Research Group on the Revitalization of Northeast China, DRC

2018-02-06

In recent years, the Central Government and the whole society have shown great concern for the improvement of business environment and the revitalization of northeast China. In July 2017, Wang Anshun, Secretary of the Leading Party Members’ Group of the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC) led a research group consisting of members from the Research Department of Industrial Economy and the Research Institute of Resources and Environment Policies to conduct a field survey in northeast China on the revitalization and upgrading of, its manufacturing industry, studied underlying problems in the operation of local enterprises and solicited opinions from relevant entrepreneurs. In line with the overall pattern of the upgrading of national manufacturing industry and its actual performance in northeast China, the research group put forward some policy options on the revitalization of northeast China.

Research findings show that various policy measures set down by the Central Government for the revitalization of northeast China are being pushed ahead and some positive results have been generated. But there are still some problems to be addressed. With regard to the current policy measures, some are of well-leveraged means and can play the major role to boost the revitalization of northeast China at present.

First, the Central Government needs to resolutely push forward the reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and bring into play the leverage role of the market entities to promote structural optimization. In pushing forward the revitalization strategy, deepening the reform of SOEs in an all-round manner is one of the important measures. The overall poor performance of SOEs is still a major factor impeding the unleashing of economic vitality of northeast China. Besides, the high proportion of SOEs in local economic aggregate and underdevelopment of private economy in northeast China have remained unchanged. The Central Government needs to make further efforts to deepen the reform of SOEs in northeast China across the board by promoting mixed ownership and fleshing out capital management.

Second, the national overall planning on social security should be accelerated by giving play to the leveraging role of financial sector. Each year, the local governments in northeast China spends certain amount of money to subsidize the pension gap, which has reduced the financial input on local innovation and business start-up, the development of new industries and new business models as well as the construction of fundamental infrastructure and weakened the attraction of private investment. Since all the local governments in northeast China are facing the pressure posed by pension fund, the Central Government needs to boost the national overall planning on social security so as to relieve the financial burden on local governments.

Third, the Central Government needs to implement preferential policies to support northeast China, give free rein to local initiative and give full scope to the industrial leveraging role by means of upgrading. Northeast China boasts potential advantages in a number of industrial sectors and more efforts are required to further optimize the environment for development so as to promote the growth of competitive industries. The Central Government needs to take the following policy measures. One, it needs to support the R&D projects on hydrogen vehicles; two, it needs to forge famous brands of agricultural products produced by northeast China and increase the profits of its competitive industries; three, it needs to enforce fiscal and taxation policy support to draw more investment for its industrial development.