{"id":58065,"date":"2025-01-26T10:39:20","date_gmt":"2025-01-26T10:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/omegatv.online\/?p=58065"},"modified":"2025-07-02T07:44:28","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T07:44:28","slug":"commentary-unleashing-new-quality-productive-forces-chinas-strategy-for-technology-led-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/omegatv.online\/en\/commentary-unleashing-new-quality-productive-forces-chinas-strategy-for-technology-led-growth\/","title":{"rendered":"Commentary Unleashing \u201cnew quality productive forces\u201d: China\u2019s strategy for technology-led growth"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Brookings, Author: Arthur R. Kroeber<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

While on a visit to Heilongjiang Province in September 2023, Chinese President Xi Jinping\u00a0called on the nation<\/a>\u00a0to mobilize \u201cnew quality productive forces\u201d (\u65b0\u8d28\u751f\u4ea7\u529b) to drive economic growth. He reiterated this message at the annual\u00a0Central Economic Work Conference<\/a>\u00a0in December. And Premier Li Qiang\u2019s annual\u00a0work report<\/a>\u00a0at the National People\u2019s Congress in March 2024 put as its top policy priority \u201cstriving to modernize the industrial system and developing new quality productive forces at a faster pace.\u201d In addition, on January 31, a group of seven ministries led by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a list of \u201cfuture industries<\/a>\u201d (\u672a\u6765\u4ea7\u4e1a) which are implied to be the major sectoral targets of the \u201cnew quality productive forces.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These slogans culminate a major shift in China\u2019s overall economic policy direction that has been building for two decades, and that has accelerated noticeably in the last five or so years of Xi\u2019s administration. China has now decisively moved away from the growth-maximizing orientation that prevailed from 1979 until the early 2010s, which prioritized systemic reforms to achieve as high a GDP growth rate as possible. The new economic vision prioritizes the acquisition and development of technology\u2014especially \u201chard\u201d technologies that require a large industrial and manufacturing base. This approach can be seen as a return both to the central tendency of Chinese economic development thinking since the mid-19th century and more specifically, to a Marxist approach to economic policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet in addition to being the culmination of a long trend toward a technology-centric, industrial policy-driven growth strategy, the shift to \u201cnew quality productive forces\u201d marks a change in the focus and methods of Xi\u2019s economic governance. Until recently, Chinese industrial policy\u2019s main aims were to achieve mastery in established technologies and self-sufficiency in key areas in order to resist economic containment efforts by the United States. Now, the aim is to make China a leader in the innovation of new technologies. To achieve this goal, national resources are to be mobilized through a \u201cnew national system<\/a>\u201d (\u65b0\u578b\u4e3e\u56fd\u4f53\u5236), which implies more centralized control over capital allocation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The evolution of technology-driven development policies in China<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

China\u2019s leadership has long seen technology acquisition as the core task of economic and national development. The origins of this view lie in the \u201cSelf-Strengthening Movement<\/a>\u201d (\u81ea\u5f3a\u8fd0\u52a8), launched in the mid-19th century in response to the trauma of China\u2019s defeats in the Opium Wars of 1839-1842 and 1856-1860. The Self-Strengtheners argued that the reason for those defeats lay in the gap in military technology between China and the European colonial powers and that Chinese policy should focus on investments that would close this technological gap. This effort basically failed, in contrast to the roughly contemporaneous Meiji Restoration, which transformed Japan into a modern industrial and military power between 1870 and 1920.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the establishment of its government in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has gone through several waves of technology-centered economic development. In the 1950s, with the aid of the Soviet Union, China tried to build up basic industries (notably steel) in a drive that ended with the disastrous Great Leap Forward. In the mid-1970s, economic policymakers launched the \u201cFour Modernizations\u201d (\u56db\u4e2a\u73b0\u4ee3\u5316) of agriculture, industry, science and technology, and national defense. One specific component of this strategy was a plan to import capital goods and even whole factories in order to accelerate industrial development. This proved impractical due to the lack of hard currency to pay for these imports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1979, economic policy shifted to Deng Xiaoping\u2019s \u201cReform and Opening\u201d (\u6539\u9769\u5f00\u653e), which stressed export-led manufacturing, catalyzed by foreign direct investment, along with systemic reforms to reduce the role of the state and increase reliance on market forces. Although both the \u201cFour Modernizations\u201d and \u201cReform and Opening\u201d slogans continued to be used into the 1980s, the former gradually receded and Reform and Opening became the central guiding principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next quarter-century had no shortage of industrial policies and technology-acquisition plans, notably the 863<\/a> and 973<\/a> programs that respectively financed applied and basic scientific research and the \u201cGolden Projects<\/a>\u201d that drove the deployment of information technology (IT) networks throughout the country and enabled the construction of the \u201cGreat Firewall<\/a>\u201d to insulate the domestic internet from outside influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the distinctive feature of Reform and Opening, relative to other Chinese developmental concepts, was that it put more emphasis on generalized economic progress, and achieving a high rate of GDP growth, than on specific technological goals. Policymakers devoted the most energy to system reforms: increasing the use of market pricing; strengthening rural property rights; creating modern banking and legal systems; lowering tariffs and import barriers; restructuring state-owned enterprises; and integrating with global economic arrangements, particularly the World Trade Organization in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2005, however, Chinese economic policy\u2019s center of gravity began to shift back from these general system reforms to technological development. The starting point was the December 2005 publication of the Medium- and Long-Term Plan for Science and Technology<\/a> Development (\u56fd\u5bb6\u4e2d\u957f\u671f\u79d1\u5b66\u548c\u6280\u672f\u53d1\u5c55\u89c4\u5212\u7eb2\u8981), which set out ambitious but vague goals for technological development across a range of sectors. It also introduced the concept of \u201cindigenous innovation\u201d (\u81ea\u4e3b\u521b\u65b0), whose precise meaning was the subject of heated debate: Chinese analysts generally portrayed it as a call to increase China\u2019s domestic economic activity, while many Western analysts<\/a> viewed it as a cover for coercive technology-transfer policies such as domestic standards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A series of technology- and industrial-policy initiatives followed over the next decade, whose details and cumulative impact have been lucidly laid out<\/a> by the China economist Barry Naughton. These included:<\/p>\n\n\n\n