This year's Report on the Work of the Government emphasizes "strengthening the core competitiveness of the manufacturing industry" and makes a series of important plans. This shows that manufacturing competitiveness is not only a long-term strategic issue, but also a short-term policy concern. The core competitiveness of manufacturing industry affects the economic benefits and economic growth in the short term, and relates to the high-quality development of economy in the long term.

Making strengthening the core competitiveness of the manufacturing sector a policy focus this year also shows that China attaches greater importance to the role of manufacturing in economic and social development. The manufacturing industry is the main body of the real economy and the focus of international competition. The high-quality development of the manufacturing industry is related to the overall high-quality development of the economy. In recent years, the scale of China's manufacturing industry has been expanding, but at the same time, the traditional competitiveness has been weakening, and new competitiveness needs to be cultivated. Cultivating and enhancing the core competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry has always been a problem that needs to be paid great attention to.

The competitiveness of manufacturing industry comes from many aspects and can be divided into four levels. The first level is the competitiveness from the advantages of resource endowment. For example, some countries have rich ore, oil and labor resources. The second level is the advantages from production efficiency, including industrial supporting advantages, industrial scale advantages, high production efficiency can significantly reduce production costs; The third level is the advantages of production technology, process and quality management system. Based on long-term accumulation of industrial knowledge, many traditional industrial powers can form many production processes that are difficult for other countries to master. The fourth level comes from core technologies and brand value. Developed countries often have core technologies that other countries do not master in some aspects, and form systematic competitiveness through patents.

To judge which is the core competitiveness, the key is to see whether it is easy for other countries and regions to imitate and catch up with. Of the four levels of manufacturing competitiveness mentioned above, the first level is the most unstable and easily imitated or surpassed. This is because most natural resources are so widely distributed that a country is less likely to develop a monopoly advantage. The scale and efficiency advantages of the second level are also easy to be imitated. Although it is difficult for many countries to form comprehensive industrial chain supporting advantages, they can concentrate on developing a few industries, thus forming catch-up in production efficiency. In contrast, tier 3 and 4 advantages are not easily established, but once they are established, they are more difficult for other countries to emulate or match, and therefore more durable and stable.

At present, the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry is mainly in the second level, and is climbing to the third and fourth level. Based on long-term industrial accumulation, many developed countries have mastered many high-end production processes and enjoy first-mover and in-place advantages. As a latecomer, it is very difficult for China to break through the barriers formed by these advantages in a comprehensive way in the short term, which has also become the short board and constraint factors for the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry.

To further enhance the core competitiveness of manufacturing, we need to pay attention to the following key issues.

First, we should grasp the relationship between scale and competitiveness. For a long time, China's industrial development has been shown to be a scale expansion model, the super-large scale does produce further supporting advantages to a certain extent, but in the new stage of development, we should see the complex relationship between scale and competitiveness. For many industries, even high-tech industries, if all localities rush in and expand too fast, it may lead to high-tech, low-benefit and "loss-making" situations. Therefore, it is very important to form the industrial development pattern of dislocation division of labor in various places, avoid excessive competition, and achieve the unity of improving efficiency and enhancing innovation ability through moderate scale growth.

Second, we need to strike a balance between emerging and traditional industries. Some people believe that traditional manufacturing industry belongs to low-end industry without core competitiveness, while only emerging manufacturing industry, high-tech and high value-added manufacturing industry is high-end industry. In fact, many traditional manufacturing industries have high upgrading value and space. Especially in recent years, digital and intelligent transformation has brought new competitiveness and development space to traditional industries. At the same time, both nationally and globally, the scale and demand of high-end industries such as information technology and intelligent manufacturing are limited. If every place is crowded on these "race tracks" with fierce competition, the final benefits are not necessarily better than focusing on the development of traditional industries. Therefore, how to develop manufacturing industry suitable for local resource endowment is a problem that needs to be solved in all regions.

Third, we should attach great importance to the problem of "people". Having a large number of high-quality labor force has always been one of the important competitive advantages of China's manufacturing industry, but in recent years, many enterprises have appeared the situation of talent shortage. In general, a large number of employed people prefer to work in factories rather than in service industries. To solve this problem, in addition to carry out the education training and build the culture atmosphere of advocating industry, but also as much as possible to improve the efficiency of the manufacturing level and improve the level of labor remuneration, accordingly make manufacturing pay is significantly higher than the same condition of other industries, this is to attract high-quality talent into the real economy development and enhance the core competitiveness of manufacturing industry important condition.

Source: State-owned Assets And Administration Commission of The State Council