CPC plenum crafts blueprint for China's sci-tech innovation

The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, which was released last week, has crafted a blueprint for China's sci-tech innovation from 2026 to 2030.

The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) stressed that the country should achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology, while also steering the development of new quality productive forces. A number of Chinese tech practitioners and industry insiders told the Global Times that they're greatly inspired by the plan, which not only shows policy continuance from the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, but also lays out new top-level design that could significantly boost the development of cutting-edge Chinese tech industries in the next five years - a critical period when the global tech race and unilateralism intensify.

The 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) convened its fourth plenary session in Beijing from last week. Participants at the session deliberated over and adopted the Recommendations of the Central Committee of the CPC for Formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan for Economic and Social Development, according to a communique of the session released on Thursday, the Xinhua News Agency reported.

"The five-year plan is of profound significance for China's scientific and technological development, particularly in advancing sci-tech self-reliance. Practices have shown that only by firmly grasping the initiative in science and technology and continuously making breakthroughs in cutting-edge fields, such as quantum computing, can we secure our position in future industrial competition," Guo Guoping, chief scientist of Origin Quantum and director at the Anhui Quantum Computing Engineering Research Center, told the Global Times on Monday.

Guo said the plan had greatly inspired researchers and strengthened their confidence to press ahead. 

"We will continue to develop China's independently controllable quantum computers, so as to contribute to the development of new quality productive forces over the next five years and strengthen the technological foundation for Chinese modernization," he noted.

Industrial robots demonstrate object-handling capabilities at the Apsara Conference 2025 in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, on September 24, 2025.

Laying out the top-design 

The 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) will be critical as the country works to reinforce the foundations and push ahead on all fronts toward basically achieving socialist modernization by 2035, and it will thus serve as a key link between the past and the future, according to the communique.

The next five years will also be a critical juncture for China to build itself into a sci-tech powerhouse, Chinese tech industry insiders pointed out. And thus, the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) will serve as a beacon and an aggregator, leveraging the country's institutional strength to pool innovative forces from various sectors and concentrate resources to overcome technical challenges in key areas. 

At a press briefing on Friday, China's Minister of Science and Technology Yin Hejun said that the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) has outlined four arrangements regarding sci-tech innovation from 2026 to 2030.

The arrangements include strengthening original innovation and breakthroughs in core technologies, promoting deep integration between scientific and industrial innovation, advancing the coordinated development of education, sci-tech and talent, and further boosting the construction of the Digital China initiative, according to another Xinhua report. 

Yin also noted that China will accelerate innovation in digital intelligence technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and enhance the efficient supply of computing power, algorithms, and data.  

Yan Yijun, vice president of Shanghai-based AI startup MiniMax, told the Global Times on Sunday that aligning the overarching goal, the company will, in the next stage, continue to "focus on investment in foundational model research and strive to make breakthrough in areas such as model development and application."

According to Yan, the Chinese authorities' strong support for basic AI research as well as breakthrough in other key technologies, including model architecture innovation and computing infrastructure construction, has laid a solid foundation for likewise tech-driven Chinese companies to develop, prosper and accelerate global cooperation.  

When it comes to deepening the integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, Minister of Science and Technology Yin Hejun emphasized the need to accelerate the efficient transformation and application of major scientific and technological achievements and enhance the protection of intellectual property rights, according to the Xinhua report.

Zhou Hongyi, founder and chairman of 360 Security Technology, told the Global Times that the guidance has charted the course for the synergistic development of technology and industry during the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) period. 

Zhou said that the new round of technological revolution represented by AI is transitioning from a phase of "technological breakthroughs" to a critical stage of "application implementation." In this process, intelligent agents, as a new form of AI development, are becoming a "key bridge" in connecting innovation with practical deployment. 

He suggested to fast-track the development of intelligent agents, whose widespread application "will serve as a crucial breakthrough in China's development of new quality productive forces and profoundly reshape production methods."

To gear up the process, some industry insiders also suggest the country to scale up the cultivation of interdisciplinary AI talent. 

"What China now needs is top-tier professionals who are well-versed in both AI technology and various specialized fields, and they will play a key role in propelling the development of China's AI industry into globally leading position," Chinese AI company iFlytek said in a statement sent to the Global Times on Sunday. 

'A profound assessment'

Observers stressed that the previous five-year plans have jointly built up the foundation for the miraculous progresses recorded China's sci-tech industry. For example, while China has achieved the goal of making its sci-tech capabilities surge remarkably during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), the freshly-released 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) put extensive focus on achieving greater sci-tech self-reliance.

Wang Peng, an associate researcher at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Monday that the shift in technological policy priority is a forward-looking strategy based on "a profound assessment of both domestic and international situations."

"In the global stage, a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation - driven by AI - has been unfolding. Meanwhile, global competition for tech dominance has been intensifying, with tech blockades by certain country showing more signs of escalating," Wang said, noting that this all highlights the urgent task for bolstering China's tech self-sufficiency rate.

Meanwhile, as China resolutely embarks on the journey toward Chinese modernization, the country also faces the urgent needs for industrial upgrade, along with coping with other challenges such as aging population. This all will make the tech industry play a more critical and efficient role in driving the country's high-quality development, analysts noted.

In 2024, China's total national R&D expenditure exceeded 3.6 trillion yuan ($507.6 billion), an increase of 48 percent compared to 2020, data from the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology showed. The country's comprehensive innovation capability ranking rose from 14th in 2020 to 10th in 2024.

(Global Times)