"New infrastructure" and traditional infrastructure need to work together

Infrastructure investment is an important starting point for stable growth and energy rotation

Infrastructure is the cornerstone of national economic and social development. Infrastructure investment is one of the main driving forces to promote sustained economic growth, and it is also a "booster" and "ballast stone" to promote economic recovery and stabilize economic and social operation order after a major crisis. Looking back on China's development history, whether it was actively responding to natural disasters and the Asian financial crisis in 1998, or responding to the international financial crisis in 2008, increasing infrastructure investment was an important means to stimulate the economy and had a lasting impact. Since the beginning of this year, the COVID-19 epidemic has had a major impact on China's economic and social development. Under such circumstances, we should consider increasing investment in infrastructure as an important starting point to stabilize the economic order and smooth the domestic economic cycle.

Unlike the previous approach of promoting investment and stabilizing growth through traditional infrastructure, this round of infrastructure investment should emphasize both traditional infrastructure and "new infrastructure", and be driven by two engines. We must not only give full play to the important role of "new infrastructure" in maintaining growth, rotating capacity, adjusting structure, and cultivating advantages, but also consolidate and enhance the basic capacity of traditional infrastructure, comprehensively improve the overall quality and efficiency of infrastructure, stimulate the market, stabilize growth, and find a new way to effectively respond to shocks and achieve a virtuous cycle.

New infrastructure is an infrastructure system that is innovation-driven and based on information networks, optimizes the organization and allocation of resource elements, carries new economic and social supply and demand, and supports services such as digital transformation, intelligent upgrading, and integration and innovation, including information infrastructure, integration infrastructure, and innovation infrastructure. Traditional infrastructure mainly refers to railway, road, airport, port, pipeline, communication, power grid, water conservancy, municipal, logistics and other infrastructure. In fact, new infrastructure and traditional infrastructure is a relative concept, relative to the previous stage of scientific and technological or industrial development, the new infrastructure of "new seeds and new seedlings" or the traditional infrastructure of "old trees and new sprouts" should belong to the category of new infrastructure.

With the acceleration of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, the connotation and boundary of infrastructure will also be reformed and expanded. 5G, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and other new generation of communication technologies will not only give birth to the industrial Internet, the Internet of things, data centers and other new infrastructure, but also greatly change the energy, transportation and people's way of production and life, reshape the spatial and temporal pattern of industrial division of labor, and promote the upgrading of traditional infrastructure. We will promote the rapid development of new infrastructure, such as green energy, smart roads, and smart railways, which "grow new buds from old trees."

"New infrastructure" and traditional infrastructure need to work together

Our emphasis on accelerating "new infrastructure" does not mean that we should weaken traditional infrastructure, but should base on the current needs of coordinating epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development, focus on promoting high-quality economic development, and integrate "new infrastructure" and traditional infrastructure, so that "new infrastructure" and traditional infrastructure can work together.

On the one hand, to cope with the impact of the epidemic and promote economic recovery, "new infrastructure" and traditional infrastructure need to work together.

Realistically, in the process of coordinating epidemic prevention and control and economic and social development, it is very important to strengthen investment in traditional infrastructure projects related to poverty alleviation, transportation and energy, major water conservancy, agriculture and rural areas, ecological environmental protection, municipal facilities, social livelihood, and the renovation of old urban communities. Affected by the epidemic, the number of traditional infrastructure projects that have been suspended is large, the investment scale is large, and the number of people involved is large. Promoting the resumption of traditional infrastructure projects as soon as possible will help stabilize economic and social order, stabilize employment and ensure people's livelihood. It should also be noted that in the context of the normalization of epidemic prevention and control, continuous efforts to promote the investment and construction of major traditional infrastructure projects that have been clearly defined in the national plan will help strengthen weak links, strong and weak areas, promote growth, give full play to the key role of effective investment, and accelerate the accumulation of economic growth momentum.