Private firms’ key role in focus
Sector pivotal in cultivating nation’s new quality productive forces
Private enterprises are expected to play a more flexible role in developing new quality productive forces in order to drive more technological innovations for high-quality development, a national political adviser said on the sidelines of the ongoing two sessions.
Zhou Yuan, founder and CEO of knowledge-sharing platform Zhihu and a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said: “Private enterprises are more flexible and willing to tackle those demands that are seemingly small and new. They tend to quickly start to try those ideas, build them into business models and make them a reality.”
Zhou said that private enterprises always play a leading role in new industries in terms of quantity and scale, and that the vast number of employees in private enterprises will ultimately allow new types of workers to become practitioners of new quality productive forces.
The comments came as a government work report submitted on Tuesday to the national legislature for deliberation said that China will strive to modernize the industrial system and develop new quality productive forces at a faster pace.
Compared with traditional productive tools that are driven by elements like labor, land and capital, new quality productive forces refer to technological innovation, data, smart or intelligent technologies and the like, industry experts said.
China will give full rein to the leading role of innovation, spur industrial innovation by making innovations in science and technology and press ahead with new industrialization, so as to promote a new leap forward in the productive forces, according to the report.
“Fundamentally, developing new quality productive forces represents new trends and changes in productivity development and aims to enhance the quality and efficiency of economic development,” Zhou said.
He said, from his perspective, the pillar of new quality productive forces is technological innovation, with industrial upgrading serving as its pivot and talent support as its critical driving factor.
“Accelerating the formation of new quality productive forces requires not only highly skilled scientific and technological talent but also a large number of high-quality technical and skilled workers, as well as master craftsmen,” Zhou said.
Therefore, he suggested to the ongoing two sessions that more targeted training should be offered to such “new professionals” to help China reap a better talent dividend instead of a demographic dividend.
New professionals, according to Zhou, have received higher education, possess scientific and cultural literacy, and have professional experience and skills. They are mostly engaged in the tertiary industry, advanced manufacturing, and new type agriculture.
“More efforts should be made to strengthen policy guidance, mobilize social forces to build diversified vocational skills training platforms, and improve lifelong career skill enhancement mechanisms for these new professionals,” Zhou said.
“With such efforts, this group is expected to become a key force driving future industrial development and an important engine for the country’s development of new quality productive forces,” he added.