Measurement of China's New Quality Productive Forces and Comparative Analysis of Provincial Status
New quality productive forces is a new and important concept proposed by General Secretary Xi Jinping based on the forefront of world scientific and technological progress,focusing on high-quality development and the goal of building a great modem socialist country comprehensively.It is the latest content of Xi Jinping's economic thought and a major innovation and development of Marxist productive forces theory and economic development theory.Since the first proposal of the new quality productive forces during his inspection and research in Sichuan in July 2023,General Secre-tary Xi Jinping has repeatedly mentioned new quality productive forces at important occasions such as the Central Eco-nomic Work Conference held in December 2023,the 11th collective study of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee in January 2024,the National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held in March 2024,and the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee held in July 2024.He has systemati-cally discussed the connotation,characteristics,functions,formation,and development paths of new quality productive forces,pointing out the direction and paths for solidly promoting Chinese modernization and effectively achieving high-quality development in the new era.With the increasing importance of new quality productive forces,scientifically and ac-curately measuring the development level of China's new quality productive forces and comprehensively and systemati-cally analyzing its spatiotemporal evolution characteristics have strong theoretical and practical value.In this context,based on the connotation,extension,and basic characteristics of new quality productive forces,this article attempts to construct a more scientific and reasonable evaluation index system for new quality productive forces and then selects 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2009 to 2022 as research objects to measure the development of new quality productive forces at the provincial level in China.On this basis,to have a more comprehensive and accurate grasp of the development of China's new quality productive forces,the kernel density estimation and Markov transition probability matrix are used to examine the dynamic evolution characteristics of China's new quality productive forces;the Dagum Gini coefficient method is used to analyze the regional differences and internal structural characteristics of China's new quality productive forces;the σ and β convergence models are used to explore the convergence characteristics of China's new quality productive forces.The research results show that the overall index and sub-dimensional index of China's new quality productive forces have steadily increased,and exhibit a gradient distribution characteristic of"high in the east,flat in the middle,and low in the west".Active government and efficient market are important mechanisms for promoting the formation of new qual-ity productive forces.There is a significant positive correlation between the new quality productive forces index and real GDP,as well as per capita real GDP.The development of new quality productive forces has strong stability,and the probability of jumping from lower levels to higher levels is relatively low and difficult.The overall difference in the devel-opment of new quality productive forces among provincial-level regions shows a fluctuating upward trend,and the re-gional differences,especially the differences in the development of new quality productive forces between the eastern and western regions,and between the eastern and central regions,are the main source of regional differences in new quality productive forces.The new quality productive forces index does not exhibit σ convergence,but shows obviousβconver-gence characteristics,and the convergence speed is the fastest in the western region.Compared with existing literature,the possible contributions of this article are mainly reflected in the following two aspects.Firstly,at the theoretical level,this article takes the Marxist productivity theory and General Secretary Xi Jin-ping's important discourse on new quality productive forces as the theoretical basis,analyzes the"four elements"and"four characteristics"of new quality productive forces,which helps to more accurately understand and grasp the connota-tion,extension,and basic features of new quality productive forces,correct some research errors in understanding the concept of new quality productive forces.On this basis,it proposes a more scientific,reasonable,and data-accessible evaluation index system for new quality productive forces.Secondly,at the empirical level,based on a new evaluation in-dex system,this article empirically measures and comprehensively compares the development of new quality productive forces in different provincial-level regions of China.It not only examines the dynamic evolution,regional differences,con-vergence,and other characteristics of new quality productive forces but also explores the formation mechanisms of new quality productive forces from the perspectives of active government and efficient market,and explores the relationship between new quality productive forces and major economic growth indicators,which is an effective supplement to exist-ing quantitative research on new quality productive forces.
New Quality Productive ForcesEvaluation Index SystemDynamic EvolutionRegional DifferencesConvergence