In an article captioned 'China’s New Economy: The First Twenty Years and The Second'
by Eric X. Li, Chinese venture capitalist and acolyte of Chinese President Xi Jinping, in June
2022, he said China's new economy is going through a critical transition period. In the past two
years, as VCs, our perception of industries, companies, technologies, and investment logic has
undergone a dramatic shift. Dividing China's new economy into "the first two decades" and
"the second two decades", he said the most crucial result of China's new economy in the first
two decades between 2000-2019 was the rise of consumer internet platforms which, with
continued capital expansion eventually achieve monopoly status. Describing this as the model
of consumer Internet platforms, he said China has 'given birth to some world-class Internet
giants in China'. Quoting a foreign think-tank scholar he said, however, that while there has
been an increase in scale between 2000 to 2019, China's industry has stuck in the middle. The
added value is relatively low. He assessed that in 'the first two decades of China's new economy'
'there wasn’t a lot of technology in it'. 'Therefore, the Communist Party of China Central
Committee proposed "high-quality development" and "common prosperity" to promote healthy
economic development, optimize the distribution of income, create opportunities for more
people to get rich, and avoid 内卷 "involution" and 躺平 "lying flat"”. Calling this a 'significant
turnaround in China's new economy', he added that under the leadership of the national strategy,
China's economy will be able to transform from large-scale development to high-quality
development through capital-driven industrial upgrading. This should see the transformation
and optimization of the supply chain, import substitution of hard technologies, for example,
chips (China imported $350 billion chips in 2020, more than double the value of crude oil) and
sustainable development and carbon neutrality. Stating that 'China's infrastructure mania means
it needs a lot of cement', Eric Lee said 'Cement production is a significant carbon emitter
because of calcined limestone, which accounts for about 20% of the total national emission' so the State Council strictly limits the cement production capacity. However, he said, this
geopolymer material of 百奥恒 does not use limestone in the production process and does not
need to be calcined, so the carbon emission is minimal, only 30% of that of traditional cement
production. Referring to Xi Jinping's speech on The Correct Understanding of Major
Theoretical and Practical Problems of China’s Development published in the magazine
Qiushi/Seeking Truth last month, he identified Common prosperity and Xi Jinping's discussion
of capital as the key points. In China, however, he said capital must grasp two principles: first,
closely combine its return on investment with national interests and actively play its function
as a factor of production; second, it must not pursue its interests in a way that runs counter to
the long-term interests of the country and the well-being of the people
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