Southern Metropolis Daily:

New quality productive forces has emerged as a buzzword this year, which arouse wide attention from all industries. Local governments have taken actions to drive their future growth. As a major economically developed and coastal province in southeastern China, what will Fujian do to develop new quality productive forces? Thank you.

Zhao Long:

Thanks for your question and I will answer it. We all know that productivity is the fundamental driving force for the progress of human civilization and social development. In today's world, as a new round of sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation keeps advancing, the proposal of new quality productive forces provides a scientific guidance for upgrading traditional economic growth modes and promoting high-quality development.

It is especially urgent for Fujian to foster new quality productive forces. Due to some historical reasons, as you all know, innovation is a shortcoming for our province. But we can rely on sound foundations in the real economy and relatively complete industrial chain to foster new quality productive forces. More importantly, the people of Fujian are brave to work hard and have strong creativity, building a good atmosphere for innovation. We will grasp the scientific connotation and core meaning of new quality productive forces, unswervingly promoting high-quality development by fostering new quality productive forces. We will focus on the following five aspects.

First is sci-tech innovation. The distinguishing point of new quality productive forces is innovation. We will accelerate building Fujian into an innovation-driven province. This year, investment in research and development (R&D) are expected to grow at an average annual rate of more than 18%, and the number of national high-tech enterprises will exceed 13,000.

Second is modernization of industrial system. The key of new quality productive forces is good quality. We will holistically advance digital and intelligent transformation of traditional industries, foster strategic emerging industries, like information technology, new energy, new materials and biomedicine, and boost future-oriented industries including artificial intelligence and quantum technology in order to make traditional industries higher-end, smarter and more eco-friendly. Within the year, we will also implement national policies on large-scale equipment renewal, continue to launch over 1,000 projects on technological transformation and nurture more than 1,000 specialized and sophisticated enterprises that could produce novel and unique products.

Third is green and low-carbon development. New quality productive forces are inherently green ones. We will leverage Fujian's advantages in clean energy and green industries, and make great efforts to develop industries like power batteries, offshore wind power and new types of energy storage. We will strengthen the green service industry and establish a supply chain that is energy-saving, circular, green and low-carbon. As was previously mentioned, Fujian's installed capacity of clean energy accounts for 63% of its total, which is a significant advantage for us to achieve high-quality development. We will strive to achieve 100% utilization of clean and green electricity by manufacturing enterprises across the entire province as soon as possible.

Fourth is the provision of production factors. This primarily involves deepening the reform of market allocation of production factors and accelerating the flow efficiency of factors such as land, capital, technology and data. In this respect, our goal is to ensure that enterprises can quickly obtain the production factors they need and be able to transfer these products out quickly as they wish. For example, we are actively revitalizing land with inefficient functions and promoting the standardized construction of industrial parks. Last year, through the reform, the province added over 5 million square meters of standardized factory buildings. This year, we will step up efforts to a larger scale, and over 20 million square meters of new standardized factory buildings are expected to be constructed.

Fifth is to create a top-tier business environment. We will continuously improve administrative services and step up efforts in strengthening legal guarantees, enhancing the credit system, protecting intellectual property rights, and building a new type of cordial and clean relationship between government and business , in a bid to create a market-oriented, law-based and internationalized business environment. For example, in terms of administrative services, we will fully utilize the integrated law enforcement platform and promote reforms to improve the efficiency of data collection and matter handling to support the development of new quality productive forces, just like Ms. Guo Ningning introduced earlier.

That's all from me. Thank you!