Efforts to Rectify "Involutionary Competition" to Boost High-Quality Development

This year’s government work report clearly proposes to "in-depth rectify ‘involutionary competition’", pointing out a clear path for business entities to shift from low-level internal friction to high-quality development. Insiders have emphasized the need to remove blockages in factor allocation, release market vitality, guide resources from inefficient consumption to high-value creation, and reshape a sound competitive ecology through systematic reforms.

It is noted that "involutionary competition" is essentially inefficient internal friction within the same dimension, model and resource pool, reflecting a phased difficulty of insufficient development momentum and narrow innovation paths. To solve this problem, the focus should be on high-quality development, shifting from competing for stock to creating increment.

Three key directions have been proposed to address the issue. Firstly, shift from traffic involution to technological innovation, reconstructing service chains with technologies such as artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things. Secondly, move from scale involution to quality improvement, shifting the focus of competition from market share to value share. Thirdly, transform from zero-sum game to ecological co-construction, where leading enterprises, together with relevant authorities, universities and small and medium-sized merchants, co-build and share infrastructure.

Practical actions are already being taken in the industry to practice these concepts. A leading enterprise in the service industry is currently building an industry-wide labor skill certification database and service credit system, which helps reduce the digital threshold for small and micro enterprises, encouraging enterprises to shift from competing for orders to jointly expanding the market "cake".

Rectifying "involutionary competition" requires joint efforts from multiple parties. At the policy level, it is necessary to strengthen standard guidance, provide precise fiscal and tax support for enterprises with R&D investment and standard upgrading, and accelerate the formulation of service standards and digital norms in segmented fields. This is in line with the direction of optimizing service consumption standards and strengthening policy guarantees for high-quality service development.

At the social level, it is important to enhance the recognition of professional services. Through vocational training, qualification certification and typical publicity, the professional pride of practitioners in consumer services can be improved, attracting high-quality talents to enter the industry and optimizing the industrial ecology from the supply side. This will help enrich service supply and better meet people’s diverse and high-quality service needs.

At the enterprise level, it is necessary to reshape the value "coordinate system", shifting the assessment focus from gross merchandise volume and user quantity to service satisfaction, repurchase rate, technology penetration rate and other indicators. This transformation will guide enterprises to focus more on quality improvement and value creation, avoiding the ineffective internal friction caused by homogeneous competition.

Insiders stressed that they will unswervingly solve problems through reform, empower development through innovation, fulfill their responsibilities in improving quality and efficiency, and inject lasting momentum into high-quality development. With joint efforts from all sectors, the rectification of "involutionary competition" will effectively optimize the market ecology, promote the healthy development of various industries, and lay a solid foundation for sustained economic progress.