Cannot be greedy for foreign numbers | local | traditional industries
The first meeting of the 20th Central Committee of Finance and Economics emphasized the need to "adhere to steady progress and gradual progress, and not be greedy for foreign investment.". Several interviewed experts and scholars have stated that "adhering to steady progress and gradual progress" is based on the requirements of the inherent laws of industrial development, and has pointed out the direction for building a modern industrial system; We should not be greedy for foreign investment, but instead provide warnings from the dimensions of industrial development scale and quality to prevent potential deviations and risks.
Currently, accurately grasping the essence and connotation of a modern industrial system, especially on the basis of respecting objective laws, is a crucial issue that must be taken seriously in the historical process of building a modern industrial system. How to avoid tendencies such as greed for foreign investment and blind implementation in industrial development is crucial.
Be wary of blind investment and duplicate construction
In the past, people's understanding of "greed for foreign goods" often remained in urban planning. Some places were overjoyed and implemented many "image projects" that did not match the local reality, bringing a heavy debt burden to the local economy. In recent years, although such phenomena have been effectively curbed, the "image engineering" hidden in the industrial field is on the rise - some places are eager to develop and blindly pursue "high precision and cutting-edge", and any concept in the market is catching up with the trend; In some places, people tend to be picky and picky, with their eyes only focused on being high-end. The so-called high-end projects with the halo of "high-tech" and the reputation of "foreign brands" have become hot cakes; There are still some places that are obsessed with "big shots", where they are just industrial cities and demonstration areas, with their mouths closed
"From the follow-up tracking, most of the projects that are greedy for foreign investment and detached from local realities have not made satisfactory progress." Xu Zhaoyuan, Deputy Minister of the Industrial Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, gave an example. In the past few years, many places have flocked to new energy vehicles, integrated circuits and other projects, and in a short period of time, there have been countless projects that went bankrupt or even abandoned.
Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Xin Guobin, previously stated that as a leading industry, new energy vehicles have attracted a large amount of technology and capital to gather in recent years. In addition, some local governments also have the desire for transformation and upgrading. Under the joint influence of various factors, some provinces, cities, and localities do indeed have blind investment and duplicate construction of new energy vehicles.
The changing list of "new forces" in car manufacturing confirms the above judgment. Early brands such as Sailin and Singularity have disappeared from the domestic market, while manufacturers such as Byton, Bosun, and Luchi have declared bankruptcy without even producing mass-produced cars. At the same time, a group of new faces have gradually appeared on the list of "new forces", but the pace of updates has significantly slowed down compared to the past. Various signs indicate that after several rounds of reshuffling, China's new energy vehicle industry is bidding farewell to its barbaric growth and gradually moving towards maturity.
Similar to new energy vehicles, the integrated circuit industry also faces problems such as regional duplication of investment and homogeneous competition. From an external perspective, China, as the world's largest integrated circuit application market with chips as its core, provides a broad market space for industrial development. According to data from the China Semiconductor Industry Association, the sales revenue of the entire integrated circuit industry in China exceeded RMB 1.2 trillion for the first time in 2021, reaching a historic high in 2022, with a year-on-year increase of 14.8%.
As early as 2014, China formulated a development plan for integrated circuits, proposing the principle of "concentration of the main body and agglomeration of regions". However, in reality, many places still operate independently, and industrial layout planning lacks coordination. After conducting research by experts such as Liu Liang, a researcher at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, it was found that even in the developed Yangtze River Delta region of the integrated circuit industry, each province, city, and even district/county is fighting on their own, with obvious homogeneous competition. "Various regions are trying to form differentiated competition in planning, but there is still a lack of coordination mechanisms for regional industrial planning, resulting in repeated construction and convergence of industrial structures, leading to serious internal resource consumption and low utilization efficiency.".
Emerging industries, high-tech industries, and some major projects often become the focus of industrial investment attraction in various regions due to their large investment scale, good development prospects, and strong driving effect on local economy. Especially in some regions, past successful cases have led many to imitate and unilaterally believe that as long as the direction is good, they may be able to "bet" on success. As a result, "greed for foreign investment" has become a subconscious in many local industrial choices and a common mentality in attracting investment.
The urgent need to develop local economy can be understood, but any industrial project, no matter how advanced its technology is and how promising its prospects are, must be constrained by the laws of supply and demand. It does not mean that enterprises can digest as much as they produce in the market, nor does it mean that the more advanced the product technology, the better the business efficiency. From a specific perspective in a certain place, city, or enterprise, developing high-tech industries and launching large-scale projects has inherent rationality and is likely to achieve success. However, the result of these industries blooming everywhere and blind local investment will inevitably lead to duplicate construction, resource waste, and vicious competition, and even the common economic fallacy of synthesis, that is, it is correct locally or microscopically, but not always correct macroscopically. We should remain vigilant about this.
Respect the laws of industrial development
At present, there is a lot of discussion about the modern industrial system. It is generally believed that the main body of the modern industrial system includes developed manufacturing, strong strategic emerging industries, high-quality service industries, and guaranteed agriculture. The "modernization" characteristics of the industrial system are mainly reflected in multiple aspects such as strategic support, safety resilience, and sustainable development.
Considering the complexity of modern industrial system construction, the phenomenon of "greed for foreign investment" in the industrial field may not be simply a matter of political performance, but is closely related to the cognitive level and factor allocation ability of local managers towards related industries. Usually, high technology often comes with high risks, and industrial transformation and innovation themselves are a trial and error process. In this context, the construction of a modern industrial system emphasizes the need to adhere to steady progress and gradual progress, which is not only a rational requirement to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, but also a scientific attitude to accelerate the cultivation of emerging industries.
The cotton textile industry is a typical traditional industry. How can the cotton textile industry transform and upgrade to meet the requirements of building a modern industrial system? Sun Ruizhe, the President of the China Textile Industry Federation, is very clear about this viewpoint: the development of the cotton textile industry should be based on industry reality, respect industry laws, and cannot be complacent or resentful. We should abandon the mentality of taking chances, start from reality, adhere to innovation, strengthen material innovation, manufacturing innovation, and design innovation, and build the future of the industry by strengthening traditional advantages.
Emerging industries are the main battlefield for building a modern industrial system. Liu Zhenzhong, Deputy Director of the Research Office of the Institute of Industrial Economics and Technology Economics at the China Academy of Macroeconomics, believes that the modernization of the industrial system should include not only the high-end nature of the industry, the efficiency of production and sales linkage, the coordination of industry proportion, the integration between industries, and the completeness of basic supporting facilities, but also its support, leadership, safety, openness, and sustainability in the modernization process, all of which should be dynamically considered.
In response to the irrational tendencies in the current industrial development, Liu Zhenzhong suggests coordinating and planning industrial development from four aspects: first, developing industries with a certain foundation and not planting rootless trees; The second is to develop industries with comparative advantages and not blindly follow the trend and follow the trend; The third is to develop industries that can be supported by regional resources and environment, without seeking significant overload; The fourth is to develop industries that can ensure chain safety and avoid uncontrolled chain breakage.
The new energy vehicle industry in Guangdong is a successful example. As a strong manufacturing province, Guangdong has good industrial advantages in fields such as electronic information and precision manufacturing. Based on this, the new energy vehicle industry has formed a comparative advantage over fuel vehicles by minimizing comprehensive costs. At the same time, Guangdong cultivates 20 strategic industrial clusters through "chain length+chain dominance", using this as a driving force to promote the "supplementation, extension, fixation, and strengthening" of the industrial chain. Even under the adverse effects of decoupling and chain breaking, Guangdong new energy vehicles still seized the opportunity and won the initiative.
In the context of intense industrial competition between regions, attracting investment through the industrial chain to enhance the agglomeration of characteristic industrial elements and enhance the development ability of regional characteristic industrial clusters has brought sweetness to many places. According to the latest data statistics from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the first batch of 100 characteristic industrial clusters of small and medium-sized enterprises in China has attracted more than 31000 small and medium-sized enterprises, with an annual output value exceeding 2.5 trillion yuan and an average annual growth rate of 19.2%. In the cluster, there are 73 manufacturing champion enterprises and 474 specialized and innovative "little giant" enterprises, with high-quality small and medium-sized enterprises accounting for 24.8%. Each region actively leverages its unique industrial advantages and accelerates the cultivation of characteristic industrial clusters for small and medium-sized enterprises. Currently, a cluster gradient cultivation system has been preliminarily formed.
Identify the key points for promoting industrial development
Building a modern industrial system is not only an inevitable requirement for promoting high-quality development, but also an urgent need to win the initiative of major countries in competition. However, the construction of a modern industrial system is a long-term systematic project that cannot be achieved overnight. It requires perseverance and long-term efforts. At the same time, the construction of a modern industrial system cannot cross the current development conditions and industrial foundation. We must do our best and act within our capacity to avoid falling into the dilemma of insufficient hematopoietic capacity.
Of course, moderately advanced industrial planning and basic research are necessary, especially when the bottleneck problem in key areas cannot be effectively solved in the short term. Identifying the focus of promoting industrial development has become more urgent. Experts and scholars interviewed by Economic Daily stated that efforts should be made to build a modern industrial system from the following three aspects:
One is to accelerate the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and enhance the independent innovation capability of modern industrial systems. At present, traditional industries are in a critical period of transformation and upgrading. We need to leverage the high innovation, strong penetration, and wide coverage characteristics of digital technology, strengthen the integration of industrialization and industry, and accelerate the empowerment of traditional industries with digital technology in all aspects, angles, and chains. We need to carry out lean technological transformation on existing industries, optimize industrial structure and strategic layout, and invest in the construction of a number of new projects with industry-leading levels. Especially for chain owners, they should be brave enough to "pick the big beam" and play the leading role, strengthen the construction of innovation systems and independent innovation capabilities, and drive win-win cooperation between the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain.
The second is to further improve the institutional and open institutional mechanisms, and enhance industrial competitiveness through high-level opening up to the outside world. Competitiveness is the source of industry vitality. Only an industrial system that is in line with internationalization can be called a modern industrial system. For many years, China's industry has established its position in the global industrial chain and supply chain through deep participation in global division of labor and cooperation. In the future, it is still necessary to maintain strong vitality in China's industrial system by fully participating in international competition. Despite the surge of anti globalization, striving to expand "circle of friends" on a larger scale, continuously promoting open cooperation and fair competition, has always been the essence of building a modern industrial system.
Thirdly, we will resolutely promote the "dual carbon" strategy and build a green, low-carbon, and sustainable industrial system. A modern industrial system must be a sustainable industrial system. On the one hand, from the perspective of the development of the industry itself, it is necessary to accelerate the transformation towards green and low-carbon production methods, and build a green supply chain industrial chain that runs through the entire lifecycle; On the other hand, from the perspective of industrial development ecology, it is necessary to optimize the allocation of production factors and accelerate the formation of a high-quality supply and demand system, including green finance, technological innovation, market consumption, etc., to create a good ecological environment for industrial development.
It should be pointed out that we emphasize the principle of "seeking progress while maintaining stability and progressing step by step, and not being greedy for foreign investment." A basic prerequisite is to properly handle the relationship between the government and the market, and play a different role in promoting industrial development. Local governments need to scientifically formulate their industrial development plans, clarify and guide the path of local industrial transformation and upgrading, but the focus should be on continuously improving market regulatory efficiency and strengthening the construction of a fair, just, and open business environment. Timely warning and correction is one of the important responsibilities of the government in the development of the service industry, but it cannot replace the independent decision-making of enterprises, let alone attract projects with so-called preferential subsidies to "assess performance".
At present, the more we are making every effort to focus on the economy and development, the more we need to coordinate and handle the relationship between national conditions and world conditions, development and security, advantages and weaknesses, and current and long-term development. We must not only follow the trend of industrial development and internal laws, but also take into account factors such as comparative advantages and ecological carrying capacity, and pay attention to finding our own positioning and focus. At the same time, we should enable the government and the market to complement each other and work together to better leverage the guiding role and systemic effects of industrial policies.
