Crack down on bad competition and maintain the market environment

The Central Economic Work Conference proposed a comprehensive rectification of "internal" competition and standardizing the behavior of local governments and enterprises. This is following the meeting of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee held on July 30 this year pointed out that "to strengthen industry self-discipline, to prevent 'internal volume' vicious competition," the central Committee once again made clear requirements. From "prevention" to "comprehensive rectification", from emphasizing "industry self-discipline" to "regulating the behavior of local governments and enterprises", the attitude against "internal volume" competition is clearer, and the object of regulation is clearer.
In essence, competition is a strength contest between micro-management subjects with innovation, creation and technological progress. In the author's opinion, the "internal volume" competition is the micro-management subject through malicious reduction of commodity prices, try to reduce the price of production factors, in direct or disguised price war, to compete for market space, such a practice has no substantive significance for promoting technological progress. Therefore, "internal" competition deviates from the real meaning of competition.
Further, the competition mechanism is an important mechanism of market regulation and a concrete embodiment of the law of value. In the socialist market economy, competition is indispensable. The purpose of competition is to optimize the allocation of resources and create new market space. However, "internal volume" competition is a "zero-sum game" around a specific market space, which not only misallocates resources but also may lead to a serious waste of resources, and is not conducive to technological progress and efficiency improvement. If the market competition mechanism is the competitive advantage mechanism of regulating industrial development, then the "internal volume" competition is a competitive disadvantage mechanism in the opposite direction.
Since the beginning of this year, all parts of the country have accelerated the development of new quality productive forces and achieved notable results. Data show that from January to November, the added value of high-tech manufacturing industries above designated size grew by 9% year-on-year, significantly faster than the growth of industries above designated size. Investment in high-tech industries grew by 8.8%, significantly faster than overall investment. However, it should be seen that there are also individual emerging industries that have "internal volume" competition. For example, some enterprises lack the strength, but based on the pursuit of "policy dividends", they continue to seize resources and land in emerging industries and future industries. For example, some local governments in the process of attracting investment, away from the local industrial base and resource endowment, blindly stare at the "new concept", which is easy to cause duplication of construction and waste of funds and other problems.
The requirements of the Central Economic Work Conference are very clear, that is, we should not allow "internal" competition to become a destructive factor affecting scientific and technological innovation and hindering the development of new quality productivity. Practice has proved that the key to accelerating the formation of new quality productivity is to rely on scientific and technological innovation. To this end, the comprehensive rectification may wish to start from two aspects: First, we can study and launch the list of scientific and technological innovation breakthroughs, support relevant enterprises to target, increase investment in scientific and technological research and development, and guide them to form product innovation and organizational innovation with scientific and technological innovation, so as to open up a broad market; Second, we should standardize the behavior of local governments to attract investment, resolutely break the local protection, and do enough to accelerate the construction of a unified national market, so as to create a good environment for the development of new quality productive forces.