The "15th Five-Year Plan" period is a critical starting stage for the development of new productive forces in our country. At present, all regions are fully motivated to innovate and launch projects, and the layout of emerging industries is accelerating across the board. However, it should also be noted that some areas have cognitive biases in the implementation of planning. They blindly pursue hot spots and are deviated from their own reality, resulting in a situation of repeated construction that "springs everywhere", which brings many practical problems. It is necessary to pay attention to and remind this phenomenon, guide various localities to correct their development concepts, and follow the path of high-quality development according to local conditions.
Some places are too "chasing the new" and have a tendency to mutate
Recently, the CBN Urban Research Institute released a research report on 291 cities’ “15th Five-Year Plan”. It shows that various places have included popular industry tracks in their plans. Among them, 257 cities are deploying low-altitude economy, 217 cities are deploying high-end equipment, 201 cities are deploying biomedicine, and 147 cities are deploying hydrogen energy. This craze reflects that local governments are very enthusiastic about the development of emerging industries and future industries, and they have similar focus, and the new tracks they choose have a high degree of duplication.
"Chasing the new" is not a bad thing in itself, as it reflects local efforts to reshape competitiveness. However, if everyone is "chasing" the same thing, it will easily lead to new duplication of construction and vicious competition. From the perspective of implementation reality, there is an obvious disconnect between the industrial planning and local basic conditions in many places. Many third- and fourth-tier cities still rely on traditional manufacturing, specialty agricultural product processing, resource industries and other sectors for their economic, taxation and employment fundamentals. The local scientific and technological talent pool is insufficient, the supply of core technologies is lacking, the supporting upstream and downstream industrial chains are incomplete, and there are no corresponding application testing scenarios. Under such circumstances, they still follow the trend and launch cutting-edge high-tech projects. Many lessons have been learned. For example, some places build industrial parks and complete land consolidation first, but cannot keep up with subsequent investment, leaving park factories idle; some rely on large financial subsidies and low-priced land as bargaining chips to compete for projects, and enterprises are highly dependent on policy dividends. After the subsidies expire, operations are difficult to sustain, resulting in inefficient accumulated assets and increasing local financial burdens; others only focus on publicity effects such as project signings and exhibition hall displays, and simply copy the industrial catalogs of developed regions, which are only "gimmicks" and do not actually form industrial chains and effective outputs.
When this kind of phenomenon occurs, first of all, there are misunderstandings at the cognitive level. Many places do not fully understand the complete connotation of new productivity. They mistakenly believe that only emerging and future industries are new productivity. They pursue the concept one-sidedly and ignore the important value of upgrading traditional industries. Others regard the industrial layout in the planning text as easily achievable development results, underestimate the risk of cutting-edge industrial technology iterations and market cultivation cycles, overestimate the ability of administrative power to shape industries, directly transform the overall national strategic deployment into the hard tasks of the region without digestion, ignore the logic of regional division of labor, and turn some new projects into "half-baked rice".
Digging deep into the root causes, the root cause is a deviation in the view of political performance. Some cadres value "visible" projects that are visible and have good publicity effects, and hope to quickly create work highlights through high-tech projects. As for the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, they feel that the results are slow and the cycle is long, and they are unwilling to make "stupid efforts". In operation, the boundary between the government and the market is not fully grasped. We try to directly "create" industries by relying on finance and land resources, and use administrative judgment to replace market competition choices. The preliminary demonstration of some projects is a formality, and the risk assessment and performance constraint mechanisms are not sound, which also leaves room for blindly pursuing projects.
The key to developing new productive forces is to correctly understand and grasp the law of conversion of old and new kinetic energy.
Industrial development has its own objective laws. An industry moves from technology research and development to commercialization, and then grows into a mature industrial cluster. It must go through the complete process of technology verification, demonstration application, supporting facilities, and scale expansion. It is the result of long-term market evolution and cannot be quickly replicated by planning and policies. Whether a cutting-edge industry can be launched depends on the availability of technology sources, supporting industrial chain, professional talents, real application scenarios and other practical conditions. In particular, many future industries have not yet fully finalized their technical routes and are still cultivating market demand. They are naturally characterized by high investment and high risks. They are more suitable for breakthroughs in areas where innovative factors are concentrated, and it is difficult to simply transplant them to areas where conditions are not met.
There is no problem in laying out new tracks, but we must respect the rules and proceed step by step. We cannot turn "seeking newness" into "only newness", let alone pursue cutting-edge hot spots indiscriminately in all places. On the one hand, there is uncertainty in cutting-edge technology, and large-scale fixed asset investment can easily become ineffective assets once it encounters iterations of technological routes; on the other hand, high-end scientific and technological talents are scarce resources. If similar tracks are deployed everywhere and various means are used to snatch resources, limited innovation resources will be dispersed, and the result will be "nowhere is strong". It should also be noted that many local governments have limited fiscal capacity. If a large amount of financial resources are invested in new projects that do not yet meet the conditions, it will squeeze resources for the transformation of traditional industries and ensure people's livelihood, and shake the foundation of local development.
To develop new productive forces, the transformation of traditional kinetic energy must be placed in an equally important position as the creation of new kinetic energy. General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "Developing new productive forces does not mean neglecting or abandoning traditional industries. We need to prevent a rush and bubble formation, and we must not create a model." my country's large-scale traditional industrial system is the foundation of the real economy. Traditional industries do not mean backward production capacity, but backward technology and equipment. As long as the implementation of digital, intelligent, and green transformation can be accelerated, and through equipment updates and process innovations, traditional industries can fully breed new technologies, products, and business formats, and generate new productivity.
For many cities with insufficient innovation resources, making existing traditional industries better and stronger is the most realistic path to develop new productive forces. The old and new kinetic energy is not an either-or substitution relationship, but a symbiotic and iterative relationship. The development of new tracks requires application scenarios provided by traditional industries, and the upgrading of traditional industries requires the empowerment of new technologies. If we throw away the industrial foundation we have accumulated for many years and blindly start anew to pursue hot spots, we will easily end up in a passive situation where old advantages are weakened and new industries cannot grow. Therefore, when choosing the path for local development, we must seek truth from facts and be responsible for the future.
Leading differentiated and high-quality development with a correct view of political performance
In the initial stage of the “15th Five-Year Plan”, faced with the rush of various regions to compete to lay out new tracks, we must be based on reality, respect the laws of industry, calibrate political performance orientation, and guide various regions to focus more on developing according to local conditions.
We must abandon the view of political achievement that follows the trend and rushes forward. Developing an industry should not only depend on whether the concept is new, but also whether it can truly form productive forces, create employment and enhance competitiveness. Leading cadres must properly handle the relationship between "manifest achievements" and "potential achievements". They must not only see the value of high-tech projects, but also realize that the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries is also a real political achievement. When planning major industrial projects, you cannot make decisions based on your head. You must conduct preliminary demonstration and evaluation, and consider the supporting industrial chain, talent conditions, application scenarios, financial affordability, etc. as important evaluation contents, and introduce external professional forces to participate in research and judgment. It is necessary to clarify the boundary between a promising government and an effective market. The government should focus on optimizing the business environment and filling in the shortcomings of public innovation. It should not act as a cover for market risks, curb involution-style investment promotion that relies on large subsidies to compete for new projects, and let the market truly play its role in testing the industry.
We must persist in seeking development based on the main functions. Each region must conduct in-depth research on its own resource endowments and basic conditions, and industrial development cannot be separated from the main functional positioning. Key urbanization areas can appropriately gather innovation elements and carry the functions of advanced manufacturing and scientific innovation transformation; the main agricultural product-producing areas focus on consolidating the agricultural foundation and extending the industrial chain around characteristic agriculture; key ecological functional areas must strictly adhere to the ecological bottom line, strictly control the expansion of energy- and land-consuming industries, and focus on the development of eco-friendly industries. It is necessary to find its own development positioning, blindly pursue high-tech tracks without departing from the carrying conditions, and achieve mutual matching between resources, environment and industrial development.
It is necessary to strengthen the overall layout of a game of chess across the country. Strengthen the guidance of industrial layout at the national level, focus on the low-altitude economy, hydrogen energy and other hot tracks, give full play to the synergy of city agglomerations and metropolitan areas, cultivate regional industrial clusters, form regional synergies, and do not engage in pepper-spreading layouts everywhere. Guide areas around industrial clusters to concentrate on 1-2 supporting subdivisions with comparative advantages. Rather than spreading the entire chain, we strive to specialize in some links. Improve differentiated assessments, focus on original innovation breakthroughs for innovation highlands, focus on industrial transformation and quality improvement for manufacturing cities, and focus on the development of characteristic real economies in counties. By making good use of the assessment baton, the motivation of local governments to follow the trend of "chasing innovation" will be reduced. In the construction of a unified national market, we will accelerate the cross-regional circulation of innovation results, build a collaborative model in which R&D is carried out in innovation highlands and transformed in suitable regions, and an industrial pattern with complementary advantages will be formed.
It is recommended to carry out a round of clean-up work on blind and inefficient investments. Establish a production capacity monitoring and early warning mechanism for key emerging industries, track changes in planned production capacity, projects under construction and market demand, issue risk warnings in a timely manner, and restrain disorderly new investments. Regulate the investment direction of government investment funds and fiscal and industrial subsidies, and do not continue to inject blood into hot projects that have no foundation and no prospects. The existing inefficient carriers and projects that have been formed will be disposed of in a classified manner. The idle science and technology innovation parks will adjust their positioning based on the actual situation of local industries to serve local advantageous industries. We will promote market-based clearing of projects that have long relied on subsidies and have no self-generating ability to reduce the ineffective consumption of fiscal funds. Improve the constraint and accountability of major investment decisions, implement responsibilities in accordance with regulations for blind decisions that cause asset losses, and strengthen closed-loop investment management.
