Eight Ministries Issue the 15th Five-Year Plan for Industrial Foundation Capability Enhancement; China to Reach the Global Advanced Tier in Industrial Foundation Capabilities by 2030

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The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) together with seven other central authorities has recently issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for Industrial Foundation Capability Enhancement. The Plan sets a target: by 2030, China will markedly ease weak links in industrial foundations, comprehensively upgrade technological innovation, independent controllability and high-quality product supply, raise the quality of basic products, and lift its overall industrial foundation capabilities to the global advanced tier

To deliver these goals, the Plan lays out 22 key tasks across seven priority areas: boosting independent controllability of industrial foundations, strengthening innovation capacity, improving the industrial technology infrastructure system, lifting quality standards, enhancing enterprise core competitiveness, scaling up the application of basic products, and optimizing the industrial ecosystem

Boosting Innovation Capacity of Industrial Foundations

The Plan encourages enterprises to take deep part in national science and technology research projects and technical roadmap formulation in industrial foundation sectors, and take the lead in more research missions. It supports industry-led integrated innovation among enterprises, universities and research institutes. High-quality firms are encouraged to take the lead in forming innovation consortia, step up basic research and underlying technology R&D, and carry out research, pilot verification and demonstration application of key basic products

The Plan also advances forward-looking innovation layout for frontier industrial technologies. Targeting cutting-edge sectors including quantum technology, biomanufacturing, hydrogen energy and nuclear fusion, brain-computer interfaces, embodied AI, 6G communications, deep space, deep sea, deep earth and polar exploration, China will follow the principle of “scenario-driven development with foundational research as the priority”, and launch forward-looking R&D tasks for key basic products. The move will expand the supply of original and disruptive basic technologies and products.

The Plan supports the R&D of general and industry-specific large models for industrial foundations, promotes integration between industrial mechanisms and agent-based decision models, develops natively intelligent basic products, and fosters new business models such as Model-as-a-Service (MaaS) and Agent-as-a-Service (AaaS)

Raising Core Competitiveness of Enterprises

Leading industrial foundation firms are encouraged to integrate industrial chain resources and build world-class enterprises. State-owned enterprises will leverage their strengths in technology, scale, application scenarios and talent. Through long-term technical cooperation and joint market development, SOEs will open up engineering practice, R&D and supply chain resources to smaller industrial foundation players, nurturing a cohort of leading firms in this field

To drive high-quality growth of specialized SMEs, the Plan prioritizes fostering specialized and sophisticated SMEs in industrial foundation sectors. These firms will be supported to develop new technologies and products, lift industrial supporting capacity, and grow into niche “little giant” enterprises, high-tech firms and manufacturing champion companies with exclusive core technologies. The policy aims to build an ecosystem featuring integrated innovation and coordinated development between large, medium and small enterprises

Financial and Policy Support

The Plan calls for full use of tax incentives for sci-tech innovation to stimulate corporate R&D vitality. It will leverage the national industry-finance cooperation platform, push forward the special initiative of “integration of technology, industry and finance”, make good use of government investment funds, and channel more social capital into industrial foundation enterprises. Authorities will recommend qualified firms for financing and guide financial institutions to roll out diversified financial products and services

Jiang Mingtao, Director of the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, told the Shanghai Securities News that the Plan addresses the long-standing disconnect between technology R&D and commercialization. It puts high priority on the popularization and application of basic products, and sets out the overall requirement of “driving research through application, integrating R&D with deployment, and advancing technical breakthroughs and market rollout as a whole”. This will speed up iteration and verification of innovation outcomes in real-world scenarios, translating research results into tangible productive forces and new quality productive forces

Industry insiders noted that industrial foundation sectors are typically fragmented, scattered and hidden, so capacity upgrading cannot be achieved overnight. Covering technological breakthroughs, enterprise incubation, product application and ecosystem building, the Plan will mobilize joint efforts from governments, industry associations and market players. It will continuously shore up industrial weaknesses, strengthen competitive edges, and push China’s industrial foundation upgrading to new heights

Source: Shanghai Securities News