Promoting high-quality development with the digital economy-Interview with Lin Yifu, Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics, Peking University
The digital economy is related to the overall situation of national development.
The "Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party's Centennial Struggle" reviewed and approved by the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposes to strengthen the real economy and develop the digital economy.
What is the significance of the digital economy to China's economic development?
What kind of relationship should be built between digital technology and the real economy?
Which industries can leverage the digital economy to "change lanes and overtake"?
Recently, a reporter from Economic Daily interviewed Lin Yifu, Dean of the Institute of New Structural Economics of Peking University, on related issues.
"Change lanes and overtake" brings development opportunities
Reporter: General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that the rapid development of the digital economy, the wide range of radiation, and the unprecedented depth of influence are becoming a key force in reorganizing global factor resources, reshaping the global economic structure, and changing the global competitive landscape.
What is the significance of the development of the digital economy to China's economy in the future?
Lin Yifu: The development of the digital economy is an opportunity for the Chinese economy to "change lanes and overtake" in the fourth industrial revolution. It is of very important strategic significance for achieving high-quality development and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
The digital economy is a core component of the fourth industrial revolution. It focuses on human capital investment and has the characteristics of short research and development cycles and fast technological iterations.
China has comparative advantages in the development of new technologies characterized by big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet.
One is the data advantage.
Big data is a new factor of production and the "oil" of the 21st century. China has a population of more than 1.4 billion people and more than 1 billion Internet users. It has generated massive data resources. China has become the world's largest source of data.
The second is talent advantage.
China is a country with large human resources, and the absolute number of talents with high IQ and innovative ability is high, so it has the advantage of talents in research and development.
The third is market advantage.
In terms of purchasing power parity, China is the world's largest economy.
At the same time, China has the most complete industrial supporting facilities. It is not only a country with a large data and population, but also a country with a large market and a large application scenario. The combination of these advantages will be an opportunity for us to develop a digital economy.
The digital economy includes digital industrialization and industrial digitization. It is not only a new industry that can turn data created in the process of consumption, production, and service into production factors to provide new services and new applications, but also can be transformed by digital economy and digital technology. Traditional industries.
Chinese industries can be roughly divided into five types, including catch-up type, such as most areas in the equipment manufacturing industry; leading type, such as part of the home appliance industry and mobile communications industry; and transfer type, such as part of the labor-intensive industry. ; "Change lanes and overtake" type, such as digital economy and other new economies; strategic type, such as national defense and military industry.
For these five types of industries, digital technology is of great significance.
For example, the automobile industry is a standard catch-up industry, but new technologies such as driverless driving brought about by the combination of automobiles and digital, and the extension of the automobile industry to the service industry are opportunities for the Chinese automobile industry to catch up; the current leading home appliance industry , You can use digitization to enhance the value chain and continue to maintain a leading position.
It can be said that in the fourth industrial revolution, China is expected to go hand in hand with other developed countries, use digitalization to shorten the catch-up cycle of backward industries, maintain the advantages of leading industries, and enhance the competitiveness of industries that are about to lose their comparative advantages.
The development of the digital economy is a great opportunity for China to achieve high-quality development on a new journey.
Create new advantages in the digital economy
Reporter: The "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal outline proposed to accelerate the construction of the digital economy and create new advantages in the digital economy.
Excuse me, what do you rely on to create new advantages in the digital economy?
Lin Yifu: To create new advantages in the digital economy, we must make good use of China's comparative advantages.
In terms of digital industrialization, China has advantages in software, artificial intelligence technology, application scenarios and other fields and needs to continue to strengthen.
In the hardware part of core technology, there is still a gap between China and developed countries.
In the context of the global industrial chain, it is impossible for the comparative advantages of every link to be in China. Those with comparative advantages should be used well, and those without comparative advantages should be fully used both international and domestic markets and two kinds of resources.
We must take a correct look at the core technologies that China has no comparative advantage.
The digital economy technology is updated very quickly. Enterprises need a large amount of R&D investment to obtain core technologies. Profit determines the total amount of R&D investment, and China is the world's largest single market.
Therefore, companies with these core technologies generally attach great importance to the Chinese market.
If there are core technologies that we cannot use, we must use a new nationwide system to solve them.
For China to develop with high quality, it must consider cost and profitability. It is impossible to develop all products and technologies on its own, and it must remain open to the outside world.
At the same time, we must keep track of other products and technologies, understand the development of the world, and understand our own gaps, and maintain the ability to quickly overcome the gaps, but we must never pursue a self-enclosed development path that replaces all domestic products.
Reporter: At present, what are the bottlenecks encountered in the development of my country's digital economy, and how should we break through?
Among them, what role should effective government and effective market play?
Lin Yifu: The digital economy is a new industry, and its application scenarios have yet to be explored and innovated.
At present, China's consumer Internet is developing well, and the development of the industrial Internet still needs to be deepened.
With regard to the industrial Internet, large companies have made better progress, while small and medium-sized enterprises have just started.
From the perspective of economies of scale, small and medium-sized enterprises have a higher investment in mastering these technologies on their own. Therefore, to help small and medium-sized enterprises use digital transformation to enhance their competitiveness, some platform companies need to develop specialized technologies to help small and medium-sized enterprises, and the government should also provide certain encourage.
The digital economy is based on data elements and involves massive amounts of personal information.
Attention should be paid to the rational use and protection of personal information, and to avoid problems such as monopoly formed by the use of data. On the one hand, it is necessary to encourage and support the innovative development of more domestic platforms, and on the other hand, it is necessary to prevent monopoly from turning into an obstacle to innovation.
The integration of the digital economy and the real economy means a larger market. Large companies have their own enthusiasm and investment capabilities. Small and medium-sized enterprises need government support.
At present, the integration of the digital economy and the real economy is progressing rapidly in the service industry, but there is still a gap in the manufacturing industry. It is necessary to provide corresponding measures for different industrial characteristics to overcome obstacles such as laws and regulations lagging behind industrial development.
Among them, there must be an effective market as well as a government.
Promising government is dynamic. It must continuously adjust policies according to the different development stages of the digital economy, different industrial characteristics, the characteristics of the digital economy itself, and the characteristics of the integration of the digital economy and the real economy, so as to better promote digital industrialization and industrial digitization. To achieve high-quality development and the goal of building a modern and powerful socialist country.
Integration can expand more space
Reporter: What kind of relationship do you think the digital economy and the real economy should build?
In the process of the integration of the digital economy and the real economy, which industries and industries will seize the opportunity?
Lin Yifu: The digital economy is part of the real economy and should be integrated and developed with the real economy.
In the process of integration, the consumer service industry is at the forefront.
Service platforms such as Tencent, Alibaba, JD.com, and Pinduoduo have many innovations, and they are not lagging behind compared with developed countries.
The reason is that, first, China has a good communication and Internet network; second, large cities have a large population and relatively concentrated; third, China has developed roads and transportation infrastructure; fourth, China's labor costs are relatively low.
In terms of production services, developed countries are developing faster.
Because the added value of the production service industry is high, such as the lawyer industry and the accounting industry, the labor cost value that can be replaced after intelligence and digitization is very high, which is more suitable for the national conditions of developed countries.
Compared with developed countries, there is still room for improvement in my country's digital economy as a share of GDP.
Public data shows that the scale of China's digital economy accounts for 39% of GDP, while some developed countries account for more than 50%.
China has advantages in the field of digital economy and can penetrate into all aspects of the real economy.
Accelerating the digital transformation of the industry can not only help China's digital economy as a proportion of GDP to reach or exceed the level of developed countries, but the real economy with manufacturing as its core will also achieve quality and efficiency development.
(Reporter Huang Xin)