China has released top-level guidelines to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, focusing on sci-tech innovation, AI expansion, industrial upgrades, and a shift from government-led to business-led R&D investment. The document outlines 19 measures across five areas and encourages foreign investment and global innovation networks.
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A high-level framework aimed at accelerating what planners call "new quality productive forces" has been released, with government figures and outside analysts noting that the approach is intended to support sustained long-term growth as the economy moves away from its traditional drivers. A document published jointly by the Communist Party of China's Central Committee and the State Council calls for deeper ties between scientific and technological advancement and the broader industrial base, backed by expanded institutional frameworks.
The guidelines describe cultivating what they term "new quality productive forces" — a framework that entered policy discourse in 2023 — as both an inherent demand and a central priority within the broader push for high-quality development. Translating the concept into practice has exposed a range of obstacles, among them misdirected investment flows, a failure to modernise established industries, and gaps in the push for structural reform.
The document, as described by a National Development and Reform Commission representative in remarks to journalists, sets out a framework centred on growth driven by new ideas, measures tailored to local conditions, and a phased transition that erects replacement structures before dismantling those already in place. Drawn from those same guiding principles, the plan lays out five broad areas of focus — 19 individual measures in total — with technological innovation placed at the front of the list.
Among the stated goals are nurturing research that breaks new ground and moving laboratory findings into the marketplace more swiftly. Private-sector enterprises have taken on an outsized share of research and development investment, with their outlays projected to represent over 77 percent of the national total by 2025, based on data from the National Bureau of Statistics — a figure placing it broadly in line with what wealthier nations typically record.
Among the provisions laid out, companies would be required to maintain a dedicated research and development reserve fund, while qualifying R&D expenditures would attract a steeper rate of supplementary tax relief. Under the published guidelines, corporate research and development initiatives that align with nationally defined strategic priorities become eligible for designation as official national projects through an established approval process.
Zheshang Securities chief economist Li Chao put forward the view that the supplementary R&D tax deduction rate applied to technology firms has room to climb from its current 100 percent to 120 percent. According to Fu Yifu, a researcher at Jiangsu Su Merchants Bank, the new policies represent a reorientation in how innovation funding gets directed — moving decision-making authority away from government bodies and placing it in the hands of the private sector.
A representative of the NDRC argued that, with private enterprise taking on a larger share of innovation activity, the state's policy tools need to be calibrated more precisely to keep that relationship in equilibrium. The planning agency's representative indicated that policymakers could direct attention toward addressing gaps where markets underperform and where competitive conditions remain uneven.
The planning agency's representative also made clear that renewing long-established industrial sectors carries as much weight in the drive toward what officials term "new quality productive forces" as does cultivating industries that are still forming or have yet to fully arrive — a parallel effort running alongside the broader technology agenda. Toward that aim, the guidelines endorse corporate adoption of digital, intelligent, and environmentally oriented technologies for modernising established industries, while also laying groundwork to cultivate emerging pillar sectors and put in place frameworks that can sustain capital inflows and distribute risk across industries of the future.
Broadening AI use across multiple sectors stands as a stated priority within the document's outlined agenda. Among the provisions outlined is a call to put in place oversight infrastructure covering technology surveillance, hazard alerts, and contingency protocols, so that artificial intelligence operates within bounds that are dependable, verifiable, and free from unintended harm.
Attending to both the renovation of established industries and the cultivation of emerging ones, Jiangsu Su Merchants Bank analyst Fu described the dual-track approach as a workable route toward reshaping the country's economic composition without destabilising broader output conditions. At the institutional level, the guidelines back long-horizon investment in nascent technology ventures and open a path for qualifying technology firms to pursue stock exchange listings.
Moving between universities, research institutes, and businesses is set to become more straightforward for researchers, with a number of existing obstacles due to be lifted. Expanding access to information and ideas sits alongside the drive to develop next-generation technologies, as the world's leading economies direct growing resources toward the frontier of innovation.
Overseas venture capital firms are invited by the framework to broaden their footprint domestically while contributing to the formation of interconnected innovation ecosystems worldwide. Kilian Aviles, who oversees Dekra's Asia-Pacific business as executive vice-president, pointed to the country's momentum in artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, and green technology as the forces driving the German testing, inspection, and certification firm to deepen its footprint there.
Four testing and certification facilities — located in Shanghai, Suzhou in Jiangsu province, Guangzhou in Guangdong province, and Hefei in Anhui province — received investment from Dekra in the form of expanded capacity and modernised equipment. Aviles noted that advances in technology within China were positioning Dekra to transfer solutions already tested in that market to other parts of the Asia-Pacific region and further afield.