Understanding the Essence of New Quality Productive Forces

New quality productive forces represent a type of advanced productivity that grants innovation a leading role. The key to understanding this concept, therefore, lies in emphasizing the pivotal role of innovation in increasing productivity. These forces represent a new direction and trend for technological revolution and industrial transformation, as well as the orientation of advanced productivity. By accelerating the formation of new quality productive forces, we are seeking to take the lead in developing productive forces, grasp the opportunities on offer in new areas and arenas, and seize the initiative amid fierce international competition.

New quality productive forces are an outcome of the evolution of productive forces and technological progress; they represent a revolutionary enhancement of humanity's ability to improve nature in a holistic and fundamental way. As the basic elements of new quality productive forces, laborers, the instruments of labor, and the subjects of labor are inevitably endowed with new meaning.

Consider laborers, who represent the most proactive element of productive forces. Those best suited to new quality productive forces will not be ordinary workers who engage in simple repetitive labor but personnel with expertise of strategic importance who are capable of actually creating new quality productive forces and applied personnel who are familiar with new quality means of production.

Next, take for example the instruments of labor. With the development and extensive application of original and disruptive technologies, more and more new and advanced production tools will emerge to replace those that are old and outmoded. This process is also a major symbol of the development of productive forces.

Finally, the widespread application of improved instruments of labor inevitably broadens the scope of labor subjects to include not only traditional physical materials but also intangible matter that is not bound by time or space, such as data.

Various factors of production only become actual productive forces when they are combined. New quality productive forces are thus reflected in the innovative development of not only various production factors but also the means by which these factors come together. As the laborers, instruments of labor, and subjects of labor that make up new quality productive forces continue to evolve, their optimal combination will also undergo revolutionary changes, giving rise to new industries, new forms of business, and new models, as well as new drivers and strengths to propel economic growth.

The relations of production are both determined by and reactive to productive forces. As such, the emergence of new quality productive forces will inevitably lead to revolutionary changes in the relations of production and necessitate the establishment of a new set of well-adapted relations that will serve to protect, liberate, and develop these forces. By steadily reforming and improving production relations and establishing new management models, systems, and mechanisms, we will provide important guarantees for the continuous development of new quality productive forces.

New quality productive forces are more than just partial optimizations or simple iterations of traditional productive forces; they are a form of advanced productivity arising from revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, the innovative allocation of production factors, and in-depth industrial transformation and upgrading. They will undoubtedly result in the transformation of development models and production modes and facilitate new substantial improvements in China's social productive forces, thereby laying more solid material and technological foundations for building a modern socialist country.

Editor: Yi Xiaowei