YANG Ruilong and SHI Bowen: Achieving Chinese Modernization Requires Vigorous Development of New Quality Productive Forces

The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China explicitly set forth the strategic goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects. To this end, it is imperative to continuously improve the quality of economic development on the basis of maintaining stable growth. The core essence of high-quality development lies in achieving efficient growth by enhancing economic vitality and innovation capacity. Developing new quality productive forces is a crucial measure for achieving high-quality economic development.

Innovation is endogenously embedded in the production process, representing an internal self-renewal of economic entities. In essence, it signifies "destruction" and creates new value. Without disruptive technological innovations and achievements, it would be impossible to foster new industries, business forms and business models centered on new quality productive forces.

While technological innovation is undoubtedly crucial for developing new quality productive forces, whether such innovation can drive industrial upgrading and enhance total factor productivity through the development of new quality productive forces ultimately depends on whether institutional frameworks effectively facilitate technological innovation, including questions of who innovates, why to innovate, how to organize innovation, and how to protect its achievements.

To establish a high-quality system that stimulates innovation and promotes the development of new quality productive forces, we must accelerate the improvement of the socialist market economy system, with a focus on perfecting the property rights system and market-based allocation of production factors. This will achieve effective incentives through property rights, free flow of production factors, flexible price responses, fair and orderly competition, and the survival of the fittest among enterprises.

(The above viewpoints are excerpted and translated from an article titled "Innovation is the Core Engine of New Quality Productive Forces: Achieving Chinese Modernization Requires Vigorous Development of New Quality Productive Forces", published in Beijing Daily and co-authored by YANG Ruilong, First-level Professor at Renmin University of China, Researcher at the National Academy of Development and Strategy and Co-director of the Economic Research Institute, together with SHI Bowen, Ph.D. Candidate at Renmin University of China.)

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