China is currently in a critical period of comprehensively building a modern socialist country, facing dual challenges from domestic economic transformation and the profound restructuring of the global industrial system. The more complex the situation, the more crucial it is to stand firm. “The real economy is the foundation of China’s development and an important support for building strategic advantages for the future,” and “We must deeply grasp the new characteristics and requirements of the development stage, insisting on making the real economy stronger, better, and more optimized as the main direction” … These important statements by General Secretary Xi Jinping point precisely to the key tasks that require comprehensive efforts, breakthroughs, and coordinated advancement.
Throughout the history of global economic development, since the Industrial Revolution, while different countries have taken varied development paths, the underlying logic remains the same: a thriving real economy leads to a thriving nation, and strong manufacturing means strong competitiveness.
For China, sticking to the real economy is of particular significance. As a large country with over 1.4 billion people, it cannot follow the path of shifting from real to virtual sectors or speculative bubbles, nor can it rely on external sources or hollow development. Forging a solid foundation for the real economy is not an option but a must-answer question; it is not a stopgap measure but a long-term strategy.
In recent years, in response to the phenomenon of large amounts of capital being withdrawn from the real economy in some areas, we have promoted policies tilted toward the real economy, concentrated resource elements, and strengthened work efforts, achieving notable results. However, it must be clearly recognized that reversing a trend does not mean resolving deep-seated contradictions. Some areas of the real economy are “big but not strong” or “comprehensive but not refined,” with key core technologies still dependent on others, low industrial quality and efficiency, and tightening resource constraints. The coexistence of “external blockades” and “internal involution” needs to be addressed. To consolidate and expand the momentum of economic stability and improvement, targeted treatment of real problems is required to make the real economy stronger, better, and more optimized.
Developing advanced manufacturing is the core engine for strengthening, improving, and expanding the real economy. The 15th Five-Year Plan emphasizes focusing economic development efforts on the real economy, aiming to maintain a reasonable proportion of manufacturing and vigorously develop advanced manufacturing. The share of China’s manufacturing value-added in GDP has gradually adjusted to around 25%, a change consistent with the general pattern of industrial evolution, but the risk of a too-rapid or too-low decline must be highly guarded against, ensuring the manufacturing proportion remains within a reasonable range.
Maintaining the bottom line of a reasonable proportion does not mean protecting backward production capacity, but achieving qualitative leaps based on stabilizing the basic framework. Aim for high-end development, focusing on the insufficient independent supply capacity in key areas such as high-end chips, strengthening innovation efforts, and increasing industrial added value and core competitiveness to break free from the lock-in at the middle and low ends of the global value chain. Aim for intelligent development, using digitalization as a foundation to unblock bottlenecks in industrial software adaptation and system integration, promoting deep integration of the real economy and digital economy, and solving production efficiency issues. Aim for green development, achieving sustainable development and seizing new high ground in international manufacturing competition.
Developing advanced manufacturing does not mean focusing only on “high-precision and cutting-edge” sectors, but making efforts in “creating value” with priorities, tiers, and continuity. By promoting the upgrading of traditional industries, consolidate the status and competitiveness of key industries in the global industrial division of labor; by developing strategic emerging industry clusters, generate multiple trillion-yuan markets or even larger scales; by opening up new tracks for future industries, form strategic reserves for long-term advantages. Allowing “old trees to sprout new branches” and “new seedlings to grow into big trees” will accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone, driving the transformation from “Made in China” to “Intelligently Made in China” and from “Chinese products” to “Chinese brands.”
