Nov. 13 (NBD) -- The new economy not only represents a general trend of the world, but points a way to China's future development.

Wu Jinxi, director of the Center of Strategic Emerging Industries, School of Social Sciences, Tsinghua University, made the above remarks in an exclusive interview with NBD.

He said that China's Shenzhen and Beijing stay at the forefront of the development of the new economy thanks to the strong atmosphere in terms of innovation and entrepreneurship. In addition to the two, a number of other Chinese cities present great development potentials for the new economy, and southwestern China's Chengdu is just one of them, he stated.

Data shows that the southwestern city has 24,396 tech firms and 31 potential unicorn companies, and that the city's new economy industries posted a growth rate of more than 10 percent last year.

At the New Economy Development Conference held last Thursday, Chengdu announced its strategic goals of creating a new economy industry system with global competitiveness and ability, aiming to drive regional development, increase the output value of new economy to more than 500 billion yuan (75.4 billion U.S. dollars), and squeeze into first-tier cities in terms of the new economy index by 2022.

The capital of Sichuan province will focus on the development of digital economy, smart economy, green economy, creative economy, flux economy, and sharing economy.

The six forms of new economy forms a new economy industry system with Chengdu's characteristics. As top priorities of Chengdu's current economic development, they are expected to become pillar industries and push the city's economic development to a new level, said Wu.

Moreover, transforming technologies and advantages into productivity requires the support of application scenarios.

Currently, the southwestern city is facilitating the development of the new economy by sharpening its abilities to serve the real economy, promoting smart city construction, boosting entrepreneurship relating to science and technology, enhancing coordination between human resources and capital, promoting consumption upgrade, pushing green, low-carbon development, and strenthening innovative applications of modern supply chain.

According to Wu, these scenarios will do a lot of good to the new economy, as the growth of the new economy relies largely on its combination with traditional industries, human resources structure, and consumption structure.

With regard to the combination with traditional industries, he took the Internet Plus as an example, saying that the Internet Plus promotes the intelligent and networked development of the real economy through the Internet, Internet of things, and cloud computing.

Meanwhile, he told NBD that without innovative consumption, there will be no innovative economy. For Chengdu, more work should be done to strengthen guide for consumption upgrade, he suggested.

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn