(China in the past ten years) Chief look at the economy: three "new" drive China's future growth

  China News Service, Beijing, May 23 (Reporter Xia Bin) Today's world is undergoing major changes unseen in a century, and it has also encountered the unprecedented new crown epidemic. Can the "fuel" that promoted growth in the past continue to apply?

What is the future growth path?

  "When we talk about China's economy, we often refer to the 'troika', that is, investment, export, and consumption. In summary, there are actually two kinds of demand, one is external demand and the other is internal demand. In the past ten years, by Domestic demand composed of investment and consumption has gradually evolved into the dominant force in China's economy." Qu Hongbin, chief economist of HSBC Greater China, said in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Agency recently.

  He explained that China's investment demand has maintained a stable and rapid growth, and for a long time it has been dominated by traditional infrastructure, typically represented by transportation-related facilities.

In recent years, new infrastructure has been very prominent, including 5G, new energy, industrial Internet, etc.

"We have to see that investment demand is not only stable in terms of total volume, but also optimized in structure. Investment in 'double-high' industries has decreased relatively, but investment in some high-value-added industries is related to green and low-carbon industries. investment is on the rise.”

  In terms of consumption, Qu Hongbin believes that although there have been some fluctuations after the outbreak of the epidemic and consumption has been suppressed to a certain extent, the proportion of consumption in China's economy has been steadily increasing in the past ten years, and the contribution rate of consumption to GDP growth in 2021 It is 65.4%, an increase of 10 percentage points compared with 2012. This performance is actually a manifestation of the simultaneous increase in the disposable income of residents while China's labor productivity and total GDP growth, and the gradual expansion of the middle-income group, which has become a consumption growth. sustainable support.

  "These changes are related to the transformation of China's old and new kinetic energy. After decades of rapid growth, China is getting closer and closer to the threshold of high-income countries. If we want to continue to develop, we must find new kinetic energy." Qu Hongbin believes that there are three " "New" will drive China's future growth.

  Specifically, one is new technology.

Qu Hongbin believes that in the past, China may have mainly relied on the input scale of production factors in exchange for growth. Now and in the future, it will pay more attention to improving the efficiency of the use of production factors, which requires technological innovation in all aspects. Science and technology innovation will become the most vivid blueprint for future development. a sum.

  He mentioned a key indicator, the ratio of China's total social R&D investment to GDP has increased from 1.91% in 2012 to 2.44% in 2021, reaching the level of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries, as a middle-income country It is very rare and rare for a country to have such a high R&D investment.

  The second is new talents.

"The foundation of innovation lies in talents." Qu Hongbin said that China has harvested a new "demographic dividend" through its long-term investment in education. The quality of the labor force is constantly improving, and it has built the world's largest higher education system. The population reaches 240 million.

  "This large-scale and high-quality supply of human capital or labor has laid a very good foundation for China's next step in promoting innovation and improving productivity." Qu Hongbin said.

  The third is new infrastructure.

In Qu Hongbin's view, infrastructure is not only the support point for sustainable economic development, but also helps to promote the continuous growth of overall production efficiency.

The traditional economy in the past has made great contributions to China's economic development. In the future, long-term investment in new infrastructure will also achieve long-term benefits, especially the support of new infrastructure for innovation, which will allow more technologies to be applied on a large scale and inject into China. long-term growth drivers.

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