What is "industrial hollowing out", thanks, my friend!

If divided by three industries, the general trend of the evolution of the world's industrial structure is: with the development of productive forces and technological progress, the development of tertiary industry gradually exceeded the primary and secondary industries, and eventually formed a tertiary industry as the main industrial structure. This trend of evolution is in line with the law. However, the ensuing problem is the emergence of the phenomenon of "hollowing out" of industries. The so-called "hollowing out of industries" means that the material production and capital centered on the manufacturing industry have been transferred abroad in large quantities and in a rapid manner, so that the status of material production in the national economy has declined markedly, resulting in a serious imbalance in the proportionality between domestic material production and non-material production. This is generally manifested in the following ways: (1) the proportion of the secondary industry, represented by the manufacturing industry, in the gross national product has declined sharply, while the proportion of the tertiary industry has risen rapidly, exceeding that of the secondary industry, and even becoming greater than the sum of the primary and secondary industries. Some people think that the proportion of the tertiary industry exceeds 60%, that is, the hollowing out of the industry; (2) the export of material products, especially industrial manufactured goods, is obviously reduced, and imports are gradually increasing and exceeding exports, so that there is a structure of supply and demand in which the domestic demand for material is dependent on external imports, resulting in a deterioration of the trade balance (mainly the trade balance of industrial products) or even a shift to a deficit. The United States in this regard is very typical.

There are two different views on the evaluation of this phenomenon. One view is that the tertiary industry dominates the industrial structure, which is the problem of softening of the industrial structure, and the softening of the industrial structure cannot be mixed up with the hollowing out of the industry. For a country, no matter how the proportion of primary and secondary industries declines, as long as it is based on the high development of science and technology and productivity and the formation of a virtuous circle among the three industries, it cannot be said that it is a hollowing out of industry. The reason is that the change in the proportionality of the three industries on this premise does not jeopardize the balance between the supply capacity and the demand capacity of a country's production. On the contrary, this structural evolution is purely a kind of progress, which marks the transition from the industrial society to the "post-industrial society" or the "information society", and is the inevitable result of social progress and the new technological revolution. The essence of industrial hollowing out is that it destroys the above-mentioned proportionality, resulting in an imbalance between supply and demand, which in turn manifests itself in an increasing dependence on foreign imports for domestic demand and a worsening of the trade deficit.

Another viewpoint disagrees with the above, arguing that:

(1) There is no such thing as a "post-industrial society". The transformation that the United States is now experiencing is not a transition from an "industrialized society" to a "service economy," but simply a transition to another kind of industrial society. In fact, the manufacturing sector in the United States, which was once regarded as a "sunset industry", has seen a new lease of life in recent years and has become an innovative sector in the United States. It is the recovery of the manufacturing sector that has helped the United States to avoid falling into a serious recession.

(2) The decline in the number of workers in the manufacturing sector is not a bad thing in itself, it may reflect technological progress and labor productivity. But this is only the positive side of the issue, along with the negative side. That is, the shrinking of the manufacturing sector means the weakening of the socio-economic base. And with the loss of an industrial base, it is impossible to have a thriving service-oriented society or to have technological progress. For technological progress, for the most part, comes about in highly developed production processes, not just in laboratories. The great growth of the service industry in the United States in the last twenty or thirty years was made possible precisely on the premise of the great growth of industry and agriculture before and during that period. If the manufacturing industry shrinks for a long time, "hollow" down, the service industry may be able to maintain a prosperous situation for a period of time, but ultimately to collapse. The United Kingdom is a lesson from the past. In the mid-19th century, the United Kingdom once relied on its status as the "world's factory" to create the highest level of economic development in history, and at the same time, it also became the world's financial center. But then, Britain's industrial capital to overseas investment, the early 20th century, Britain's overseas investment once more than the scale of domestic investment, resulting in Britain's domestic industrial production, from the end of the 19th century began to decline, the rate of technological progress slowed down markedly, and finally by the United States and Germany than from the "factory of the world," fell to the industrial products importer. In the half-century since then, although it still maintained its leading position in finance, it was later replaced by New York and then by Tokyo. The United States is today repeating the mistakes of the United Kingdom. If manufacturing keeps declining, the center of financial services will one day shift to Japan. In fact, as a world financial center, the U.S. can't catch up with Japan now.

So it can not be based on the service sector to establish a prosperous economy, there are other reasons: (1) the service sector, like the manufacturing industry, but also subject to the threat of foreign competition; (2) in general, the service sector, the increase in labor productivity is slower than the manufacturing industry, the average wage is lower than the manufacturing industry, so the manufacturing industry shrinking and the development of the service sector, the average wage level will tend to decline, thus affecting the economy and the standard of living The improvement of; (3) the great development of the U.S. service industry, and did not offset the huge balance of payments deficit due to the shrinkage of the manufacturing industry, and the future will not General Assembly. On the contrary, the accumulation of this deficit has made the United States the world's number one debtor nation, which has somewhat deprived the United States of its capital in the financial services industry; (4) the outflow of technology. With the transfer of production to foreign countries, some key technologies also fall into the hands of foreigners, and thus will lose the technological advantage.

(3) The wealth and power of the United States can only be maintained by organizing and controlling material production. Moving a lot of manufacturing out of the country is not a long-term strategy for winning. For while this may reduce some costs, it is unlikely to solve the problem of domestic productivity, and it will leave American manufacturers with no control over the products they cannot produce. A viable strategy is to revitalize the manufacturing sector, combining developed technology with skilled workers and innovative management, and using adjustments to the production structure, the use of high-tech, new equipment, etc., to reduce production costs and improve efficiency, resulting in a high-wage, high-productivity economy.

Of course, from the present point of view, the United States industry, "hollowing out", has not changed the entire industrial landscape of the United States, its manufacturing industry still has a relatively strong foundation in science and technology and certain industrial areas, the United States is still in a leading position. This shows that the hollowing out of industry is a long-term problem, which must go through the transformation process from quantitative change to qualitative change. Japan is now already moving towards industrial hollowing out, which is manifested by the massive outflow of capital, the expansion of some non-productive service industries, and the sluggishness of domestic material production and investment, only it has not yet reached a serious degree.

China has now entered the period of accelerated transformation of industrial structure, and the tertiary industry needs to accelerate the development speed as one of the key industries. Especially the transportation and communication industry which has long been the "bottleneck" of the national economy, the emerging finance, insurance, real estate, information and consulting industry as well as education and science and technology need to be developed vigorously so as to make the proportion of the tertiary industry to have an obvious increase, solve the problem of the tertiary industry's level of development being excessively lower than the proportion of the structure of the needs of the national economy relatively quickly, and better ensure the steady development of the primary industry, the expansion of the total volume and the improvement of the quality of the secondary industry. However, in the 1990s, the secondary industry will still maintain its dominant position in the overall industrial structure.

China's regions, the stage of economic development and the overall level of the differences are great, the development of tertiary industry as well as the adjustment of primary, secondary and tertiary industrial structure, but also need to be adapted to the local conditions: (1) large cities, mega-cities and developed areas, can be in the order of three, two, one order of the adjustment of the regional industrial structure; (2) development of the growth area, generally should be in the order of two, three, one order of the adjustment; (3) the backward area

The above changes in the spatial structure of the world economy have been analyzed in terms of four trends.

Economically, China is still a developing country. The developed regions of China generally still have a problem of re-industrialization, and large areas are waiting to be developed. Traditional industries, in particular basic industries and basic industries, still need to have a greater development. The scale of China's participation in the modern international division of labor is still small. In the light of these realities, it seems that the above trends will have little impact on China. In reality, however, it is impossible for China to remain outside the trend of the world's new technological revolution. Every major change in the world economy cannot but bring China such and such a big or small impact. In particular, China to expand the opening up to the outside world, a larger scale to participate in the international division of labor and exchange, there is a greater need to pay close attention to the trend of the world's new technological revolution, to master the world's economic spatial pattern of change trend, which is correctly formulated China's participation in the international division of labor strategies and tactics, the correct planning of the strategic layout of China, is of great significance.