Scientific and technological innovation serves as a core driver of economic growth in today's digital era. Research and development generates cutting-edge scientific and technological knowledge, while innovation translates such knowledge into marketable products, services and technological processes. Lastly, new and high technology has comprehensively reshaped the paradigms of production, consumption and global trade. These three elements form a positive feedback loop that continuously boosts production efficiency, industrial competitiveness and long-term growth momentum. Since the turn of the 21st century, based on its national development realities, China has consistently streamlined the entire chain spanning basic research, achievement transformation and industrial application, leaping forward in scientific and technological innovation and accomplishing the historic shift from "Made in China" to "Created in China." Its development practices offer valuable insights for global scientific and technological progress and common prosperity for all.

In recent years, China has secured all-round and groundbreaking achievements in scientific and technological innovation. The digital economy has boomed, fostering the world's largest digital market in scale. Digital payments, e-commerce and smart applications have gained widespread popularity, nurturing a number of globally competitive leading enterprises. Additionally, China has built the world's most extensive high-speed railway network and world-class port clusters. The coverage of 5G networks and the scale of data centers continue to expand, consolidating a solid hardware foundation for innovative development. Meanwhile, elevated to a national strategic priority, artificial intelligence has seen sustained increased investment in machine learning, computer vision, industrial automation and other fields, placing China among the world's leaders in overall development. Boasting outstanding strengths in green and low-carbon technologies, China is both the world's largest manufacturer of new energy equipment and the biggest electric vehicle market, with its advanced power battery technology injecting strong impetus into global energy transition. Moreover, remarkable landmark breakthroughs have been made in aerospace development: China has independently built and put into operation its space station, steadily advanced lunar and deep space exploration, and solidified its status as a major aerospace power.

China's rapid progress in scientific and technological innovation stems from its unique comparative advantages across multiple aspects. The ultra-large domestic market provides abundant application scenarios for technological innovation, greatly shortening the commercialization cycle of innovative achievements. China churns out a world-leading number of engineers and science and engineering talents every year, delivering a steady stream of professional expertise for scientific and technological advancement. The complete manufacturing industrial cluster enables efficient collaborative synergy, supporting the rapid transition from laboratory research and development to industrial mass production. A modern transportation, logistics and digital network system effectively cuts transaction costs in innovation sectors and accelerates the dissemination and application of technological achievements. Meanwhile, guided by long-term strategic planning, China's robust overall coordination capacity allows it to pool resources for key national scientific and technological fields, forming a powerful synergy for innovative development.

Upholding the philosophy of openness, inclusiveness, mutual benefit and win-win results, China pursues an open and integrated path in scientific and technological innovation. It continues to expand the breadth and depth of scientific and technological cooperation, covering digital connectivity, joint research and development, technological exchange and transformation, green development collaboration, talent exchanges and joint innovation projects. China has built a robust scientific and technological cooperation network with countries across Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and beyond. For countries worldwide, deepening scientific and technological cooperation with China presents broad opportunities. Take Europe as an example: Its climate governance goals are highly complementary to China's advanced manufacturing capabilities. Joint research by the two sides in new energy, biomedicine, artificial intelligence and other fields can not only accelerate breakthroughs in frontier technologies, but also help foster a more balanced international economic order and mitigate development risks arising from technological fragmentation. Rooted in reciprocity, transparency and win-win outcomes, such cooperation represents two-way empowering strategic alignment rather than one-sided dependence.

China continues to deepen South-South scientific and technological cooperation, driving the global innovation landscape toward greater diversity and balance. In the long run, global innovation resources will gradually evolve into a multi-centric distribution paradigm. Today, addressing global challenges including climate change, public health crises and food security increasingly relies on cross-border scientific and technological cooperation, and a country's development potential will increasingly depend on its capacity to integrate into the global knowledge network. History and practice have repeatedly proven that protectionism cannot sustain long-term prosperity. While short-term protective policies may support domestic emerging industries, a country's long-term development is fundamentally rooted in opening up to the outside world, fair competition and in-depth integration into the global market. Protectionism only drives up production costs, undermines industrial competitiveness, hinders technology diffusion, and triggers cascading negative consequences such as supply chain fragmentation and slower growth of productivity.

Looking ahead, opportunities for development will never belong to closed and exclusive economic blocs. Scientific and technological innovation is not only a key engine driving national economic growth, but also a solid foundation for global sustainable development and common prosperity in the 21st century. Only by adhering to open integration, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation can we seize the opportunities of the innovation era and jointly tackle common challenges facing global development.

(The author is former president of the 62nd UN General Assembly and former foreign minister of North Macedonia)