BEIJING, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council have issued a set of guidelines aimed at accelerating the development of new quality productive forces to bolster high-quality development.
These guidelines outline 19 key measures in five areas, namely advancing scientific and technological innovation, deepening the integration of sci-tech and industrial innovation, innovating development approaches, promoting institutional and mechanism innovation, and improving mechanisms for talent development.
Noting that developing new quality productive forces is an intrinsic requirement and an important focus of promoting high-quality development, these guidelines stress the importance of innovation-driven development, reform and measures tailored to local conditions, and following the approach of "establishing the new before abolishing the old."
The guidelines call for pursuing high technology, high efficiency and high quality, properly handling the relationships between the government and the market, between the qualitative nature of productive forces and the forms they take in industry and business, between reform and development, and between self-reliance and opening up, while coordinating development and security.
"The new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation has opened up broad prospects for developing new quality productive forces. Seizing this historic opportunity requires moving faster to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology and raising innovation capacity across the board to maintain strategic initiative," said Wang Shengxiao, a researcher with the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.
The guidelines call for stronger original and transformative sci-tech innovation, with major sci-tech projects to focus on strategic, landmark and leading products, targeting the cutting-edge of global science and technology and serving major areas of economic development, major national needs, and people's health.
They stress the need for faster breakthroughs in key core technologies, including efforts to promote the high-quality development of key manufacturing industrial chains and implement industrial innovation projects in priority areas.
The guidelines emphasize coordinated efforts to strengthen national strategic sci-tech capabilities, giving full play to national laboratories in organizing major national sci-tech projects and building major innovation platforms. The guidelines also urge optimizing the roles and distribution of national sci-tech research institutions, high-level research universities and leading sci-tech enterprises.
The guidelines underline the principal role of enterprises in sci-tech innovation, encouraging technology-based small and medium-sized enterprises to increase research and development investment and supporting capable private enterprises in taking the lead in major national technological breakthrough tasks.
To speed up the transformation of sci-tech achievements into real productive forces, the guidelines call for leveraging the advantages of China's vast market to better connect technology with the market and advance the development of new quality productive forces on a larger scale.
The guidelines also urge upgrading traditional industries through the application of digital, intelligent and green technologies.
The country should seek to advance producer services toward greater specialization and the higher end of the value chain, while improving the quality, diversity and convenience of consumer services, according to the guidelines.
For emerging industries, the guidelines emphasize efforts to foster their growth and develop new pillar industries. The guidelines encourage greater cross-industry and cross-regional integration, measures to avoid "involution-style" competition, and support eastern regions to help central, western and northeastern regions develop emerging industries in line with local conditions.
The guidelines call for forward-looking planning for future industries and emphasize the need to make full use of existing fiscal policies to support their development and guide social capital to steadily increase investment.
The guidelines also urge promoting the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, optimizing the layout, construction and operation of national data infrastructure, advancing the digital transformation of the manufacturing sector, and building digital industrial clusters with international competitiveness.
The guidelines call for fully implementing the "AI Plus" initiative, using artificial intelligence (AI) to transform traditional industries, accelerating innovation in AI and other digital and intelligent technologies, and promoting the widespread application of AI across industries.
Efforts are also needed to establish systems for technology monitoring, early risk warning and emergency response to ensure that AI is safe, reliable and controllable, the guidelines note.
These guidelines further propose building a green, low-carbon and circular economic system by strengthening green manufacturing, developing green services, expanding the green energy industry, and driving the supply of green products via green consumption.
Efforts should be made to optimize the policy toolbox for green development and implement fiscal, financial, investment, pricing, technological and environmental policies that promote green and low-carbon development, according to the guidelines.
The country will actively advance the energy revolution and accelerate the green transition of energy use in production and daily life across society, the guidelines add.
The guidelines call for deepening reform to promote close integration of science and technology with the economy, saying that efforts should be made to build an open, shared and secure nationally integrated data market.
The guidelines also stress the need to improve the market regulation system and increase the supply of innovative financial products.
The guidelines pledge to allocate advanced production factors globally by expanding high-standard opening up and actively building a global innovation cooperation network, and encouraging foreign venture capital institutions, international standards organizations and others to develop in China.
The guidelines urge cultivating talent urgently needed for the development of new quality productive forces, adding that policies on the use and flow of talent should be improved.
"New quality productive forces are primarily driven by transformational technological breakthroughs, which bring profound changes to how innovation is organized, industries evolve and resources are allocated," said Liu Zhenzhong, a researcher at the Institute of Industrial and Technological Economics of the National Development and Reform Commission. "These changes require deeper reforms to reshape institutional frameworks and remove obstacles to development."
The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) identifies the development of new quality productive forces as a key strategic task and sets out 28 major projects related to this goal, accounting for 25.7 percent of the 109 major projects outlined in the plan.
The projects focus on four priorities: strengthening industrial capabilities and competitiveness, fostering emerging industries, pursuing breakthroughs in cutting-edge technologies, and enhancing innovation capabilities.
At an international seminar held in Beijing in September, Chinese experts said China's development of new quality productive forces could provide fresh momentum for global economic growth and create new opportunities for countries at different stages of modernization. Abdulrahman Bello Dambazau, Nigeria's ambassador to China, noted that the emphasis on talent development, scientific research and industrial upgrading could offer useful reference for developing countries.
China's development of high-tech, green and intelligent industries is also creating more opportunities for cross-border investment and industrial cooperation. At the China International Fair for Investment and Trade in September, representatives from European countries explored cooperation with China in areas such as clean energy, AI, smart manufacturing, biomedicine and the digital economy. ■
