In recent years, with the weakness of the new economy in the United States, academic circles have also complained a lot about high-tech industries. Some scholars believe that high-tech industry has not fundamentally changed our mode of production and economic activities. Some scholars even put forward the extreme view that "potato chips or chips can make money is a good chip", and advocated that China should vigorously develop labor-intensive industries according to the theory of comparative advantage. So, what is the truth? Where will the future high-tech industry develop? Here, we might as well put forward some basic judgments on this issue from the perspective of the change of technology-economy paradigm.

From the background, the high-tech industry represented by information technology is becoming a new leading industrial group, and this basic trend has not changed. Since 1980s, the world economy has been in the process of transforming to a new technological economic paradigm, and information and communication technologies have played a key role in this process. Personal computer and network are two core technological breakthroughs. Up to now, six high-tech industries, such as information, biology, new materials, energy, ocean and aerospace, have made major technological breakthroughs and are or are gestating large-scale commercial applications. It can be predicted that in the next 30-50 years, this kind of high-tech industry will become increasingly mature and become a new generation of leading industrial groups in the economic development of various countries.

Because high-tech industry is knowledge-intensive and has strong backward compatibility, that is, the ability to transform traditional industries, the development of high-tech industry has led to an obvious softening trend in the industrial structure of developed countries, and the proportion of manufacturing industry is getting lower and lower, while the proportion of service industry, especially knowledge-intensive financial service industry and high-tech service industry is getting higher and higher. In developed countries, the proportion of service industry is generally above 60%, and the United States and Switzerland even exceed 70%. 1987-2000 During the period, the proportion of American manufacturing industry in GDP decreased by 3.2 percentage points, while the proportion of services such as finance, insurance and real estate increased from nearly 73% to over 77%. It can be said with certainty that the softening trend of industrial structure in developed countries will become more and more obvious and common.

Another great change brought about by the development of high-tech industry is unprecedented fierce international competition, and the front of competition has moved forward further. This is mainly manifested in two aspects: first, the focus of market competition is not only the competition of final products, but also the competition of research and development direction and speed. Whoever can grasp the correct research and development direction and develop new products at the fastest speed will be in an invincible position in the market. Because of this, the R&D expenditure of American industry doubled from $95 billion to 654.38+0992-2002. Second, the internationalization trend of R&D is increasingly obvious. According to the data of American Engineering Technology Index (2002), there were 375 foreign companies operating 7 15 R&D institutions in the United States in 198, including 25 1 in Japan, 0/07 in Germany and 0/03 in Britain. American companies established 186 R&D institutions abroad in 1997, and the R&D funds increased from1998 to $22 billion. If we add the US$ 654.38+0.5 billion R&D expenditure of American parent companies abroad, this figure will be even more impressive.

From the second point of view, the future development direction of the information technology industry is: in the near future (six months to one year), the information technology industry needs some adjustment to digest the production capacity formed by a large amount of investment in the information technology field in the 1990 s; In the medium and long term, the information technology industry will further develop in the direction of networking and service based on the existing large-scale information processing technology, thus further improving people's quality of life and making people's lives more convenient.

According to SICAS statistics, the current global integrated circuit wafer capacity utilization rate is: 65438+93.9 in the fourth quarter of 0999, 94.7 in the fourth quarter of 2000, 7 1.8 in the fourth quarter of 2006 and 83.5 in the first three quarters of 2002. It can be seen that the production of wafer industry has gone out of the trough, exceeding the level of 200 1 first half of the year. However, according to the statistics of American Electronics Manufacturers Association (NEMA), the equipment capacity utilization rate of American electronics manufacturing industry was only 74.5, 74. 1 and 73.5 in August, September and June, 2002, respectively, which basically remained at a level close to 75%. Judging from this, the current information technology industry is still in the process of adjustment, and the recovery is weak, but this process should not last long.

From the medium and long-term development trend? At present, the latest technology of making chips with silicon crystal has reached 0.09 micron, so it is estimated that the technology of silicon-based chips will reach the technical limit around 20 15? And the new chip material technology-gallium arsenide, is not mature in technology, so? The future development direction of information technology industry lies not in the manufacture of information technology products, but in how to make use of existing technologies to carry out integrated innovation. Merrill Lynch analysts think? The profit point of the information technology industry will shift from the increasingly saturated hardware department to the software, service and consulting department. For enterprises, the question now is not whether to apply information technology, but how to use information technology to explore new profit models; For ordinary consumers, the general feeling at present is that the technology supply in the information technology industry is sufficient and good enough. The key in the future is to expand the application and further popularize it, and get rid of the vicious circle of purchase-upgrade.

Thirdly, biotechnology industry is likely to replace information technology as a new leading industry in the next 10- 15 years. The sequencing of human genome completed ahead of schedule in 2000 made people have a new understanding and judgment on the development prospect of biotechnology. At present, academic circles at home and abroad have been measuring the gene sequencing of other complex species. Therefore, the industrial development prospect of biotechnology is undoubtedly very considerable. Judging from the current situation, the biotechnology industry has reached a considerable scale. There are 200 1 * * biotechnology companies 1457 in the United States, including 342 listed companies; In May 2002, the total market value of these listed companies was 224 billion yuan. The scale of biotechnology industry has more than tripled since 1992, and its income has increased from $8 billion in 1992 to $27.6 billion in1. The biotechnology industry currently employs1790,000 people. According to the figures of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (Bio), 1999, the direct, indirect and induced activities of the biotechnology industry contributed 437,400 jobs and 47 billion US dollars of commercial income to the American economy, and the tax revenue obtained by the federal, state and local governments from the biotechnology industry was estimated to be about/kloc-0.00 billion US dollars.

On the other hand, biotechnology is one of the industries with the highest research intensity in the world, and the technological innovation cycle is long. In 200 1 year, American biotechnology industry spent156 billion dollars on R&D; In 2000, the average R&D expenditure per employee of the five largest biotechnology companies was $89,400. Not only that, the US government also strongly supports biotechnology research. In fiscal year 2002, the US government's expenditure on R&D was10310.50 billion US dollars, of which non-defense expenditure was 49.672 billion US dollars, more than half of which was invested in health care research, especially biotechnology research, accounting for 25.3% of the total US government R&D expenditure. According to estimates, the research and development cycle of a biotech drug is 2- 10 years, and then it will take about 6 years to go through laboratory and animal tests, phase III clinical trials, review by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and testing after entering the market. Therefore, the average time to market of biotechnological drugs is about 8- 16 years. Judging from this, even biotech drugs that are currently undergoing clinical trials will take at least five years to enter the market. Therefore, at least in the short and medium term, biotechnology cannot completely replace the dominant position of the information technology industry.

Fourthly, the new material technology represented by nanotechnology is unlikely to become a new leading industry in the next 20 years. Although as early as 1998, Neil Ryan, the science and technology adviser to the President of the United States, said, "If someone asks me which science and engineering field is most likely to have a technological breakthrough tomorrow, I will tell him that it is nano-scale science and engineering", and the National Nanotechnology Initiative announced by the US government in February 2000 was subtitled "Leading the next industrial revolution". In fact, the investment in research and development of nanotechnology in various countries fully shows that there is still a considerable gap between the research results of nanotechnology and its practical application. From 65438 to 0997, the total amount of government funding for nanotechnology research and development in the world was less than 500 million dollars. Among them, Western Europe is 65.438+0.28 billion US dollars, Japan is 65.438+0.20 billion US dollars, the United States is 65.438+0./kloc-0.60 billion US dollars, and other countries or regions invest about 70 million US dollars. In 2000, the government invested only $270 million in nanotechnology research, and only $495 million in 20001year. Although this growth rate is amazing, compared with the investment of 44.8 billion US dollars in information technology research and development and 30 billion US dollars in biotechnology, this investment is insignificant. Obviously, such a small R&D scale cannot support the formation and development of a leading industrial technology.

Fifth, by contrast, the prospect of space technology industrialization may be more optimistic. Especially since satellite communication turned to data transmission, mobile communication and live TV broadcast in the 1990s, communication satellite technology has developed by leaps and bounds. According to the statistics of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, by the end of 1996, a new space technology development and application industry with an annual output value of 77 billion US dollars and an annual growth rate of more than 20% has been formed. At present, the scale of space new technology development and application industry is nearly $654.38+020 billion, and it will exceed $200 billion by 2005. If related industries are added, such as aerospace insurance, global satellite navigation system application and geographic information system application, the scale of aerospace science and technology industry will be even larger. A research report published by the National Security Space Administration and Agency Evaluation Committee 20001claims that the profit of the international space industry in 2000 has exceeded 80 billion US dollars, and it is predicted that the profit will more than triple in the next 10 year. Some scholars even predict that by 20 10, the income of global commercial space activities will reach 500-600 billion US dollars.