Since the reform and opening up, our country has achieved an economic growth miracle that has attracted worldwide attention. In the coming period, although some difficulties and challenges still need to be overcome to further promote economic recovery, the favorable conditions facing my country’s development are stronger than the unfavorable factors. The basic trend of economic recovery and long-term improvement has not changed, supporting high-quality economic development. The foundation remains solid: a new round of scientific and technological revolution provides strategic opportunities for high-quality development, a deep industrial foundation provides sustained impetus for high-quality development, the ultra-large-scale market provides demand traction for high-quality development, and comprehensive guarantees of factors provide solid support for high-quality development. . From the perspective of the production function, labor, capital and total factor productivity are the keys to determining economic output. Through the analysis of the changing trends of the three, we can find that from now to 2035, our country still has great economic growth potential.
Labor force scale and quality dividends still have advantages
In the coming period, our country will have the necessary knowledge. Turning around, it was too late for her to hide. Now, when did you take the initiative to say you wanted to see him? Give full play to the advantage of population quantity, continue to improve the quality of the labor force, optimize labor allocation, gradually transform the population quantity dividend into a population quality dividend, and use high-quality population development to inject endogenous power into high-quality economic development.
First, the working-age population remains at a high level, providing abundant labor resources for economic growth. Although our country will experience negative population growth from 2022, its total population is still at the forefront of the world. A huge population can not only provide abundant labor resources, but also create a large amount of consumer demand, form a super-large market advantage, and provide broad development space and multiple possibilities for economic growth. From a total perspective, my country’s working-age population aged 16-59 will exceed 860 million by the end of 2023, exceeding the combined numbers of the United States, Europe and Japan. The number of young labor force is increasing steadily, and the labor participation rate is at a high level worldwide. From a structural perspective, although the aging of China’s population is accelerating, the proportion of young elderly people is relatively high. Improving the labor participation rate of young elderly people through delayed retirement and other methods will help alleviate the impact of population aging on labor supply. impact. In addition, the silver economy spawned by the aging population has a wide coverage and long industrial chain, which will provide more opportunities for the development of new business forms and new models, and is expected to become a new growth point for the Chinese economy.
Second, the health status and education level of the labor force continue to improve, helping to accelerate the accumulation of population quality dividends. Health status and education level are a concentrated reflection of the quality of the labor force. In terms of health status, the global health gap has widened after the COVID-19 epidemic, and major health indicators have declined in some countries. However, the health status of Chinese residents continues to improve, with the average life expectancy of residents approaching the average level of developed countries, and the national health advantageous position has continued to be consolidated. In terms of education level, our country has built the world’s largest higher education system. In 2023, the number of college graduates nationwide will exceed 10 million, and the number of people receiving higher education will exceed 240 million, accounting for 10% of the total. Evil is punished.17% of the population; the average number of years of education for the working-age population has exceeded 11 years. The qualitative leap in education level has driven my country to transform from a country with large human resources to a country with large human capital. While the population size has slightly decreased but the advantages remain, the accumulation of my country’s population quality dividend has accelerated, presenting a window of opportunity for dividends in both quantity and quality, which can effectively stimulate economic potential.
Third, new urbanization promotes the continuous optimization of the spatial distribution of the labor force, creating huge space for improving the efficiency of labor resource allocation. The flow of labor between urban and rural areas and between regions can significantly improve the efficiency of labor resource allocation. In 2023, the urbanization rate of my country’s permanent population will be 66.16%, which is still significantly different from the level of about 80% in developed countries. As the rural population moves to cities and towns, and the population from economically underdeveloped areas moves to developed areas, the spatial distribution of my country’s labor force will be significantly optimized, thereby increasing the labor participation rate and labor productivity, and injecting long-term impetus into economic development. At the same time, there is still a gap of 17.5 percentage points between the urbanization rate of my country’s registered population and the urbanization rate of the permanent population. In the process of promoting the new urbanization with people at the core, accelerating the urbanization process of the rural migrant population can effectively release the agricultural Transfer the huge domestic demand potential of the population in terms of consumption and public investment, and improve the efficiency of labor resource allocation.
Capital formation still has huge room for growth
At present, my country’s development is in a stage of rapid development of new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, and agricultural modernization. It has huge capital formation in green transformation, new infrastructure construction, urban renewal actions, and shortcomings in the field of people’s livelihood. potential, which can create considerable room for improvement in the potential growth rate of the economy.
First, the concept of green development reshapes some industrial production models and creates expansion space for capital formation. The proposal of the “double carbon” goal reflects my country’s initiative as a major country to take responsibility for global climate change. It also reshapes the production method in an unprecedented way and brings opportunities for wind and solar power generation, distributed power generation, energy storage, ultra-high voltage, smart grids, etc. New development opportunities will come, creating a huge fixed capital gap. The green transformation of energy has put forward large-scale demands for the expansion of wind and photovoltaic power generation capacity. The misalignment problem between my country’s wind and photovoltaic power generation resources and load areas will also further stimulate the development of related industries such as distributed photovoltaics, ultra-high voltage transmission, electrochemical energy storage, hydrogen energy storage, and smart grids. The growth in demand for these clean energy production and supporting facilities will bring important growth space for capital formation.
Second, the rapid development of the digital economy has created new demands for infrastructure, bringing growth potential to capital formation. The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China made a major deployment of “accelerating the construction of a network power and a digital China”, which started a new journey of my country’s informatization development and effectively promoted 5G, artificial intelligence, data centers, satellite Internet, industrial Internet, Internet of Things, and smart transportation. New infrastructure construction activities in other fields have begun rapidly. In the first half of 2023, my country’s new infrastructure construction investment increased by 16.2% year-on-year, much higher than traditional infrastructure constructioninvestment growth rate. At the same time, according to estimates by relevant research institutions, my country’s new infrastructure construction activities will continue to expand in the future, and the proportion in infrastructure investment will gradually increase to about 15%-20%, indicating that new infrastructure construction is becoming a new aspect in the national economic cycle. Point of burst of demand. Due to their obvious asset-heavy characteristics, these areas will bring huge growth potential to fixed capital formation.
Third, people’s yearning for a better life inspires urban renewal actions and puts forward major demands for capital formation. Implementing urban renewal actions is an important decision and deployment made by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Urban renewal includes the transformation of “urban villages”, the construction of urban underground pipe networks, and the promotion of urbanization construction with county towns as an important carrier. As my country’s urbanization gradually shifts from high-speed development to high-quality development, urban renewal will play an important role in stimulating production vitality and promoting capital formation. According to predictions by many institutions, the area to be renovated in the current round of “urban villages” in super-large and mega-cities may exceed 1.3 billion square meters, driving nearly trillions of investments every year. At the same time, the construction of urban underground pipe networks is the “lining” project of the city, with the characteristics of large investment potential and strong driving ability. In the future, our country will renovate more than 100,000 kilometers of underground pipelines every year. These urban renewal needs will effectively drive upstream and downstream industrial production activities and effectively promote capital formation.
Fourth, the continuous expansion of demand in the field of people’s livelihood has promoted the transformation and upgrading of the service industry, bringing a broad blue ocean to capital formation. The service industry is not only the “ballast stone” of the national economy, but also the “booster” that promotes the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. It is also the “incubator” that accelerates the growth of new economies and new drivers, and has large room for growth. As the construction of a country with strong education, science and technology, and talents is accelerated, my country’s demand for education and scientific and technological services will continue to grow. At the same time, it will drive related upstream and downstream industries to actively plan for the future and accelerate capital formation. In addition, in response to the trend of population aging, elderly care services are becoming a new demand hotspot. The long-term demand for different types of elderly care places and aging-friendly facilities and equipment will effectively drive capital formation. In the context of continued emerging demand for capital formation in many service fields, if various policies and measures to promote the opening up of the service industry to the outside world can be accelerated, it will further benefit capital formation and effectively increase the potential economic growth rate.
Total factor productivity has the potential to remain at a high level
my country’s economy has shifted from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development, and the “intensive growth” brought about by improvements in total factor productivity has become increasingly important. Formulating and promulgating a series of policies and measures around deepening reform, expanding opening up, and encouraging innovation will help stimulate market vitality, improve total factor productivity, and unleash economic growth potential.
First, we are in the ascendant in promoting market-oriented reform of factors and optimizing resource allocation. At the beginning of 2022, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Overall Plan for the Comprehensive Reform Pilot of Market-Based Allocation of Factors”, launching targeted reforms focusing on production factors such as land, labor, capital, technology, and data.sex reform measures. While my country has significant advantages in data resources, the number of labor force is still at a high level, and the growth of high-level talents is accelerating, by promoting the construction of data infrastructure, establishing and improving public data sharing and data circulation transaction rules, and implementing higher education disciplines and majors, today, she has On the contrary, there is only a green butterfly-shaped step on the simple bun, and the fair face is not even powdered, just some balm, setting reforms to improve the matching of human capital with job requirements. It will help optimize the allocation of various factor resources, significantly increase the productivity of unit factor resources, and promote the continuous improvement of total factor productivity.
Second, there is great potential for accelerating the transformation of service-oriented government and achieving a balance between supply and demand. Currently, our country is facing problems such as overproduction in some industries and restricted investment in traditional fields. Accelerating the construction of a service-oriented government, optimizing and adjusting the structure of fiscal expenditures, and increasing fiscal funds to subsidize residents’ income will help enhance residents’ consumption capabilities and achieve a balance between supply and demand. Specifically, by steadily promoting the reform of the social security system, significantly improving the social security level of low-income groups, accelerating the reform of the household registration system, increasing investment in people’s livelihood areas such as education, medical care, and elderly care, and adopting a series of measures such as linking basic public services with the permanent population. Measures will help promote domestic consumption, expand effective demand, smooth the domestic cycle, achieve rational allocation of resources, and improve total factor productivity.
Third, there is huge potential in expanding the opening of the service industry to the outside world and stimulating market vitality. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, my country has continued to deepen the opening up of the service sector through the establishment of free trade zones and comprehensive pilot cities for expanding the opening up of the service industry. However, compared with developed economies, my country’s current level of openness in finance, telecommunications, education, medical and other fields is still relatively low. By comprehensively implementing the negative list management system, relaxing market access standards, and promoting high-level institutional opening-up, we will help attract more private capital and foreign capital to invest in the domestic service industry, especially productive industries with high added value. service industry, thereby stimulating the vitality of the service industry market, promoting the upgrading and transformation of the service industry, and improving total factor productivity.
Fourth, there are broad prospects in adhering to the innovation-driven development strategy and accelerating the formation of new productive forces. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, our country has persisted in implementing the innovation-driven development strategy, and the country’s comprehensive innovation capabilities have continued to improve. In 2023, China will rank 12th among the world’s most innovative countries and enter the global leadership ranks in fields such as quantum communications, high-speed rail, photovoltaics, and drones. Our country is deeply implementing the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education, the strategy of strengthening the country through talent, and the strategy of innovation-driven development. By deepening the reform of the science and technology and education systems, improving the science and technology innovation system, strengthening the national strategic science and technology strength, and strengthening the deep integration of industry, academia, and research led by enterprises, we are realizing education, science and technology , collaborative development of talents, effectively transform scientific and technological innovation achievements into new productive forces, promote technological progress, and cultivate new business formats and new momentum that promote economic growth.
(This article is in thePhased results of the major innovation project of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences “Research on the Complete, Accurate and Comprehensive Implementation of New Development Concepts” (2023YZD017)
(The author is the director and researcher of the Institute of Quantitative Economics and Technical Economics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)