Dr. Syed Mehboob
Senior Business and Political Analyst
http//: www.thenewslark.com
China is a country with many wonders. The Great China Wall, its great leadership in the past like Chairman Mao Zedong, and Deng Xiaoping, its language which has survived for the last 5,000 years, its status as a unified country for the last 2,000 years everything is full of wonder. Its project Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which connected 150 countries and 32 international organizations, with an investment of US$ 1,000 billion in 3,000 projects, generated 420,000 jobs and lifted 40 million people out of poverty. Out of 190 countries that are members of the United Nations Organization (UNO) , 130 have more trade with China than the United States of America ( USA). BRI has been reinforced by China’s great and visionary leader Xi Jinping’s Global Development Initiative (GDI), Global Security Initiative (GSI), and Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), which are promoting equality, inclusivity, and diversity. China isa big surprise to the world. China is focusing on modernization especially cutting-edge twenty-first-century technologies like 5G, Artificial Intelligence (AI) , robotics, cloud computing, etc. It is interesting to mention that China is leading in 37 out of 44 technologies including electric batteries, hypersonic, and advanced radio frequency communications such as 5 Gs and 6Gs.
Chinese leadership initiated “ Made in China 2025” ( MIC 2025) which is a national strategic plan and industrial policy to further develop the manufacturing sector of the People’s Republic of China, signed by Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang in May 2015. The industrial policy aimed to upgrade the manufacturing capabilities of Chinese industries, growing from labor-intensive workshops into a more technology-intensive powerhouse with more value addition.
Made in China 2025’s goal includes increasing the Chinese domestic content of core materials up to seventy percent by 2025. The initiative encourages enhanced production of high-tech products and services, with its semiconductor industry central to the industrial plan, partly because advances in chip technology may lead to breakthroughs in other areas of technology. In 2018, the Chinese government committed to investing roughly US$ 300 billion into achieving the industrial plan. In 2019 additional US$ 1,400 billion was invested into the Made in China 2025 initiative. In 2024, Bloomberg reported the U.S. efforts to curb the “ Made in China 2025” initiative had been ineffective and that the majority of the program’s goals were evaluated to have been achieved.
For effectiveness and achievement of this Made in China’s goals, several specific policies have been implemented including:
- High-tech companies are subject to reduced taxation rates
- Incentivization of mergers and acquisition of foreign technology companies
- Increased Research and Development funding by large manufacturing enterprises
- Roadmap stating specific targets for far factors such as Research and Development share, productivity, digitization, and environmental protection
The Chinese Communist Party ( CPC) also implemented five strategic initiatives:
- Building Research and Development Centers across China about forty till 2025
- Development of High-Endprojects across all of the Key Industries
- Sustainable production and worldwide leading green manufacturing practices
- Smart manufacturing including robotics and digitalization
- New Materials production to be less dependent
Industries integral to Made in China 2025 include aerospace, biotech, information technology, smart manufacturing, maritime engineering, advanced rail, electric vehicles, electrical equipment, new materials, biomedicine, agricultural machinery and equipment, pharmaceuticals, and robotic development and manufacturing , many of these have been previously dominated by foreign countries and now China is a prominent country in these fields.
Some companies that have been named as leaders of the key industries:
- Baidu (Artificial Intelligence, autonomous vehicles)
- Alibaba (E-commerce)
- Tencent (E-commerce)
- Megvii (Artificial Intelligence)
- DJI (Artificial Intelligence, drones)
- BAIC (New Energy Vehicles)
- Geely (New Energy Vehicles)
- BYD (New Energy Vehicles)
- NIO (New Energy Vehicles)
- SMIC (Semiconductor)
- Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit ( DRAM manufacturing)
- Huawei (Semiconductors, telecommunications, and consumer electronics)
- BBK Electronics (Consumer electronics)
- Xiaomi (Consumer Electronics)
- Aviation Industry Corporation of China (Aerospace)
- CRRS ( Rail)
- Sinopharm ( Medicine)
China’s investment in 5G is seen as part of the Made in China 2025 programme. In 2020, China had around 200,000 5G towers in use, at the end of 2000 it reached to 500,000 while for 2025 its goal is 5,000,0000. In its fourteenth five year plan, China’s national People’s Congress approved the spending of US$ 1,400 billion in five to six years to build 5G networks.
In October 2024, Bloomberg published a series of articles underscoring China’s steady strides in positioning itself as a global leader in future-focused industries, despite more than six years of U.S. tariffs, export controls, and financial sanctions. Research from Bloomberg Economics and Bloomberg Intelligence concludes that the “Made in China 2025” initiative, designed to secure China’s leadership in emerging technologies, has been “ largely a success”. Among the thirteen critical technologies tracked by Bloomberg, China has achieved global leadership in five
- High Speed rail
- Graphene
- Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
- Solar Panels
- Electrical Vehicles and Lithium batteries
According to the analysis by the South China Morning Post found that of the more than 260 goals proposed under the plan, more than 86 percent of the targets have been achieved. The report found targets in sectors such as electric vehicles and renewable energy were well surpassed, and all the goals in robotics, agriculture machinery, biopharmaceuticals, and marine energy were fulfilled, though some targets such as advanced photolithography technology, intercontinental passenger aircraft, and broadbandinternet Satellite network were unfulfilled.
The engines driving China’s success are its cities, many of which have become specialists in strategic areas. Hefei, for example, has become the country’s electric vehicle capital, Shanghai is a hotspot for biopharmaceuticals, and Urumqi is home to the world’s biggest solar farm.
China’s universities have been fundamental to achieving its MIC2025 goals because they supply the talent and expertise that its high-tech industries need, says Zhang. Government initiatives to attract foreign researchers and entice Chinese researchers to return home are helping to boost China’s performance in innovation areas, as are incentives for universities and research institutes to apply for patents and establish more industry collaborations. Today, China leads the world in patent application numbers, picking up four times more AI-related patents than the United States in 2022.
China’s growth in new energy vehicle (NEV) production — a key goal of MIC2025 — shows how rapidly the country can dominate a market. By next year, China aims to have domestically produced NEVs (a category that includes any electrical vehicle, , including hybrid, battery-electric, and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles) account for more than 80% of the domestic market. It’s also pushing for NEV manufacturers to develop and manufacture all of their components in-house. Few cities have responded to this challenge quite like Hefei. The city’s government has established innovation platforms and incubators, such as the Hefei Innovation Industrial Park and the Hefei NEV Innovation Center, which provide funding support to start-up companies to help them break into the market. The government’s policies also encourage collaboration between enterprises and universities or research institutes. Such partnerships, particularly with the University of Science and Technology of China, one of the city’s leading universities, have played a pivotal role in transforming scientific achievements into technological innovations, It’s a city-centered, regional-based innovation ecosystem.
In the first half of 2024, Hefei produced more than 500,000 NEVs, a jump of around 67% from the previous year. Many vehicle companies have received generous backing from the Hefei government; in 2020, it poured almost $1 billion of investment funds into Chinese car manufacturer NIO, and in 2021, it took just 23 days to negotiate with BYD, another of the country’s major vehicle companies, over the establishment of an expansive factory in the city.China accounts for more than half of all new electric cars sold globally, but geopolitical tensions are threatening to undermine its success. This year, the US government imposed a 100% tariff on Chinese electric vehicle imports, which was closely followed by a 37.6% tariff from the European Union, raising concerns that China now has an overcapacity in the space.
Aligning with China’s broader goals of reducing its reliance on fossil fuels, MIC2025 is pushing for renewable energy equipment and energy-storage devices to account for more than 80% of the Chinese market. Rapid progress has been made in photovoltaic solar cell production, in particular. At the time of MIC2025’s launch, China relied on other countries for key materials and essential components of photovoltaic cells. Today, it’s responsible for 80% of the world’s solar cell exports and hosts the 10 leading suppliers of solar-cell manufacturing equipment globally. China is also now home to the world’s largest solar farm, by capacity: the Urumqi Solar Farm, in the northwestern city of Urumqi. With more than 5 million photovoltaic panels spread over an area roughly the size of New York City, the facility can generate enough power to keep a small country running for a year.
