Recently, the 18th Frost & Sullivan China Growth, Innovation and Leadership Summit 2024, co-hosted by Frost & Sullivan and LeadLeo, was successfully held at the Jing'an Ruiji Hotel in Shanghai. The theme of this year's Frost & Sullivan New Investment Conference is "Gather Strength to Win the Future", bringing together the wisdom and efforts of the global industry, academia, and investment community to jointly explore new growth points, markets, and tracks for the Chinese economy in the new era.
Wang Dong, Director of the Localization Project for Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations Development Programme China Office, was invited to attend the opening ceremony and deliver a speech.
Wang Dong, Director of the Localization Project for the Sustainable Development Goals at the United Nations Development Programme Office in China
Wang Dong pointed out that over the past 40 years, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as the largest international development cooperation agency within the United Nations system, entered China in 1979. During these 40 years, it has witnessed China's rapid development process. From 1978 when per capita GDP was only a little over $150, making China a relatively poor country, to becoming the world's second-largest economy today, its share of global GDP has increased from 1% forty years ago to 18% last year. China's development achievements have been recognized by the United Nations and are regarded as a great achievement in the history of human development, attracting worldwide attention.
After experiencing 40 years of medium-high growth, China's economic growth scale and development model have also had to undergo profound adjustments and reconstructions. Especially in the past 20 years, with relatively extensive development, it mainly relied on infrastructure investment and construction, real estate development, as well as investment in related industries and local debt accumulation. These factors have played an important role in promoting China's development over the past 20 years. According to relevant calculation standards of the United Nations and the World Bank, China entered the ranks of middle-income countries in 2011. According to the latest forecasts, China will enter the ranks of upper-middle-income countries in 2027.
Wang Dong analyzed the multiple challenges currently facing economic development.
On the one handThe central government has emphasized risk management and control, especially to address the debt risks accumulated in the real estate sector;On the other handAt the macro level, China is facing internal challenges such as the disappearance of demographic dividends, rapid rise in labor costs, and gradually diminishing marginal effects and regulatory sensitivity of monetary policy. At the same time, rapid changes in the international environment and Sino-US relations have also brought external challenges, which are very evident to China.
In this process, China has to face the pain of transforming and connecting old and new drivers of growth, as well as reshaping development and business models. These challenges are also reflected in everyone's life and work. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that developing new quality productive forces is an inherent requirement and important focus for promoting high-quality development. To address China's development challenges and achieve the goal of building a modern strong country by 2050, turning towards high-quality development is the only way. By developing new quality productive forces, we are also given more specific directions for our efforts.
At the same time, he further proposed two key directions for developing new productive forces.
On the one hand, the focus is mainly on promoting technological innovation in the manufacturing sectorIn the past, we absorbed a lot of advanced international experience, concepts, and technologies through following and catching up strategies, making China the world's leading manufacturing powerhouse. However, with changes in the international environment, we are facing more and more challenges and problems. Therefore, we must achieve self-control over key technologies through new scientific discoveries, technological inventions, and model innovations, and promote the development of new quality productive forces in scientific and technological innovation.
On the other hand, new productive forces particularly require the development of high-value-added modern service industries, especially those closely related to the production process.The proportion of productive services is an important parameter for measuring a country's development level and stage. In some Western countries and industries that are more developed, this type of productive service industry has accounted for nearly 40% of the total GDP, while in China, it is currently only about 10%. Therefore, developing productive services is an important direction for China's future development, which also contains many opportunities.
