Chinese President Xi Jinping has stressed developing new quality productive forces amid the country’s accelerated efforts to foster new growth drivers and promote high-quality development.
First put forward by Xi in 2023 during inspection in China’s north-east Heilongjiang province, the concept was highlighted at a key meeting on economic work last December, and became the subject of a group study session of the CPC leadership earlier this year. In this year’s top legislature meeting, the concept dominated policy discussions in many areas, and was placed as the top priority of the government’s work in 2024 in the government work report. Here are the key implications of the concept, and how China plans to implement as the country pursues high-quality development:
The ABCs of new quality productive forces
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Q: What does it mean?
A: With innovation playing the leading role, new quality productive forces mean advanced productivity that is freed from the traditional economic growth mode and productivity development paths, features high-tech, high efficiency and high quality, and comes in line with the new development philosophy.
Q: What are the drivers, basic connotation and core hallmark?
A: Drivers: revolutionary technological breakthroughs, innovative allocation of production factors, and deep industrial transformation and upgrading
Basic connotation: the improvement of workers, means of labor, subjects of labor and their optimal combinations
Core hallmark: a substantial increase in total factor productivity
Marked by innovation, and with high quality as the key, new quality productive forces are advanced productivity in essence.
Q: Why it matters?
A: Promoting high-quality development has become the consensus and conscious action of the whole Party and society in the new era. There are still many factors restricting high-quality development, which must be guided by a new productivity theory.
Q: How to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces?
A: 1) To continue to well leverage innovation to speed up the development of new quality productive forces
- 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
- Strengthen sci-tech innovation, especially original and disruptive innovation
- Sci-tech innovations should be applied to specific industries and industrial chains in a timely manner
- Expedite the green transformation of growth models and contribute to carbon peaking and carbon neutrality
- To further deepen reform in an all-round way and form a new type of relations of production appropriate to the development of new quality productive forces
- Deepen reforms of the economic system and the science and technology management system, work hard to remove bottlenecks that hinder the development of new quality productive forces
- Further deepen reform in an all-round way and form a new type of relations of production appropriate to the development of new quality productive forces
- To smooth the virtuous cycle of education, science and technology as well as talent in accordance with the requirement of developing new quality productive forces, and improve the mechanism of talent training, introduction, use and flow
DOs & DON’Ts in Developing New Quality Productive Forces
President Xi Jinping called for focusing on high-quality development as the top priority, urging efforts to step up innovation, foster emerging industries, adopt forward-thinking plans for developing future-oriented industries and improve the modernized industrial system.
Developing new quality productive forces does not mean neglecting or abandoning traditional industries, Xi said. It is necessary to prevent a headlong rush into projects and the formation of industry bubbles, and avoid adopting just a single model of development, he noted.
Localities should take into account their own resource endowment, industrial foundation and scientific research conditions in promoting the development of new industries, models and growth drivers in a selective manner, and use new technologies to transform and upgrade traditional sectors into high-end, intelligent and green industries, he said.
