Scientific and technological innovation have become the top drivers of economic development under  the new normal of China’s economy.
 

In recent years, China’s economy has entered a phase described as the “new normal,” which is essentially more advanced in form, more complicated in division and more reasonable in structure.

One of the basic characteristics of the new normal of China’s economy is that overall it has maintained a medium-to-high speed of growth. From 2002 to 2014, China’s GDP maintained a growth rate in excess of 7 percent, yet overall it has declined year on year. This means that the economy is gradually shifting to a new normal.
 

Under the new normal, scientific and technological innovation has become the top driver of economic development. Strategies regarding intellectual property, in particular, have become the core element during innovation-driven economic development. China should put intellectual property strategies at its core when moving at a faster pace toward a country of innovation.
 

It is crucial to address excess capacity by means of switching production, merging and reorganizing. Emphasis should not be laid one-sidedly on certain industries, and there should be coordinated and balanced development between the primary, secondary and tertiary industries and their own branch industries.

The protection of the ecological environment and the efficient use of natural resources are key parts of economic development under the new normal. Economic development under the new normal will need to find a balance between economic development and ecological protection. On the one hand, relevant laws and regulations regarding environmental protection should be improved and implemented, and on the other, there must be improvements to administrative-performance-based evaluation systems, including the evaluation of the ecological environment, at all levels of government.
 

Improving the quality of overall economic development requires the coordinated development of regional economies. This will involve coordinating the regional development strategies of each economic zone. It will also involve making overall plans and giving classified guidance, according to China’s major functional region plans, to develop different regions.
 

Economic development under the new normal involves planning the allocation of wealth and income, employment, healthcare, housing, education and social security from a strategy that improves people’s lives. First of all, we should uphold the system in which distribution according to work is dominant. Then, we should make achieving equality of services our main objective and provide a basic public services system with fundamental security in fields like employment, healthcare, housing, education and social security.
 

State-owned enterprises are growing stronger under the new normal due to an emphasis on developing mixed-ownership economic entities which are held by publicly-owned capital. We should prevent the loss of state-owned assets and develop a mixed-ownership economy by guiding private capital to hold shares of State-owned enterprises while also encouraging publicly-owned capital to hold shares in private enterprises. Economic development should also maintain a close connection with technological development.
 

Finance must serve the real economy. It is important that the speed and level of financial development corresponds with the real economy. First, this means we should prevent foreign capital from forming a financial monopoly in China in order to secure China’s economic sovereignty and national security; second, we should be cautious about the opening of capital accounts; third, we should accelerate full supervision over the financial market, and strengthen the supervision of the stock market in particular.
 

Efficiency dictates that both the market and the government should play cooperative roles. We must ensure that the market plays the decisive role in allocating resources and the government takes the lead in allocating important resources.
 

Overall, for both the present and the ensuing period of time, only by accomplishing the work mentioned above, can China’s economic development maintain a medium-to-high speed and progress positively in terms of overall quality and benefit.

 

Cheng Enfu is from the Academic Division of Marxist Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; Gao Jiankun is from the School of Marxism at Fudan university.