By Yang Kaizhong, Member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
The introduction of the concept of "new quality productive forces" represents a major integration and synthesis in our Party's theory of productive forces, providing scientific guidance for promoting high-quality economic development on China's new journey in the new era.
Facing this historic transformation brought by new quality productive forces, Western China enjoys unique strategic advantages.
Firstly, significant resource endowment advantages. Vast territory, abundant wind, solar, and water resources, extensive low-altitude airspace, and key mineral resources provide a solid foundation for developing green energy, big data, the low-altitude economy, and other industries.
Secondly, unique "late-comer leapfrogging" advantages. Western China does not bear the heavy historical burden of transforming traditional industries, allowing it to directly target global cutting-edge technologies and achieve non-gradient, leapfrog development.
Thirdly, "East-West synergy" innovation collaboration advantages. The western and eastern regions are building an efficient collaborative system of "innovation sourcing – pilot-scale transformation – large-scale application." Cutting-edge R&D from the east obtains low-cost industrial verification and broad application scenarios in the west, while distinctive technological achievements from the west (such as ultra-high voltage power transmission and large-scale energy storage) reach the whole country and even the world through the east's capital and market networks.
Fourthly, the ability to overcome geographic relative inefficiency. Being far from traditional market centers, western China has long relied on major infrastructure such as ultra-high voltage power grids and computing networks, along with institutional innovations such as pilot free trade zones and cross-border data flows, to continuously change the problem of distance, turning "geographic disadvantage" into a "hub advantage." These transformations provide key support for the efficient aggregation and diffusion of new quality productive forces.
New quality productive forces are a revolutionary force for improving geographic efficiency. Digital technologies (such as remote industrial control and virtual industry clusters) and the low-altitude economy greatly reduce the constraints of physical distance. Intelligent logistics systems reshape spatial and temporal efficiency. Green energy technologies enable the west to directly convert its resource endowments into the ability to process data locally and develop high-end manufacturing. This is not merely a technological upgrade; it is an internal driving force that fundamentally optimizes Western China's development pattern and reshapes its economic geographic role.
These multiple advantages, mutually reinforcing, are transforming Western China into a core growth pole for the diffusion of new quality productive forces from technological breakthroughs to broader regional application across the country. Facing the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, we must adapt to and lead the historic leap of Western China from a domestic hinterland to a strategic pivot point linking Asia and Europe, fully leveraging its growth pole potential and unwaveringly adopting the development of new quality productive forces as a core strategic orientation.
We must follow the paradigm of new quality productive forces characterized by the coordinated development of greening, (artificial) intelligence, and resilience.
On the one hand, we must promote the integrated development of education, science and technology, talent, and quality, strengthen the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, strive to achieve breakthroughs in a number of key core technologies, and develop new quality industries, new quality infrastructure, and new quality cities, thereby generating new drivers of regional development.
On the other hand, we must pursue institutional innovation, seeking a voice in the formulation of international rules and cross-border coordination mechanisms for new quality productive forces.
During the stage of rapid development of new quality productive forces, the interactive relationship between productive capital and financial capital becomes extremely close, yet it can also become highly distorted. These risks include financial capital dominance, potential financialization of productive capital, the positive feedback loop shifting from an initial virtuous cycle to a later vicious cycle, financial capital rushing into new economic sectors while draining funds from traditional industries, and the prevalence of short-termism among entrepreneurs and managers. Therefore, attention must be paid to cultivating patient capital and preventing the financialization of productive capital and short-termism.
Published in Social Sciences Weekly, April 16, 2026