Innovation key to high-quality development: China Daily editorial

Innovation is at the heart of China's modernization drive. On the Global Innovation Index list published by the World Intellectual Property Organization, China ranked 12th this year. Ten years ago it ranked 35th.

As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has observed, "over the past 20 years, China has transformed from a technological backwater into an innovation powerhouse" as a result of financial, human and physical capital invested in key and emerging technologies.

For a long time the impression has persisted that China can only emulate and not truly innovate, but that is premised on the too-narrow view of innovation characterized by the rise of the personality-led US internet giants and their new-to-the-world products. But China's achievements in areas such as genomics, artificial intelligence and quantum computing show that it is successfully mobilizing the political will and societal and economic resources to boost the overall performance of China's innovation system.

Nor should it be ignored that China also has something that no other country has: a huge population that is used to rapid changes and "has developed an astonishing propensity for adopting and adapting to innovations", as an article in Harvard Business Review observed. This helped make the digital economy a major growth driver for the Chinese economy. The scale of China's digital economy reached 50.2 trillion yuan ($7.25 trillion) in 2022, accounting for 41.5 percent of its GDP, according to a report released in April by the Cyberspace Administration of China at the sixth Digital China Summit. It is expected to exceed 50 percent in 2025, as the government continues its efforts to "strengthen, optimize and expand" the digital economy to empower high-quality development.

As well as creating new industries, new forms of business and new business models, the digital economy is expected to enable the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries helping China's endeavor to peak its carbon emissions before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. In honoring this solemn promise to contribute to mankind's efforts to rein in the global rise in temperatures, China is also seeking to realize the harmonious coexistence of humans and nature, highlighting the building of an ecological civilization is one of the vital objectives of the country's modernization.

In emphasizing a development philosophy that is innovative, coordinated, green and open, China is promoting the building of a shared future for all life on Earth, which is an essential requirement for a sustainable future. China's leader has repeatedly urged the international community to enhance cooperation, build consensus and pool strength to ensure the green transition becomes a new journey of high-quality development for humanity that is within the limits of the ecology and environment.