殷德生：“十四五”规划纲要中“结构”出现55次，释放出什么信号？ - 2021-04-23

Yin Desheng
 
In the full text of the 14th Five-Year Plan released a few days ago, the word “structure” appears 55 times, and another two terms “coordination” and “overall planning” that are closely related to “structure” occur 48 and 50 times respectively. The frequently occurring keyword “structure” has close links with the development theme and main task during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. It’s also a requirement of grounding our efforts in the new development stage, implementing the new development philosophy and forming a new development paradigm.
China has entered a new stage of promoting economic growth with structural reform
A fundamental reason behind the emphasis on structural reform during the 14th Five-Year Plan period is that China has entered a stage of high-quality development. During this stage, it needs to rely more on structural potential to achieve economic development instead of the total amount of resource input. This is the key to sustainable growth in China in the next five or fifteen years, as well as the basis to rise to various challenges.
In terms of the guiding philosophy, the 14th Five-Year Plan takes promoting high-quality development as the theme, and deepening supply-side structural reform as the main task. This is mainly based on the profound and complex changes facing China’s development environment during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. On one hand, as the international power dynamics has undergone profound adjustments, and global structural problems have become increasingly complex, the industrial chain structure, energy structure, trade structure and financial structure have experienced deep changes. On the other hand, the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development faced by China is more manifested in the structure. It’s an urgent task to comprehensively deepen reforms in the driving force structure, industrial structure, supply-demand structure, the structure of domestic and international circulations of the economy, urban-rural structure, and income distribution structure.
New structure is at the core of the new stage, new philosophy, and new paradigm
Different from the structural growth characterized by real estate, traditional infrastructure, and exports during the previous stage of rapid economic growth and catch-up, in the new stage of high-quality development, the growth potential depends more on new structural features such as development driven by innovation, structural upgrading and urban agglomerations.
Strategically, to promote high-quality development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, we should not only continue to deepen supply-side structural reform, but also ground efforts in the new development stage, implement the new development philosophy and build a new development paradigm. The structural relationship between these three aspects is obvious: having a keen grasp of the new development stage is the realistic basis for implementing the new development philosophy and forming a new development paradigm; implementing the new development philosophy provides an action guide for having a keen grasp of the new development stage and building a new development paradigm; building a new development paradigm is a strategic choice to cope with the opportunities and challenges in the new development stage and implementing the new development philosophy.
The new development stage represents a new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way, which involves a series of major structural reforms and optimization. In particular, we should fully consider the broad picture of China’s great national rejuvenation strategy, as well as the tremendous changes in the world unseen in a century. We must implement the integrated plan encompassing economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological development, and the comprehensive strategy consisting of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way and comprehensively deepening reforms, enhancing law-based governance, and strengthening Party self-governance. Implementing the new principles of innovative, coordinated, green, open, and shared development is an inherent requirement for high-quality development, the key to which lies in structural coordination and optimization.
The key task during the 14th Five-Year Plan period is to take the new development philosophy as the basic logical thread, and put it into practice in structural reform. Under the new development paradigm, we should promote the domestic and international economic circulations, namely strengthening the structural coordination of the domestic and international economic circulations. On one hand, we need to build a strong domestic market to smooth domestic circulation. Specifically, it’s necessary to combine expanding domestic demands with intensifying supply-side structural reform, and rely on a strong domestic market to smooth production, distribution, circulation, and consumption links, thus striking a dynamic structural balance at a higher level, where demand and supply can boost each other. On the other hand, we should promote domestic and international economic circulations. It’s necessary to coordinate the building of a strong domestic market and a trader of quality, and facilitate the coordinated development of the structure of domestic and foreign demands, the structure of imports and exports, and the structure of introduction of foreign capital and outbound investment.
Structural problems are increasingly becoming factors hindering high-quality development
“Structural barriers” are the main factors hindering high-quality development for now and for a long period of time in the future. It’s an important challenge in China, which similar challenges can be found in other countries. It has become an important problem of global governance. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China will focus on solving the industrial, government-market and urban-rural structural problems.
In terms of the industrial structure, we should accelerate the establishment of a modern industrial system and consolidate and strengthen the foundation of the real economy. Specifically, we need to not only improve the structural coordination of manufacturing and service industries, but also promote the structural optimization and upgrading of the manufacturing industry, build a well-structured growth engine for strategic emerging industries, and establish a new system for the service industry with a better structure and stronger competitiveness. As for the structural reform of agriculture, we need to optimize the layout of agricultural production.
In terms of the government-market structure, we should let the market play the decisive role in allocating resources, and let the government play its functions better. We need to promote better combination of effective market and well-functioning government, so as to build a high-level socialist market economic system. We will focus on accelerating the layout optimization and structural adjustment of state-owned economy, and establish a long-term mechanism for it. The main way for the government to play its role is to establish a modern fiscal, taxation and financial system, and improve macroeconomic governance. It includes optimizing the structures of the tax system, tax rates and the financial system and improving the macro-control policy system to enhance the aggregate economic balance, structural optimization, and internal and external equilibrium.
In terms of the urban-rural structure, on one hand, we should accelerate the efforts to grant urban residency to rural people who have moved to cities, promote household registration reform, extend basic public services to fully cover the permanent population of cities and towns in a coordinated manner, and deepen the new type of urbanization centered on people. On the other hand, we need to focus on improving the strategy for new type of urbanization and the quality of urbanization. It’s necessary to respond to the changes in the spatial structure, optimize the regional economic layout, and promote the coordinated development of the region. It’s important to implement major regional strategies by focusing on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Economic Belt, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, integrated development of the Yangtze River Delta, ecological protection, and high-quality development of the Yellow River Basin. It’s crucial to fully implement the coordinated regional development strategy by promoting the large-scale development of the western region, comprehensive revitalization of Northeast China, rise of the central region, and leading development of the eastern region.
Carry out structural reform through overall planning and coordinated development
It’s impossible to conduct structural reform without a package of macro policies. While emphasizing “structure”, we should also consider “coordination” and “overall planning.”
In terms of supply-demand coordination and matching, by deepening supply-side structural reform, we can not only improve the adaptability of the supply system, but also make it more capable of leading and creating new demands. First, we should optimize and upgrade the supply structure by promoting the coordinated development of industries such as agriculture, manufacturing, service, and energy resources. Second, we need to adjust the demand structure by accelerating the building of a complete domestic demand system, deepening the implementation of the strategy of expanding domestic demands, strengthening consumption’s fundamental role for economic development, and optimizing the structure of investment demand. It’s crucial to maintain basically simultaneous personal income and GDP growth, and labor remuneration and productivity rise.
In terms of the coordination and matching of the domestic circulation and international circulation, we should not only pursue coordinated development of industrial chain, market supply and demand, economic and social, domestic and international circulations, but also achieve overall progress in implementing the innovation-driven development strategy and regional development strategy, building a modern industrial system and a high-level socialist market economic system, and expanding opening up to the outside.
In terms of matching the spatial structure and regional coordination, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, we will focus on the development of urban agglomerations. We should rely on urban agglomerations and metropolitan areas to promote the coordinated development of large, medium, and small cities and small towns, and optimize the internal spatial structure of urban agglomerations to form a network with multiple centers, several levels, and many nodes. We need to establish and improve the integrated and coordinated development mechanism, and cost- and benefit-sharing mechanism for urban agglomerations. It’s necessary to coordinate the layout of infrastructure, industrial division of labor, sharing of public services, and joint ecological collaboration and environmental governance. It’s important to deepen the implementation of coordinated regional development strategy, improve relevant systems and mechanisms, and achieve relatively balanced development in various regions.
(Author: Yin Desheng, Dean of School of Economics at East China Normal University, and Specially Appointed Researcher of Research Center of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in Shanghai)