Creating a Favorable Policy Environment for Developing New Quality Productive Forces

In the complex situation of facing external environmental uncertainties and internal structural reforms, the 2024 Central Economic Work Conference[1]1 The Central Economic Work Conference is an annual high-level meeting convened by the Communist Party of China to set the economic policy priorities for the following year. The 2024 meeting was held in December 2024. made a comprehensive policy deployment for the economic work in 2025. The meeting emphasized adhering to the general tone of seeking progress while maintaining stability, implementing more proactive and effective macro policies, promoting industrial transformation and upgrading through technological innovation, and focusing on developing new quality productive forces. This move is not only a short-term growth stabilization measure to cope with fluctuations but also an important direction for consolidating the long-term development foundation and cultivating high-quality growth momentum.

在面临外部环境不确定性和内部结构性改革的复杂形势下，2024年中央经济工作会议为做好2025年经济工作作出了全面政策部署。会议强调，在坚持稳中求进总基调的同时，实施更加积极有为的宏观政策，并以科技创新推动产业转型升级，着力发展新质生产力。此举不仅是应对短期波动的稳增长之策，更是巩固长期发展根基、培育高质量增长动能的重要方向。

The connotation of new quality productive forces lies in reshaping industrial value chains and resource allocation structures through digitalization, greening, and intelligent means, accelerating the iteration and upgrading of traditional industries, and giving rise to new industries, new models, and new technologies. In this process, fiscal policy and monetary policy, as the two core tools of macroeconomic regulation, need to achieve synergistic linkage at a higher level—fiscal policy focuses on enhancing basic support capacity and resource allocation efficiency, while monetary policy focuses on optimizing the financial ecosystem and financing environment—to provide a more stable institutional environment and capital nourishment for industrial transformation. Under the effect of the policy "combined punch," new quality productive forces are expected to become the core driving force for achieving a new leap in China's economy.

新质生产力的内涵在于通过数字化、绿色化、智能化手段，重塑产业价值链条与资源配置结构，加快传统产业迭代升级，催生新产业、新模式和新技术。在这一过程中，财政政策与货币政策作为宏观调控的两大核心工具，需要在更高层次上实现协同联动——财政政策侧重增强基础支撑能力与资源配置效率，货币政策侧重优化金融生态与融资环境——为产业转型提供更为稳健的制度环境和资本养分。在政策“组合拳”作用下，新质生产力有望成为实现我国经济新的跃升的核心驱动力。

Injecting Impetus into New Quality Productive Forces with More Proactive Fiscal Policy

以更加积极的财政政策为新质生产力注入动力

At the current stage, fiscal policy must not only achieve counter-cyclical regulation but also grasp structural optimization issues. By increasing fiscal expenditure, optimizing the allocation structure, and improving fund utilization efficiency, it can provide long-term and strong policy support for developing new quality productive forces. This Central Economic Work Conference explicitly proposed increasing the fiscal deficit ratio, issuing additional special government bonds[2]2 Special government bonds and local government special bonds are debt instruments issued by the Chinese central government and local governments respectively, earmarked for specific projects such as infrastructure and public services, to stimulate investment without counting toward the official deficit in the same way as general bonds., expanding the scale and investment scope of local government special bonds[2]2 Special government bonds and local government special bonds are debt instruments issued by the Chinese central government and local governments respectively, earmarked for specific projects such as infrastructure and public services, to stimulate investment without counting toward the official deficit in the same way as general bonds., and emphasizing the need to revitalize existing stock and improve the increment. This series of measures will gather resources and inject vitality into the development of strategic industries, breakthroughs in key core technologies, and improvements in weak links of the industrial chain.

财政政策在当前阶段不仅要实现逆周期调节，更需把握结构性优化问题。通过加大财政支出力度、优化投向结构、提升资金使用效率，可以为发展新质生产力提供长期而有力的政策支持。本次中央经济工作会议明确提出提高财政赤字率、增加发行特别国债、加大地方政府专项债券使用规模和投向范围，并强调要盘活存量、做优增量。这一系列举措将为战略性产业发展、关键核心技术攻关和产业链薄弱环节改善等聚合资源、注入活力。

First, increase fiscal support for technological innovation and basic research to solidify the foundation for developing new quality productive forces. Key technologies, core components, and basic software areas have always been weak links in China's industrial chain upgrading. Through precise allocation of special funds, guiding funds, and within-budget investment, building a more complete scientific research ecosystem, and supporting enterprises, universities, and research institutions to form innovation synergy, it will help accelerate breakthroughs in "bottleneck" technologies[3]3 "Bottleneck" (卡脖子) is a Chinese idiom referring to key technologies or components that are controlled by foreign entities, restricting China's industrial development and requiring domestic breakthroughs.. In this way, the source innovation of new quality productive forces will continue to emerge, laying a solid foundation for industrial structure optimization.

第一，加大对科技创新和基础研究的财政支持力度，为发展新质生产力夯实底座。关键技术、核心零部件和基础软件领域一直是我国产业链升级的薄弱环节。通过专项基金、引导资金和预算内投资的精准配置，构建更完善的科研生态体系，支持企业、高校和科研机构形成创新合力，有助于加快突破“卡脖子”环节。这样，新质生产力的源头创新将不断涌现，为产业结构优化奠定坚实基础。

Second, provide more targeted incentives for industrial digitalization and greening transformation. Combining local government special bonds with "Two Major"[4]4 "Two Major" (两重) refers to major national strategies and major infrastructure projects; "Two New" (两新) refers to new types of infrastructure and new urbanization initiatives. These are policy shorthand used in China's economic planning. projects and "Two New"[4]4 "Two Major" (两重) refers to major national strategies and major infrastructure projects; "Two New" (两新) refers to new types of infrastructure and new urbanization initiatives. These are policy shorthand used in China's economic planning. policies can promote the construction of major infrastructure, the cultivation of industrial clusters, and the building of public service platforms, creating conditions for the formation of emerging industrial ecosystems. At the same time, through fiscal tools to broaden the scope of project capital use, sufficient construction funds are provided for data centers, intelligent manufacturing industrial parks, green energy bases, etc., thereby reducing the upfront investment costs of enterprises and clearing obstacles for developing new quality productive forces.

第二，更有针对性地激励产业数字化、绿色化转型。将地方政府专项债与“两重”项目、“两新”政策相结合，可推动重大基础设施建设、产业集群培育和公共服务平台搭建，为新兴产业生态圈的形成创造条件。同时，通过财政工具拓宽项目资本金使用范围，为数据中心、智能制造产业园、绿色能源基地等提供充足建设资金，从而降低企业前期投入成本，为发展新质生产力扫清障碍。

Third, in the process of optimizing expenditure structure and implementing policies to benefit people's livelihoods, leverage the guiding effect of fiscal resources on domestic demand expansion and consumption upgrading. Appropriately raising the pension levels of urban and rural residents, medical security, and the income levels of low- and middle-income groups will release consumption potential and create broad market demand for innovative products and services. The development of new quality productive forces requires not only technology and capital drive but also stable and strong market pull. This requires strengthening fiscal policy design around ensuring people's livelihoods and promoting consumption upgrading, helping to build a virtuous cycle of smooth two-way supply and demand, and accelerating the transformation of innovation achievements into actual productive forces.

第三，在优化支出结构、落实惠民生政策的过程中，发挥财政资源对内需扩张和消费升级的引导效应。适度提高城乡居民养老金、医疗保障和中低收入群体收入水平，将带动消费潜能释放，形成对创新产品和服务的广泛市场需求。新质生产力的发展不仅需要技术和资本驱动，更需稳定而强劲的市场拉动。这就需要围绕保障民生、促进消费升级加强财政政策设计，助力构建供需双向畅通的良性循环，加快创新成果向现实生产力转化。

Injecting Vitality into New Quality Productive Forces with Moderately Loose Monetary Policy

以适度宽松的货币政策为新质生产力增添活力

After years of development, the monetary policy tools of the People's Bank of China have become increasingly rich and mature. While conducting aggregate regulation of the economy, it pays more attention to structural optimization and efficient resource allocation. In this context, moderately loose does not mean aimless "flooding" but rather, by leveraging both the aggregate and structural functions of monetary policy tools, providing a stable financing environment and reasonable capital costs for China's development of new quality productive forces.

经过多年的发展，中国人民银行的货币政策工具日益丰富成熟，在对经济进行总量调节的同时，更关注结构优化和资源高效配置。在这一背景下，适度宽松并不意味着没有目的地“放水”，而是通过发挥货币政策工具的总量与结构双重功能，为我国发展新质生产力提供稳定的融资环境和合理的资金成本。

On the one hand, the central bank timely and appropriately uses tools such as reserve requirement ratio reductions and interest rate cuts[5]5 Reserve requirement ratio reduction (降准) and interest rate cuts (降息) are conventional monetary policy tools. The former lowers the fraction of deposits banks must hold as reserves, increasing lending capacity; the latter reduces benchmark lending and deposit rates to lower borrowing costs. to maintain reasonable and ample liquidity, ensuring that the monetary growth rate matches economic growth and price level targets. This measure enables financial institutions to have stronger willingness and ability to extend credit, providing medium- and long-term, low-cost financial support to innovative enterprises, high-tech industries, and green projects. The stable supply of financial resources helps enterprises increase R&D investment, rapidly expand production capacity, shorten the commercialization process of new technologies, and promote the large-scale implementation of innovation achievements.

一方面，中央银行及时适度地运用降准、降息等工具，有利于保持流动性合理充裕，使货币增速与经济增长和价格水平目标相匹配。这一举措可使金融机构具备更强的信贷投放意愿和能力，为创新型企业、高技术产业、绿色项目提供中长期、低成本资金支持。金融资源的稳定供给有助于企业加大研发投入，快速扩大产能，缩短新技术商业化进程，促进创新成果的规模化落地。

On the other hand, the central bank further strengthens the structural guiding capacity of monetary policy. In traditional credit markets, financing for high-end manufacturing, green economy, digital industry, and other fields still faces problems such as information asymmetry and insufficient collateral. Through "precise drip irrigation" tools such as policy bank relending[6]6 Relending (再贷款) and rediscounting (再贴现) are structural monetary policy tools used by China's central bank to provide targeted low-cost funding to financial institutions, often for specific sectors such as agriculture, small businesses, or green projects., rediscounting[6]6 Relending (再贷款) and rediscounting (再贴现) are structural monetary policy tools used by China's central bank to provide targeted low-cost funding to financial institutions, often for specific sectors such as agriculture, small businesses, or green projects., and industrial special loan quotas, financial "living water" can directly reach innovation entities. Particularly for specialized and sophisticated enterprises that produce new and unique products[7]7 "Specialized, sophisticated, unique, and new" (专精特新) is a Chinese classification for small and medium-sized enterprises that focus on niche markets, possess advanced technologies, and produce high-quality, innovative products, often supported by government policies. in key industrial chain links with high growth potential, risk weights can be appropriately reduced and credit enhancement mechanisms innovated, so that truly capable and potential innovative enterprises receive relatively stable financial support, ensuring that these enterprises have the basic conditions for medium- and long-term development in their early growth stages.

另一方面，中央银行进一步强化货币政策的结构性引导能力。在传统信贷市场中，高端制造业、绿色经济、数字产业等领域的融资依然面临信息不对称和抵押不足等难题。通过政策性银行再贷款、再贴现、产业专项贷款额度等“精准滴灌”工具，可使金融“活水”直达创新主体。特别是对于关键产业链环节、成长潜力大的专精特新企业，可适度降低风险权重、创新信用增进机制，从而使真正有实力、有潜力的创新型企业获得相对稳定的金融支持，确保这类企业在成长初期就具备面向中长期发展的基础条件。

At the same time, China is actively exploring the expansion of the central bank's macroprudential management and financial stability functions. Starting from regulating capital flows and preventing excessive leverage and inappropriate speculation, it ensures that newly added money flows more to the real economic innovation fields rather than settling in some inefficient projects. By introducing more precise risk monitoring and prudent management in the implementation of monetary policy, improving resource allocation efficiency, avoiding large in-and-out flows of funds or short-term speculation, and ensuring that the financial environment for developing new quality productive forces is more stable and sustainable.

同时，我国正在积极探索拓展中央银行宏观审慎管理与金融稳定功能。从规范资金流向、防范过度杠杆和不当投机入手，确保新增货币更多流向实体经济创新领域，而非在一些低效项目中沉淀。通过在货币政策执行中引入更加精准的风险监控与审慎管理，提高资源配置效率，避免资金大进大出或短期炒作，保证发展新质生产力的金融环境更为稳健与可持续。

Macro Policy Synergy to Build Fertile Soil for the Growth of New Quality Productive Forces

宏观政策协同构建新质生产力成长沃土

Fiscal policy and monetary policy cannot act independently; they should complement each other and work in synergy. Facing problems such as weak foundations, broken points in the industrial chain, and imperfect market structure in the process of developing new quality productive forces, their effective connection is crucial.

财政政策与货币政策不能各自为战，而应相互补位、协同发力。面对新质生产力发展过程中出现的基础薄弱、产业链断点、市场结构不完善等问题，二者的有效衔接至关重要。

In terms of timing, the forward-looking layout of fiscal expenditure can build infrastructure, public platforms, and industrial alliance networks for industrial innovation, laying a solid foundation for emerging industrial chains. After innovation entities receive fiscal support in the stages of technological breakthroughs, equipment introduction, and initial market verification, monetary policy can provide sustained credit support and financing convenience in the stages of industrial chain extension, capacity expansion, and market-oriented promotion, promoting the stable development of enterprises throughout the full lifecycle from "start-up, growth, to maturity." In this process, fiscal policy and monetary policy form a two-wheel-driven, back-and-forth policy framework, making the evolution path of new quality productive forces smoother.

在时间安排上，财政支出的前瞻性布局可为产业创新构筑基础设施、公共平台及产业联盟网络，为新兴产业链条打下扎实根基。当创新主体在技术攻关、装备引进和初步市场验证阶段获得财政支持后，货币政策可在产业链延伸、产能扩张、市场化推广阶段予以持续信贷支持和融资便利，推动企业从“初创—成长—成熟”全生命周期实现稳健发展。在这一过程中，财政政策与货币政策形成双轮驱动、前后呼应的政策框架，使新质生产力的演进路径更加平滑顺畅。

In terms of policy tool allocation, fiscal policy creates external conditions for accelerating technological and industrial innovation through public investment, special funds, tax and fee reductions, etc.; monetary policy provides necessary financial "living water" for industrial upgrading through reasonably guiding market interest rates, broadening multi-level capital market financing channels, and innovating credit enhancement models. When fiscal investment in basic research, public technology service platforms, and industrial supporting facilities gradually forms spillover effects, more innovative enterprises will gain a foothold in the market, thereby attracting commercial banks, venture capital institutions, and other social capital to actively participate. This virtuous cycle of combined fiscal and monetary policy can greatly improve overall resource allocation efficiency.

在政策工具配置上，财政政策通过公共投资、专项资金和税费减免等措施，为加快科技和产业创新营造外部条件；货币政策则通过合理引导市场利率水平、拓宽多层次资本市场融资渠道、创新信用增进模式等手段，为产业升级提供必要的金融“活水”。当财政政策对基础研究、公共技术服务平台、产业配套设施的投入逐步形成溢出效应时，将有更多创新型企业在市场中站稳脚跟，进而吸引商业银行、创投机构和其他社会资本积极参与。这种财政政策与货币政策合力叠加的良性循环，可大幅提升整体资源配置效率。

In terms of urban-rural integration and regional coordination, the synergy of fiscal and monetary policies can also play a positive role. Under the guidance of fiscal policy, key industrial clusters and national innovation platforms are orderly laid out; monetary policy provides incentives for local financial institutions to support them in improving credit service capabilities for county economies, small and medium-sized enterprises, and upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain. In the process of vigorously promoting urban-rural integration and coordinated regional development, the diffusion effect of new quality productive forces runs through the horizontal and vertical dimensions of economic development, helping China fully enjoy the spillover dividend of innovation-driven development.

在城乡融合和区域协调方面，财政政策与货币政策的协同也能发挥积极作用。在财政政策的引导下，重点产业集群和国家级创新平台有序布局；货币政策则为地方金融机构提供激励，支持其面向县域经济、中小企业和产业链上下游企业提升信贷服务能力。在大力推动城乡融合和区域协调发展的过程中，使新质生产力的扩散效应贯穿于经济发展的横纵维度，有助于我国充分享受创新驱动发展的溢出红利。

At present, China is in a critical period of transforming its development model, optimizing its economic structure, and switching its growth drivers. New quality productive forces are the long-term engine for promoting industrial chain upgrading and driving stable economic growth. Organically connecting fiscal policy with monetary policy can create an institutional soil for the benign growth of new quality productive forces, realizing a virtuous interactive cycle of domestic demand expansion and supply innovation. In addition, developing new quality productive forces will also promote employment and the improvement of people's livelihoods. Innovation-driven industrial upgrading helps enhance workers' skills and income levels, thereby driving up consumer demand and creating sustained growth space for high-end products and green consumption. Macro policies act as a "catalyst" in this process, optimizing policy design and implementation mechanisms to help achieve a benign interaction between industrial upgrading and consumption upgrading.

当前，我国正处于转变发展方式、优化经济结构和转换增长动力的关键期。新质生产力是推动产业链升级、促进经济稳健增长的长期引擎。将财政政策与货币政策有机衔接，可以为新质生产力构筑良性成长的制度性土壤，实现内需扩张与供给创新的互动循环。此外，发展新质生产力还将促进就业与民生改善。创新驱动的产业升级有助于提升劳动者技能与收入水平，从而带动消费需求升级，为高端产品与绿色消费创造持续增长空间。宏观政策在其中作为“催化剂”，通过优化政策设计和实施机制，助力实现产业升级与消费升级的良性互动。

Looking ahead, as the synergistic effect of fiscal and monetary policies continues to strengthen and new quality productive forces flourish, China's economy will achieve high-quality development from a higher starting point. New technological changes will fundamentally improve total factor productivity, continuously spawning new industrial communities and new business models; the emergence and cultivation of innovative talents, along with the introduction and cooperation of international innovation resources, will further expand the depth and breadth of industrial development. In this process, the coordinated deployment and forward-looking layout of macro policies can not only ensure the development direction and speed of new quality productive forces but also provide strong impetus for China to effectively mitigate external shocks and enhance internal stability.

展望未来，随着财政政策与货币政策协同效应的不断增强和新质生产力的蓬勃发展，中国经济将在更高起点上实现高质量发展。新技术变革将从源头上提升全要素生产率，持续催生新产业群落与新商业模式；创新人才的涌现与培养、国际创新资源的引入与合作，将进一步拓展产业发展的纵深和广度。在这一进程中，宏观政策的协调配合与前瞻布局，既可保障新质生产力的发展方向与速度，也可为我国有效化解外部冲击、提高内生稳定性提供强劲动力。

(The author is Vice Dean and Professor of the School of Finance, Renmin University of China)

（作者系中国人民大学财政金融学院副院长、教授）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧