Inflection point that will decide country's fate

Editor's note: The National Bureau of Statistics has disclosed parts of the results of its fourth national economic census, which show that the service sector has become the No 1 contributor to the economic growth and the job market. 21st Century Business Herald comments:

International experience shows that as the service sector accounts for an increasingly larger proportion of an economy, the overall economic growth speed often slows, which might deteriorate into a recession if industry does not become stronger as it downsizes, and the service sector does not pick up efficiency along with its expansion.

In other words, China has come to the crossroad where a country either becomes a developed one or falls into the so-called middle income trap.

The development of the education, training and science and technology research, which are important components of the service sector, directly influences the quality of the working population. But their significance is often ignored by policymakers, as they are invariably more money consuming, and less effective than consumption in boosting growth in the short term.

Yet the input in these, if well used, is the most worthwhile investment in the future, as it will help fill the gap between China's ambition to lead the next round of the technology revolution, and its actual manufacturing capacity to industrialize new technologies, and reduce its deficit in trade of services that largely comes from its purchase of know-how from overseas.

China should pay more attention to boosting its education, training and research sectors.

It urgently needs to reform the talent assessment mechanism in its institutes and universities, which has largely remained unchanged for decades, so that researchers can divert more attention from pursuing the number of theses published each year to seeking breakthroughs in their fields.

The current system makes the chief editors of academic journals powerful tune setters and the prey of bribers, as their personal preferences directly decide the performance of researchers.

The country must also further strengthen its intellectual property rights protection so as to stimulate the enterprises' enthusiasm to cultivate their own research talent pools, which remains the short slab for most Chinese companies.