Abstract: Total factor productivity (TFP) serves as the core engine of sustained and stable economic growth and a key factor in transitioning China’s economy toward high-quality development. Although TFP is a common concept in Western economics, the intellectual origins embedded in Marx’s theory of labor productivity provide a theoretical foundation for understanding its stage-specific characteristics and contemporary implications from a political economy perspective. The significant enhancement of TFP is a central marker of new quality productive forces, whose internal mechanisms are reflected in disruptive technological innovation, innovative allocation of factors, and industrial transformation and upgrading—continuously expanding production boundaries, enhancing efficiency, and optimizing production structures. Therefore, improving TFP requires giving full play to the advantages of the new national system to achieve breakthroughs in key technologies, accelerating the development of a unified national market to facilitate the smooth flow of advanced production factors, and deepening the integration of digital and real economies to modernize the industrial system—thereby accelerating the formation and development of new quality productive forces.

Key words: total factor productivity, new quality productive forces, technological innovation, artificial intelligence, new national system