Against global industrial restructuring and fiercer tech competition, strategic emerging industries (SEIs) serve as China's core engine to develop new-quality productive forces, overcome high-end tech bottlenecks, and advance high-quality growth. Drawing on New Structural Economics, this paper analyzes the evolutionary logic, effects, and optimization paths of China's SEI industrial policies. We find that the effective industrial policies for SEIs should follow the dynamic change of factor endowment structure and adapt to local conditions and time conditions as the key bottlenecks for industrial upgrading change. The study also shows that for industries tied to national defense and economic security, industrial policies should seek a reasonable balance between efficiency and security. Finally, we propose that China's industrial policies for SEIs should shift from extensive subsidy-oriented intervention to precise, market-oriented, and efficiency-driven governance, supporting sustainable high-quality SEI growth and national industrial transformation.
This study examines the long-term evolution of the returns to higher education and work experience in China during a period of profound economic and institutional transformation. Using multiple nationally based household surveys spanning 1992-2021, we investigate how market reforms, higher education expansion, and structural upgrading have affected the market value of human capital. We find that higher education continues to generate substantial earnings premiums. However, the return to university education increased continuously over the sample period, while the return to 3-year college education plateaued after the late 2000s, resulting in a widening earnings gap. Graduates of elite universities earn significantly higher returns than graduates of other institutions. The returns to work experience exhibit substantial heterogeneity across career stages and education groups, suggesting that formal schooling and on-the-job learning have become increasingly complementary as production has shifted toward more technology- and skill-intensive activities.
