1. Comprehensive national strength and national strategic resources
1. The meaning of comprehensive national power
Comprehensive national power (National Power) is the most important indicator to measure a country’s basic national conditions and basic resources. It is also a comprehensive indicator to measure a country’s economic, political, military and technological strength. There is no internationally unified definition and calculation method for how to define and measure a country's comprehensive national strength or strategic resources. Ashley Tellis et al (2000) defined national strength as the product of the interaction of two components, that is, a country has the ability to master the economic innovation cycle at a given time and uses this control ability to form Effective military capabilities, in turn, create a stable political environment, strengthen existing economic advantages, and provide basic conditions for maintaining the country's strategic advantages and benefiting from the international system. In summary, comprehensive national power can be simply defined as a country's comprehensive ability to pursue its strategic goals through purposeful actions. We define National Strategic Resources as the actual and potential key resources that a country can use to achieve its strategic goals. They reflect a country's ability to utilize various resources on a global scale, and also reflect the country’s overall national strength. International relations scholar Kenneth Waltz (1979) defined power as the distribution of capabilities. In fact, comprehensive national strength is the distribution and combination of national strategic resources, which are mobilized and utilized to achieve a country's strategic goals. What we call comprehensive national strength generally refers to the sum of various national strategic resources; while national strategic resources generally refer to a certain type of strategic resources.
2． Contents of National Strategic Resources
What resources should national strategic resources include? Michael Porter (1990) proposed five major element resources: physical resources; human resources; infrastructure; knowledge resources; and capital resources. Resources).
We divide national strategic resources into eight categories of resources and 23 indicators. The sum of these indicators constitutes comprehensive national strength.
1． Economic resources refer to gross national product (GNP) or gross domestic product (GDP). The size of the economy is usually measured by GNP in national currency. The so-called GNP refers to the total added value created by residents, plus (or minus) taxes not included in the value of output (after subtracting subsidies), plus taxes from non-government sources. The sum of net income of residents’ main income (employee compensation and property income). GNP also includes gross domestic product (GDP) and primary income of non-residents. There are usually two calculation methods. The first method is based on official or nominal exchange rates. This method often underestimates the economic strength of developing countries and overestimates the economic strength of developed countries. The second method is based on purchasing power parity (PPP). Calculation method. The so-called purchasing power parity calculation means that 1 US dollar has the same purchasing power for domestic GNP as the US dollar has the same purchasing power for US GNP or GDP. Sometimes, dollars converted according to this method are called international dollars. The International Comparison Project (ICP) promoted by the World Bank and the United Nations, based on 1993, calculated for 118 countries and used the PPP conversion factor to estimate the per capita GDP of all countries in the world. GNP and GDP per capita international dollar values.
2． human capital. Human capital, especially the opportunity and ability to obtain education, is considered to play a decisive role in the economic growth process.
Usually, human capital is represented by the number of years a population has received education. The more years a population has received education, the more skilled the labor force will be, and the easier it will be to improve labor productivity and promote economic growth. The rich human capital in developing countries will be easier to absorb and use. New technologies introduced and diffused in developed countries (Barro and Lee, 2000). Reflecting the total human capital of a country includes two important measurement indicators. One is the population and the working-age population, such as the population aged 15-64; the other is human capital, which is usually expressed by the average number of years of education for the population over 15 years old. This indicator is quoted from the global education database of Barro and Lee of Harvard University in the United States, and the Chinese data is quoted from previous national census data. These two types of indicators can constitute a country's total human capital, which is defined as the product of the working-age population and the average years of education, or can also be defined as the product of the labor force and the average years of education of the population. The labor force is composed of people who meet the definition of economically viable population determined by the International Labor Organization (ILO). They include people who provide labor for producers and services at a specific stage, including both the employed and the unemployed. Estimates for women are not internationally comparable because in many developing countries the majority of women in the labor force help with farm work or perform unpaid labor in other household enterprises. In general, the labor force includes military personnel, the unemployed and first-time job seekers, but excludes domestic workers and other unpaid service providers and those working in the informal sector.
3. Natural resources. Usually refers to the abundance, quality, accessibility and cost of key natural resources. Natural resources are necessary conditions for economic development, but natural resources are limited and become a restriction or upper limit (Upper Limits) for economic growth. At the same time, natural resources have diminishing marginal returns, and the ecological costs and external costs of extraction and utilization are relatively high. high. In addition, different resources play very different roles at different stages of development, but they all show a downward trend. On the contrary, knowledge resources play an increasingly important role. It includes four major indicators. First, agricultural planting area, which is the sum of temporarily and permanently occupied cultivated land, permanent farmland and pasture as defined by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations; second, fresh water resources, including domestic river flow, obtained from precipitation. Groundwater and river flows from other countries; the third is commercial energy use, which refers to its consumption calculation method, domestic production plus imports and inventory changes, minus exports and fuel used by ships and aircraft engaged in international transportation. The data does not include fuel wood, dry animals and other traditional fuel use; fourth is power generation, which is measured at the terminals of all generating units in the power station. In addition to hydropower, coal power, oil power, natural gas power and nuclear power, it also includes power generation from energy types such as geothermal, solar, wind, tidal and wave energy, as well as flammable renewable substances and waste codes. Electricity generation includes the electrical output of power plants and combined heat and power plants designed solely to generate electricity.
4. capital resources. According to Harvard University's Michelle Porter's definition of capital resources, it includes three types of indicators. One is total domestic investment, which is the additional expenditure on fixed assets in a country's economy plus the net change in inventory levels; the other is foreign direct investment (FDI). ), it refers to the net inflow of investment to obtain long-term rights and interests (10% and more voting shares) of an enterprise operating in a country's economy. It is different from investors. It is an international The sum of equity, reinvested earnings, other long-term capital and short-term capital in income and expenses; third, the stock market value, also known as capital market value, refers to the sum of the capital market value of all companies listed on domestic stock exchanges. This indicator Reflects the development scale of a country's financial market. In this article, we convert total domestic investment into PPP international US dollars, and the other two indicators are still calculated in current US dollars.
5. Knowledge and technology resources. We regard it as the most important national strategic resource, especially as the world enters the knowledge society and information society in the 21st century, its importance is increasing day by day.
Knowledge and technology resources include five indicators: first, the number of scientific papers, including about 4,800 papers published in international academic journals, which reflects a country’s knowledge innovation capabilities; second, the number of patent applications by domestic residents, which reflects A country's technological innovation capability; the third is the number of personal computers used, which reflects a country's ability to apply new technologies; the fourth is the number of Internet host users, which reflects a country's information dissemination capabilities; the fifth is the government's use of Ramp; D The amount of expenditure reflects a country’s potential knowledge and technological innovation capabilities. The above five indicators fully reflect the basic situation of promoting knowledge innovation and dissemination, and technological innovation and popularization under the conditions of the information age.
6． Government resources. Due to the limitation of calculable indicators, we only use one indicator, that is, central government fiscal expenditures, including current and capital expenditures, including commercial services and social service expenditures, excluding non-financial public institutions and Public institutions. It reflects the ability of a country (mainly the central government) to mobilize and utilize resources.
7. military strength. It is one of the important components of a country's comprehensive national strength. It reflects the country's internal ability to maintain social stability and prevent national division. It also reflects the country's external power (External Power) in seeking to maximize national interests. It is also An "output" of a country's comprehensive national strength (Ashley Tellis et al, 2000) is an extremely important national strategic asset, because military strength is not only an explicit function of comprehensive national strength, but also an expression function of national will. It includes two types of indicators, one is military expenditure, which includes the military expenditure of the Ministry of National Defense and expenditures of other ministries, excluding the civilian expenditure of the Ministry of National Defense; the second is armed forces personnel, which refers to active military personnel (including paramilitary personnel). It should be noted that these two indicators cannot reflect the quality of military resources.
8. International resources. It includes four types of indicators, the first is the export volume of goods and services trade; the second is the import trade volume of goods and services; the third is the amount of copyright and patent income; the fourth is the amount of copyright and patent expenditures; the fifth is net foreign direct investment, which has been listed in capital resources. The first two indicators reflect a country's ability to utilize and develop international markets, while the latter two indicators reflect a country's ability to create and utilize international technologies
II. Methods for Calculating Comprehensive National Power
Measuring and evaluating comprehensive national power requires the development of a new method that can be widely used and is measurable and comparable. Here we first introduce the traditional calculation formulas and methods, and then introduce a multi-index comprehensive national power dynamic equation and calculation method developed by the author.
1． Traditional calculation methods
Here it is necessary to give a brief introduction to the previous methods of calculating national power.
The meaning of national strength proposed by Klaus Knorr (1956) includes economic capabilities, administrative competitiveness and war mobilization capabilities. This is the earliest comprehensive national strength equation. People have realized that a country's strength is not just economic strength, although it is the basis of national strength.
Clifford German (1960) proposed the national strength index equation:
G=National strength=N (L P I M)
Formula Where N is the nuclear capability; L is the land; P is the population; I is the industrial base; M is the scale of military power. This equation is a national power equation centered on nuclear capabilities. A country's strength is directly proportional to its ability to possess nuclear weapons. It reflects the special importance of a country's possession of nuclear weapons under the conditions of the Cold War and the nuclear age. In fact, after World War II, major powers have been desperately developing nuclear weapons as their most important national strategic resources and strategic means.
Wilhem Fucks (1965) proposed a nonlinear national power equation. This equation considers three types of variables: first, population size (P); second, energy production (Z); third, steel production (Z1).
The equation is:
M=(P^2)*Z
M=(P^(3/2))*Z1
The equation is Based on traditional resources in the industrialization era, its main national strategic goal is to obtain more energy globally and significantly increase the country's industrial production capacity.
Ray Cline (1975) proposed the following national power equation:
P=(C E M)*(S W)
Where C is Land and population; E is economic strength, including income + energy + non-fuel mineral resources + manufacturing + food + trade; M is military capability, including strategic balance + combat capability + incentives; S is national strategic coefficient; W is national will. , including the level of national integration, leadership capabilities, and strategies related to national interests. This is a comprehensive national power equation. The first part of the equation is objective strength or hard power, the second part of the equation is subjective strength or soft power, and comprehensive national power is the product of the two. It reflects researchers' emphasis on soft power, but it is difficult to calculate soft power. This approach has been used by the U.S. military to assess long-term trends in international systems.
For the first time, scholars such as Thales of the American RAND Corporation proposed methods to measure national strength in the post-industrial era. They believe that traditional indicators and methods cannot reflect national strength under information technology. The article introduces a lot of new concepts, but does not give calculation formulas and calculation results.
The traditional method is to rank the main indicators of each country according to Rank-Ordered Scores, without giving the actual gaps and relative changes in the indicators. This method is still a semi-quantitative method. We hope to develop a quantitative calculation method that can more comprehensively, dynamically and objectively observe the relative changes in the comprehensive national strength of the world's major powers.
2． The calculation method and characteristics of this article
The comprehensive national power equation calculated in this article is:
NP=∑(ai*Ri)
where NP is the comprehensive national power; Ri is the proportion of a certain resource to the total number of the world; ai is the weight of a certain resource. When considering the time variable, the dynamic equation of comprehensive national strength is:
NP(t)=∑(ai*Ri(t))
For the characteristics of the calculation method in this article, we make 4 is explained below:
First, this article uses the dimensionless proportion method to calculate the proportion of each country's main resources in the world's total. First of all, the comprehensive national strength studied in this article refers to the relative national strength. We are more concerned about the relative increase of one country's comprehensive national strength or strategic resources relative to another country. Or is it a relative decline? Secondly, when more than 20 indicators are used to calculate comprehensive national strength, the units of each indicator are different and cannot be added. Using the proportion method avoids the above problems and has additivity, that is, converting different indicator units into a unified unit (percentage). It constitutes comprehensive national strength and is comparable at the same time, that is, for international comparison and historical comparison.
Second, this article defines eight strategic resources and uses 23 main indicators to form a calculable comprehensive national power equation, which more comprehensively reflects the strategic resources and comprehensive national power of different countries.
Third, adopt different weights for different indicators to reflect the importance of different strategic resources. For example, strategic assets in the knowledge age or information age are very different from those in the industrialization era. The former are mainly emerging strategic resources such as knowledge, technology and information, and their role is rising rapidly; the latter are mainly traditional resources such as land, food, energy, and steel, and their role is rapidly increasing. The effect is constantly declining. This article gives a fairly high weight to knowledge and technology resources (see Table 1).
Fourth, this equation is a dynamic national power equation that changes over time. It can not only reflect a country’s comprehensive national power or strategic resources and the relative strength of other countries, but also reflect the dynamic changes between them.
The calculation data source of this article mainly uses the World Bank's "World Development Indicators Database 2000", which contains more than 500 economic and social indicators for 206 countries and regions and the world from 1960 to 1998.
Human capital (average years of education for people over 15 years old) is based on the global education database of Barrow and Lee (2000) of the Department of Economics, Harvard University, USA.
Reference materials: Hu Angang, Men Honghua: International Comparison of the Comprehensive National Power of China, the United States, Japan, Russia and India (1980-1998), Strategy and Management, Issue 2, 2002