinping stated that we should integrate sci-tech innovation resources, drive the development of strategic emerging industries and future industries and accelerate the formation of new productive forces. According to Xi, it is necessary to foster strategic emerging industries including new energy, new materials, advanced manufacturing and electronic information and nurture industries of the future, in a bid to create new productive forces and new growth impetus. General Secretary Xi’s remarks provide us with a foundation for comprehending and seizing new productive forces. With the help of the extensive application of digital technology, new productive forces have created a series of innovative technologies and new production methods and become a key force driving the upgrading of traditional manufacturing. The cultivation of new productive forces will promote the industrial system toward high quality, high efficiency and sustainable development and offer a new engine for boosting China’s strength in manufacturing.

New productive forces bring about profound changes in manufacturing

New productive forces refer to high-level modern productivity driven by sci-tech innovation; these forces might be new-type, new-structure, high-tech-level, high-quality, high-efficiency and sustainable. The “new” in new productive forces is mainly embodied in the following four dimensions. Firstly, new laborers who can fully use modern technology and high-end advanced equipment; secondly, new objects of labor that adapt to new productive forces; thirdly, new instruments of labor such as AI, virtual reality and augmented reality devices; fourthly, new infrastructure that adapts to new productive forces. As the main content of new productive forces, high-caliber labor and modern high and new technologies are crucial to the future development of manufacturing in China because not only do they accelerate the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of the traditional manufacturing industry’s production and organization methods, but they also help develop strategic emerging industries and future industries. Today, as society moves to a higher development stage, new productive forces, by integrating innovation resources, promotes the application of technologies such as intelligent production lines, automated robots and big data analysis, to greatly improve enterprises’ production and manufacturing capabilities and their products’ quality level, thereby injecting new vitality into traditional manufacturing and bringing profound changes to the manufacturing sector.

This year, China has increased investment in technological transformation, promoted the rapid transformation of traditional manufacturing, actively fostered strategic emerging industries and developed more advanced manufacturing clusters. China has now basically established a large-scale, comprehensive and competitive modern industrial system and is accelerating the building of the main front for the generation and development of new productive forces. In the first 10 months of this year in China, investment in high-tech industries grew by 11.1% year on year, significantly faster than the overall investment growth; in October, the added value of equipment manufacturing above designated size grew by 6.2% year on year, rallying for three consecutive months. In addition, the number of the first national strategic emerging industry clusters has reached 66, the scale of the AI core industry has reached RMB 500 billion, and the global share of newly installed industrial robots has exceeded 50%. These data show that China is accelerating the development of strategic emerging industries and the formation of new productive forces, and the transformed and upgraded manufacturing is becoming firm support for the modern industrial system.

However, China still has a few pressing issues to address in its efforts to develop new productive forces. For example, the “new” in new productive forces stems from sci-tech innovation, but China still has much room for improvement in keeping up with the global trend of sci-tech innovation, major original achievements, utilization rate of sci-tech innovation resources, underlying technologies and process capabilities. Furthermore, the formation and development of new productive forces depend on high-caliber talents, but China’s system for independently cultivating innovative talent needs to be improved, the enthusiasm, initiative and creativity of talent team building have not yet been fully sparked, and there is an urgent need to further optimize the systems and mechanisms for talent introduction, cultivation, use, evaluation and flow.

Accelerating the formation of new productive forces from three aspects

Given the dynamic and ever-evolving opportunities and challenges of today, new productive forces are needed to ignite the innovation engine and propel China’s strength in manufacturing to a new level. Specifically, efforts should be made from the following aspects.

Firstly, adhere to the innovation-driven development strategy and continuously promote the development level of productivity with sci-tech innovation, to accelerate the formation of new productive forces and provide core power for boosting China’s strength in manufacturing. On the one hand, the government should deepen structural scientific and technological reform, remove institutional barriers, increase fiscal investment in basic research and improve the systems and mechanisms that support original innovation; adhere to the innovation-driven development strategy, continuously adjust the relations of production, optimize resource allocation and layout structure, attract global resource factors with the flow of the domestic economy and maintain firm strategic resolve in open development. On the other hand, enterprises are the subject of sci-tech innovation and the most active innovation force. Regarding cutting-edge digital technology, leading enterprises in the industry should be driven by digital technology innovation, bring into play the high connectivity and strong penetration of digital technology, strengthen basic research, attach importance to original innovation, increase the reserve of original technologies and realize independent and controllable core technologies in key fields. In the face of fierce international competition, accelerating the creation of a new development pattern urgently needs sci-tech innovation as a power engine and trailblazer and the cultivation of new productive forces at a faster pace, in a bid to inject strong power into the boosting of China’s strength in manufacturing.

Secondly, strengthen talent support, enhance talent team building, strive to foster top-notch innovative talents and play the important role of innovative talents in the formation of new productive forces and the boosting of China’s strength in manufacturing. The government should improve the basic system to support the development of innovative talents, formulate and implement policies for recruiting innovative talents, focus on the country’s technology and strategy needs, form an attractive and internationally competitive talent system and accelerate the formation of a talent structure in line with the development needs of new productive forces. Enterprises should explore a more reasonable talent employment system to offer better conditions to attract high-caliber talents with a sci-tech background, familiarity with market operations and mastery of enterprise management skills to the enterprise innovation team. In the meantime, the government should cultivate innovative talents with a multi-dimensional knowledge structure, optimize long-term incentive mechanisms and provide talent guarantee and environmental support for the cultivation of new productive forces. The government should cultivate top-notch talents that adapt to the country’s strategic needs and lead the trend of economic and social development and provide strong talent and intellectual support for promoting the continuous upgrading of new productive forces.

Thirdly, focus on the building of a modern industrial system, lead the development of strategic emerging industries and nurture industries of the future, in a bid to create new productive forces and new growth impetus. The government should seize the opportunity of the reshaping of the global economic structure in the latest revolution in science and technology and industrial transformation, address the country’s major strategic needs and future industrial development needs, strive to realize effective cooperation and connection between strategic emerging industries and dominant industries through whole-industry-chain layout, and promote the fundamental transformation from continuous industrial upgrading to iterative industrial upgrading. Enterprises should accelerate the layout and exploration of leading technologies in new areas and new arenas so that innovation results can be quickly transformed into real productivity, and they should consolidate the technological foundation to support the development of industries of the future, improve industrial capabilities, drive industrial transformation in reliance on sci-tech innovation and continuously empower the building of a modern industrial system. Both the government and enterprises should not only base themselves on the existing industrial foundation and accelerate the upgrading of traditional manufacturing but also prospectively plan for new industries, lead the development of strategic emerging industries and future industries and accelerate the formation of more new productive forces, in order to provide enduring impetus for better boosting of China’s strength in manufacturing.

Source: Science and Technology Daily, December 11, 2023