Writer: Shen Shiwei, founder of the China Briefing newsletter
The development of future industries will accelerate China’s transformation to an intelligent economy and the country’s evolution to high-quality growth, ushering in the next long boom cycle.
As China concludes the “Made in China 2025” initiative and gears up for the 15th Five-Year Plan, Beijing is intensifying its quest for technological supremacy with a focus on “future industries,” and innovation is being positioned not only as a supporting pillar but also as the central engine driving its development path.
In the starting year of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), the Chinese leadership’s first group study focused on developing industries of the future, a term first introduced by President Xi Jinping in 2020.
Chinese President Xi Jinping has emphasized efforts to leverage the country’s comparative advantages, pursue progress while maintaining stability, and promote continuous breakthroughs in developing industries of the future, while presiding over the 24th group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on January 30.
Why did Xi Jinping choose a Beijing tech hub for his first domestic tour in 2026? On February 9, Xi stressed self-reliance in science and technology, hailing it as the “key” in building China into a great modern socialist country when visiting the National Information Technology Application Innovation Park at Yizhuang in Beijing.
His tour in Yizhuang fits into a broader national layout. At the annual Central Economic Work Conference in 2025, China set out plans to build three international science and technology innovation centers in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Over the past year, Xi has inspected innovation development in Shanghai and Guangdong. With his visit to Yizhuang, his footprint has now covered all three regions central to this strategy.
China is set to implement a series of initiatives and actions aimed at further developing and strengthening emerging and future industries during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030).
First introduced by President Xi Jinping during his inspection tour in Zhejiang Province from March 29 to April 1 in 2020, the term refers to sectors that have the characteristics of forward-looking, strategic, and disruptive.
At the celebration meeting of the 40th Anniversary of the Establishment of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone on October 14, 2020, Xi emphasized cultivating and developing future industries.
In 2024, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) released guidelines identifying target areas, including humanoid robots, 6G network equipment, brain-computer interfaces, large-scale AI data centers, and next-generation large aircraft.
As exemplified by fields such as quantum technology, bio-manufacturing, hydrogen and nuclear fusion power, brain-computer interfaces, embodied artificial intelligence (AI), and 6G mobile communications, these sectors were explicitly highlighted in the Communist Party of China Central Committee’s recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) released in October last year.
Throughout 2025, Xi has provided strategic guidance to cultivate future industries. On April 29, Xi visited an AI incubator in Shanghai, calling on the city to take the lead in AI development and governance. Xi urged promoting the healthy and orderly development of AI and accelerating the building of a highland of scientific and technological innovation with global influence. The tour came days after a CPC leadership group study session on artificial intelligence on April 25, at which he emphasized that facing the rapid evolution of new-generation AI technologies, China must fully leverage the strengths of the new system for mobilizing the resources nationwide, achieve self-reliance and strength in this regard, and prioritize practical application so as to promote the healthy and orderly development of AI in the country in a beneficial, safe and fair manner.
During his visit to Shanxi Province in July, Xi also required efforts to push forward the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and develop emerging and future industries in light of local conditions to foster new, quality productive forces.
Provincial-level regions across China are taking advantage of their specific resources to cultivate future industries, among which Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou have been playing a leading role.
The national capital will gear its forward-looking planning toward future industries such as quantum information, new materials, artificial intelligence, satellite Internet, and robotics, according to the city’s outline for its development plan in the next five years and development goals through 2035.
In 2023, Beijing issued the Implementation Plan for Promoting the Innovative Development of Future Industries in Beijing, in which the capital will build a research institute for future technological innovation and a center for the application of future technological achievements, and accelerate the development of key sub-sectors such as quantum computing, quantum communication, and quantum precision measurement.
Shanghai, China’s business and financial hub, will strengthen scientific research and strategic planning in sixth-generation communications, next-generation photonic devices, brain-computer fusion, hydrogen energy, stem cells and regenerative medicine, synthetic biology, and new marine economy to lay a solid foundation for future industrial development.
Hangzhou in eastern China is establishing innovation projects in disruptive technology in the low-altitude economy and humanoid robots sectors, systematically establishing its competitive advantages in industries of the future. Among these are six stand-out companies, nicknamed the “Six Little Dragons”: DeepSeek; Game Science, the developer behind Black Myth: Wukong; robotics firms Unitree and Deep Robotics; BrainCo, a neurotechnology company focused on brain-computer interface; and Manycore, specializing in spatial intelligence.
The April 1st issue of Qiushi leads with Xi’s June 2024 speech at the National Science and Technology Conference, the National Science and Technology Award Conference, and the Academicians’ Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering In the speech titled “Forge Ahead Towards the Grand Goal of Building a Technological Powerhouse”, Xi outlined China’s strategic goal of becoming a global science and technology power by 2035.
During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), a group of emerging industries, including new energy vehicles (NEVs), photovoltaics as well as low-altitude, shipbuilding, and marine engineering equipment, achieved fast expansion, further enhancing the reputation of “Made in China”. Back in 2024, some provincial plans unveiled at the local Two Sessions have included the building of pilot zones focused on future industries such as quantum tech, 6G, life science, artificial general intelligence, and humanoid robotics.
The upcoming five-year plan carries unusual weight, as only 10 years remain before 2035, the milestone year by which China aims to “basically achieve socialist modernization.” This marks the first goal in the CPC’s two-step blueprint for building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects by mid-century.
