The Path of New-Type Industrialization with Chinese Characteristics

Adhere to using informatization to drive industrialization and industrialization to promote informatization, creating a new path of industrialization with high technological content, good economic benefits, low resource consumption, less environmental pollution, and full use of human resources. This was put forward by the 16th CPC National Congress in 2002 in accordance with our national conditions on the basis of summing up the experience of our country’s industrial development and industrialization. Industrialization is a natural historical process from agricultural economy to industrial economy, and there are general regularities. But in different systems, there can be different development paths and models at different stages of industrialization. The term of new industrialization is relative to but different from traditional industrialization.

Traditional industrialization refers to the process of economic development in which the dominant position in an economic structure of a country or region is transformed from agriculture to industry. New industrialization superimposes the development of informatization and modern science and technology in this transformation process. The traditional industrialization process goes at the cost of sacrificing resources and the environment but new industrialization focuses on sustainable economic development. Traditional industrialization emphasizes that developing countries should learn from the previous experience of advancing industrialization in developed countries, but new industrialization emphasizes integrating the laws of industrialization with their own natural and institutional conditions. Traditional industrialization emphasizes the expansion of the number of industries in the process of industrialization, but new industrialization emphasizes the improvement of industrial quality by relying on modern science and technology in the process of industrialization. The emphasis on exploring the road to industrialization that suits our country’s national conditions is not just made. As early as 1957, Mao Zedong used “The Road to China's Industrialization” as the title of the twelfth question in his article “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions among the People”, stating, “The problems of the road to industrialization mentioned here are mainly the relationship between the development of heavy industry, light industry and agriculture. Our country’s economic construction is centered on heavy industry, which must be affirmed. But at the same time, full attention must be paid to the development of agriculture and light industry.” Practice has proved that as a large agricultural country, our country’s core issue of industrialization is how to deal with the relationship between agricultural, light, and heavy industries.

The new industrialization road reflects the characteristics of the times and conforms to our country's national conditions under new historical conditions. Its main features include: driven by informatization, driven by scientific and technological progress, centered on improving economic efficiency and competitiveness, combined with the implementation of sustainable development strategies, and giving full play to the advantages of our country's human resources. The new industrialization path is also the main engine for the healthy development of our country’s urbanization and the main way to expand employment in our country’s urban and rural areas.