New quality productive forces revitalize 'old' sectors

New quality productive forces can be a new momentum to boost high quality development. The central authorities have reiterated that new arrangements should be based on local conditions, emphasizing the need to coordinate the cultivation of new economic drivers and the upgrading of old economic drivers.

How to deal with the relationship between the new and traditional economic drivers? To further cultivate new quality productive forces and facilitate the transformation and upgrading of traditional economic drivers, it is necessary to view the relationship between them from a dialectical perspective. Since the two economic drivers are not opposed to each other, they should promote each other and pursue integrated development.

Emphasizing new quality productive forces does not mean that traditional drivers have become dispensable, nor does it mean that traditional industries should be phased out as "low-end industries". Instead, China should continue promoting the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and empowering them with new-quality productivity.

In many fields, traditional industries often serve as the matrix or elemental support for the development of new quality productive forces. For example, the traditional electroplating industry is characterized by high energy consumption and emissions.

But electroplating is one of the basic processes in manufacturing. Despite the development of the electronics, automobile, aerospace and other industries, as well as the industries' high-end and green transformation, the electroplating industry still has considerable room for development. And we should know that there are no backward industries, only relatively backward products, technologies and capacities.

How to support scientific and technological innovation and the upgrading of industries?

First, to provide a solid foundation for innovation, there is a need to expand domestic demand by increasing the incomes of urban and rural residents, expanding the size of the middle-income group and the domestic market, and optimizing the consumption environment. China has a large, fast-growing and vast market. With a population of more than 1.4 billion and a middle-income group of over 400 million people, China is the second-largest and most promising consumer market for goods globally. As for online retail sales, it has crossed 13 trillion yuan ($1.78 trillion), making China the world's largest online retail market for 10 consecutive years.

Second, there is also a need to ensure smooth factor mobility and concentration in advantageous fields by expeditiously building a unified national market, breaking down all forms of local barriers and de-segmenting the market, guaranteeing smooth factor resource mobility, improving factor allocation, and stimulating the endogenous motivation and innovation vitality of businesses.

Third, measures should be taken to promote the new national system, implement high-quality development initiatives for key manufacturing industry chains, strengthen quality support and standard leadership, and make the industry and supply chains more resilient.

Fourth, it is also necessary to promote coordinated regional development and cultivate new-quality productivity based on local conditions. Since China has vast territory with different regions at different development levels, different regions should maximize their comparative advantages according to their resource endowments, industrial bases and scientific research levels, and expeditiously develop a development pattern with distinctive features and complementary advantages in new-quality productivity.

And fifth, measures should also be taken to expedite the green transformation of development modes and promote green productivity. The key to solving the challenges of green development lies in technology.

The biggest challenge facing the world today is how to promote sustainable global economic growth. Given the different development levels and resource endowments of different countries, it is necessary to use the complementary advantages, while pursuing mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, jointly building an open world economic system, seizing the opportunities created by the digital economy, artificial intelligence and low-carbon technology, and creating new drivers of growth.

Pursuing high-quality opening-up to promote reform and development is necessary to ensure China makes new achievements in its modernization drive. High-quality opening-up helps stimulate innovation potential, and promote conceptual, institutional and technological innovation. China will continue to further open up its economy as it welcomes the participation of foreign industries, academia and research communities in the development of new-quality productivity.

China will make international standards a benchmark for future development, promote trade and investment liberalization, and improve business efficiency. Also, by adapting to the trends of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, according to the Action Plan for Promoting High-level Opening-up to Attract and Utilize Foreign Investment, China aims to include foreign investment in fields such as integrated circuits, biomedicine and high-end equipment in the list of major and key projects.

Moreover, China will continue to cooperate with other countries in order to boost traditional industries, develop emerging and future industries, cultivate new growth drivers, and jointly promote the sustainable development of the world economy. China is always open to cooperation with other countries with a positive attitude, and will continue to promote common development and prosperity worldwide.

The author is the deputy director-general of and senior research fellow at the Institute of International Economic Research, Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.

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