Peking University, March 8, 2022: "To achieve high quality development, China must keep innovating and adjusting industrial and technological structures. During the process, we should fully leverage our comparative advantages," said Justin Yifu Lin, member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), during an online interview.
China has advantages in two fields, said Lin, also dean of Institute of New Structural Economics at Peking University.
China's per-capita GDP is approaching the threshold for being a high-income country. But it still has a long way to go before reaching the per-capita GDP of countries such as the U.S. and Germany, so China's relatively backward industries have latecomer's advantages when trying to catch developed countries and emerging opportunities for importing technologies and re-innovating, said Lin.
Such kind of innovation bears lower cost and risks, Lin added.
China is home to the most comprehensively-supported industries, so it has advantages in new economy. Over the past years, China has been leading the world in terms of the number of unicorn companies. So we should fully leverage the above two advantages in technology innovation, industrial upgrading and structural transformation.
