The Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) focused on major national economic and social reforms, and provided a strong institutional guarantee for Chinese-style modernization in further deepening reforms in an all-round way. The factor market is the core link of the modern economic system, and the market-oriented reform of the factor factor is a key move to improve the socialist market economic system, and is an inherent requirement for building a unified market, which is conducive to enhancing the vitality of Chinese-style modernization.
The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to "build a unified national market, deepen the market-oriented reform of factors, and build a high-standard market system". On June 27, the meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee emphasized that the focus of further deepening reform in an all-round way is to build a high-level socialist market economic system. Deepening the market-oriented reform of factors is crucial to continuing to uphold and develop the socialist system with Chinese characteristics and promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.
Development: Accelerate the market-oriented reform of factors
Deepening the comprehensive reform of the market-oriented allocation of factors is an important part of upholding and improving the basic socialist economic system and speeding up the construction of a high-level socialist market economic system and a high-standard market system. The market system is a multi-level organic whole composed of commodity markets, service markets, and markets for land, labor, capital, technology, data, and other factors. The essence of the core task of economic structural reform is the selection and continuous improvement of the mode of resource allocation. Over the past 40 years since the reform and opening up, China's economic structural reform has been centered on the reform and improvement of the mode of allocation of resource factors.
A series of policy measures of the central government fully reflect the important role of market-oriented factor reform in promoting high-quality development and helping to realize Chinese-style modernization. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China clearly pointed out that the market plays a decisive role in the allocation of resources, and the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China made arrangements for market-oriented reforms. In April 2020, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Building a More Perfect System and Mechanism for Market-oriented Allocation of Factors", as the first central document on market-oriented allocation of factors, building the "four beams and eight pillars" of the reform of market-oriented allocation of factors in mainland China. In January 2022, the General Office of the State Council issued the Overall Plan for the Pilot Comprehensive Reform of Market-oriented Allocation of Factors, which regards the market-oriented allocation of factors as a comprehensive reform and promotes the in-depth development of reform. In April 2022, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Opinions on Accelerating the Construction of a National Unified Market", especially for the creation of a unified factor and resource market.
In the next step, "we should improve the rules of the basic market system, formulate guidelines for the construction of a unified national market, improve the basic social credit system, and strengthen anti-monopoly and anti-unfair competition." Wu Hao, Secretary-General of the National Development and Reform Commission, pointed out that it is necessary to deepen the market-oriented reform of factors, promote the rational allocation of factors, and guide high-end factors to the real economy. After more than 40 years of reform, the degree of marketization of mainland commodities has reached 98.5 percent. Positive progress has been made in the construction of factor markets, and factor markets such as land, labor, and capital have been transformed from scratch and from small to large.
Since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the "separation of three rights" of rural land has become the core issue of reform. The role of the market in the allocation of labor resources has gradually increased, the mobility of labor has been continuously improved, the human resource service industry has continued to develop, and the labor security system has been continuously improved. The reform of the financial regulatory system has been carried out in depth, and the Office of the Central Financial Commission, the State Administration of Financial Supervision and Administration, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission have been established to supervise the financial industry in a unified manner. The R&D expenditure of enterprises continued to increase, and the proportion of R&D expenditure of various enterprises increased year by year, realizing the successful transformation from plan-led R&D to market-led R&D. The market-oriented reform of data elements has promoted the rapid development of the digital economy.
The market-oriented reform of factors is an important combination of goal-oriented reform and problem-oriented reform. Market-oriented reform is the most important task in the reform of the economic system, and market-oriented reform of key factors is the key and difficult point in establishing a high-level socialist market economic system. Peng Sen, president of the China Society for the Study of Economic Reform, told this newspaper that to accelerate the development of new productive forces and promote Chinese-style modernization, it is necessary to comprehensively deepen reform, especially to deepen the reform of the economic system, which requires speeding up the process of marketization of land, labor, capital, technology, data, and other factors. Regardless of whether the reform task is determined from the problem-oriented or goal-oriented, the market-oriented allocation reform of land, labor, capital, technology, data and other factors is the most critical and basic task of the entire market-oriented reform.
The key: focus on making up for the shortcomings of reform
Over the past decade or so, positive progress has been made in the market-oriented reform of factors, but there is still a gap between it and the requirements of building a high-level socialist market economic system. The lag behind the market-oriented reform of factors is the shortcoming of the current reform of the market economic system. In order to solve the problems of insufficient market incentives, poor flow of factors, inefficient resource allocation, and weak vitality of microeconomic entities, it is necessary to make a major breakthrough in the market-oriented reform of factors.
"Various explicit and implicit market segmentation leads to low efficiency in resource allocation. There is a mismatch between the supply side and the demand side of some factor markets. Chen Yanbin, vice president of the Capital University of Economics and Business, said that taking the land market as an example, the supply of industrial land is mainly based on transfer, and enterprises on the demand side have to pay high land costs for one-time acquisition of land, which makes it difficult to meet their needs. There are quite differences in the degree of marketization of different factors on the mainland, and the contradictions and problems faced in promoting marketization are also different. Wang Yiming, former deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, pointed out that since the reform and opening up, the mainland has made positive progress in the reform of land, labor, capital and other factors, but it has not yet achieved full coverage of the market-oriented mechanism, and there is still a "dual-track system" to varying degrees. There are problems such as the rural migrant population being constrained by the household registration system and the unequal supply of public services, the main flow of financial resources to large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, the difficulty and high cost of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises, and the slow development of the mainland's technology and data factor market. It is necessary and urgent to focus on the stuck points and pain points that restrict the circulation of factor resources and maximize the supply potential and allocation efficiency of production factors.
As a new factor of production in the digital age, data is a high-quality factor of production that forms new quality productivity. However, the market-oriented allocation of scientific and technological data elements faces multiple challenges. Zhou Daishu, deputy secretary-general of the China Capital Market 50 Forum, told this newspaper that there is a lack of detailed rules for the open flow of data in the field of scientific and technological innovation, the market-oriented flow of data and the value distribution mechanism in the field of scientific and technological innovation are not clear, and the basic system is not perfect. The insufficient application of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence has led to the risk of "data exposure" in some links of the whole data flow chain. "We are accelerating the reform of the market-oriented allocation of data elements, specifically, by strengthening the construction of data infrastructure systems, including property rights, circulation and transactions, income distribution, etc., and establishing a good policy environment to promote the supply, flow, use and security of data." Liu Liehong, director of the National Data Bureau, told reporters.
In March this year, the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) issued the Provisions on Promoting and Regulating Cross-border Data Flows, setting out a "white list" that exempts cross-border data transfers in various scenarios from additional reporting or compliance procedures. For a period of time, many places have intensively introduced data element market policy measures. On May 16, the General Office of the Guangzhou Municipal People's Government issued the "Plan for the High-Quality Development of Guangzhou's Digital Economy", proposing to formulate a public data operation plan and promote the establishment of a digital technology group. Not long ago, the Tianjin Municipal Public Data Authorized Operation Pilot Work Group held a meeting to deliberate and determine the first batch of seven municipal-level public data authorized operation pilot construction units.
Future: Highlight the overall synergy of reform
To promote the market-oriented reform of factors, it is necessary to highlight the systematic, holistic and collaborative nature of the reform, promote the market-oriented reform measures of factors in various fields to cooperate and promote each other, and improve the efficiency of the combination and allocation of resources of different factors.
It is necessary to establish a high-standard market system, gradually solve the market segmentation of various factors, realize the free flow of factors in different sectors and regions, reduce the mismatch of supply of various factors, increase the frequency of transactions between market players, and stimulate economic vitality. Establish and improve mechanisms for adjusting laws, regulations, and policies that are compatible with the promotion of market-oriented reforms of factors such as land, labor, capital, technology, and data, coordinate the laws and regulations involved, and do a good job of connecting with the enactment, reform, abolition, and interpretation of relevant laws and regulations. The obstacle to the market-oriented reform of labor factors comes from the household registration system, which involves social security policies, which requires governments at all levels to provide supporting basic public services and strong financial support. The market-oriented reform of technological elements should respect the application and transformation of scientific research results. The market-oriented reform of data elements needs to clarify the boundaries of public data and personal privacy in law. Through the comprehensive authorization reform pilot, the local breakthrough can be used to drive the overall breakthrough. (Produced by the "Thought Workshop" of the social science newspaper, the full text can be found in the social science newspaper and its official website)