Steady Growth, Quality Improvement and Enhanced Resilience: China's Manufacturing Industry Demonstrates New Development Momentum in 2025

In 2025, driven by both precise policy guidance and the release of market vitality, China's manufacturing industry continues to serve as the "economic ballast", with increasingly distinct development characteristics centered on steady growth as the foundation, quality improvement as the core, and strong innovation as the engine. Amid the complex internal and external environment, it has delivered a performance of steady progress with both improved quality and efficiency.

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Policy support has laid a solid foundation for the growth of the manufacturing industry. In 2025, a new round of steady growth policies for ten key industries has been fully implemented, fully unleashing the driving effect of large-scale and widely connected industries such as electronics, non-ferrous metals, chemicals, and automobiles. The supporting mechanism for ensuring a reasonable proportion of the manufacturing industry and major investment projects, combined with the 15.7% high-speed growth of investment in equipment and tools procurement, has formed a "policy + investment" dual-drive pattern. Regarding the optimization of industrial layout, sound policies for orderly industrial transfer have promoted the agglomeration of resources to industries with distinctive advantages. The role of industrial powerhouses and characteristic regions as growth poles continues to stand out, providing diversified support for the growth of the manufacturing industry.

The in-depth penetration of digital and intelligent transformation has injected the core of quality and efficiency improvement into growth. Driven by the upgraded "5G + Industrial Internet" policy, the network infrastructure formed by 4.25 million completed 5G base stations and over 200 million gigabit users has accelerated the integration of digital technology and the real economy. The pilot deployment of 10-gigabit optical networks and the optimized layout of computing power centers have enabled the large-scale application of scenarios such as flexible production and intelligent quality inspection in key industries, driving the manufacturing industry's production efficiency to increase by more than 12% year-on-year. Digital industrial clusters are expanding rapidly; the combined digital industry revenue of the top 10 provinces has reached 25.8 trillion yuan, and the 6.4% year-on-year growth highlights the enabling value of the digital economy for the manufacturing industry.

The explosive growth of emerging industries has become a core highlight of the manufacturing industry's transformation. Supported by policies such as vehicle purchase tax reductions and guidelines on battery swapping models, the new energy vehicle industry continues to lead the world. Building on the 10-million-unit production and sales scale in 2024, its market penetration rate further increased in 2025, with exports reaching more than 100 countries and regions. Breakthroughs in key technologies such as new-system batteries and the optimization of the "dual-credit policy" have promoted the industry's transition from scale expansion to technological upgrading. At the same time, the green manufacturing system continues to improve; the establishment of automotive carbon footprint management and power battery recycling systems has made green and low-carbon development a core competitiveness of the industry.

The enhanced resilience of the industrial chain has provided a safety guarantee for the development of the manufacturing industry. The High-Quality Development Initiative for Key Industrial Chains has been thoroughly implemented, and breakthroughs in core components, basic materials and other fields have accelerated the process of domestic substitution. The cultivation of specialized, refined, characteristic, and innovative SMEs and the development of advanced manufacturing clusters have formed a linkage; 80 national-level clusters have become important carriers for collaborative innovation in the industrial chain. The digital upgrading of the supply chain has increased cross-regional collaboration efficiency by more than 30%, enabling rapid responses to market fluctuations and external risks, and building an industrial ecosystem with self-repair capabilities.

Looking ahead, with the issuance of documents on the high-quality development of the digital industry and increased investment in 6G technological innovation, the manufacturing industry will achieve new upgrades in three dimensions: network evolution, integrated application, and innovation capability. Driven by continuous policy support and technological innovation, China's manufacturing industry is accelerating the construction of a modern industrial system with the distinct characteristics of "steady growth, quality improvement, and strong resilience". It will not only provide solid support for the conclusion of the 14th Five-Year Plan but also further demonstrate the core competitiveness of China's smart manufacturing in the global industrial pattern.