Beijing’s five-year plans are accelerating its economic self-reliance and technological sovereignty in a fractured geopolitical world.
Designed as a fluid, malleable structure, the Dalian International Convention Centre is a pulsating mass of corrugated aluminium mimicking the waves at a seashore. It defines Dalian, a port city in Northeast China known for its strategic location, rich history, beautiful beaches, and thriving industrial and cultural scene. Under Russian and Japan in the past, Dalian is now a proud symbol of China’s global industrial might. The World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting of New Champions has been held here since 2007. Known as “Summer Davos”, the meeting has served as the Forum’s flagship platform for entrepreneurship, innovation and next-generation growth companies.
The Summer Davos of 2026 demonstrated China’s industrial leap in the post Covid years. A white paper released by WEF at Dalian, “Inside China’s Industrial Transformation: Policy, Practice and the Path to Scale” has captured the significant leaps made by the country in the recent years.
FIVE-YEAR PLANS
China has been investing in its capabilities in a systematic manner under its Five Year Plan (FYP) structure. During the 14th FYP (2021-25) China emphasized moving up the manufacturing value chain, improving quality and ensuring supply of critical raw materials. The primary focus was on strengthening the real economy to serve as the development foundation by modernizing manufacturing capacities and cluster ecosystems. Key priorities included Technology & Materials: Addressing critical bottlenecks in core technologies and materials; Resilience: Enhancing supply-chain diversification and overall resilience; and Industrial Evolution: Upgrading traditional industries while simultaneously fostering strategic emerging and future industries.
This strategy involved cultivating advanced manufacturing clusters and driving innovation in industries such as integrated circuits, while simultaneously addressing critical bottlenecks in core technologies and materials to enhance supply-chain diversification and resilience. Additionally, the plan emphasized transforming traditional industries by facilitating layout optimization and structuring of raw-materials sectors and accelerating the technological upgrading of enterprises in priority industries, including chemicals. The 14th FYP prioritized the establishment of a network of technology research institutes for future industries and focused on developing application scenarios for future technologies. “China’s industrial digitalization strategy has combined the development of digital industries with the digital transformation of traditional sectors. The 14th Five-Year Plan laid the groundwork for integrating digital technologies into industry,” the WEF white paper says. “China has adopted differentiated policy approaches to encourage integration across sectors, enterprise types and production enabling factors. Examples include promoting service oriented manufacturing and encouraging industrial factories to evolve from standalone production sites into shared service platforms.”
China promoted university-enterprise cooperation, vocational education reform, and preferential talent policies, which built mechanisms for talent development and mobility. The country operated the world’s largest vocational education system, encompassing more than 10,000 vocational schools with 34 million enrolled students. Its 1,434 majors spanned every industrial category recognized in the United Nations classification, producing a vast pool of highly skilled talent, the white paper notes.
The 15 FYP (2025-30) maintains policy continuity while accelerating paths to innovation. China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP), announced earlier this year, outlines a push for technological self-reliance amid geopolitical tensions and export restrictions. The plan targets leadership in sectors such as semiconductors, AI, robotics, quantum computing, 6G communications, aerospace, special materials, and advanced manufacturing. It signals a deliberate move from low-cost manufacturing toward high-value industrial production that has historically been led by the United States and Europe, and it asserts that China already leads the West on many measures. The 15th FYP calls for “extraordinary measures” to reduce reliance on foreign science and technology while strengthening domestic innovation capacity, placing “indigenous” innovation at the core of national development. In practice, this strategy often leverages foreign commercial and research ties to fill capability gaps while advancing national goals.
The FYP emphasizes boosting self-reliance in areas where China still depends on the United States, Europe, and Japan, including aircraft, agriculture, advanced equipment, instruments and tools, energy systems, gas turbines, software, and semiconductors. It also prioritizes upgrading legacy industries such as steel, petrochemicals, and shipbuilding, while driving advanced manufacturing through decisive breakthroughs in materials, equipment, machine tools, high-end instruments, and the industrial application of AI and robotics. The aim is to establish PRC leadership in strategic emerging sectors and secure further breakthroughs in core areas like biotechnology, semiconductors, and software.
China’s strong focus on self-reliance comes as concerns about tech sovereignty spread globally. Anthropic recently restricted use of its AI models by foreign individuals and countries, underscoring why many nations are doubling down on investments in domestic digital technologies. As China offered its free LLM versions, the controls placed on Anthropic were removed by the US government.
At Dalian, Guo Lanfeng, President, China Society of Economic Reform, identified three areas requiring sustained attention: consolidating the foundations of growth, responding to demographic change and adapting to a complex international environment. China’s advantages, he said, include its large market, comprehensive industrial system, innovation capacity and commitment to reform and opening-up.
GLOBAL GDP LEADER
China is expected to account for over a quarter of global real GDP growth in 2026, making its economic trajectory a key driver for global markets and supply chains. Overall, Asia, as the economic engine of the world, is projected to deliver over half of global GDP growth in 2026.
In a Special Address at WEF Dalian, Chinese Premier Li Qiang set out China’s innovation-driven vision for growth, emphasizing that new technologies should benefit the world and that this can be achieved through cooperation and collaboration. “We should harness technology for good. Innovation drives humanity’s quest for a better life,” said Li Qiang, Premier of the People’s Republic of China. “Advanced technologies should serve as tools that benefit people across countries, rather than sources of chaos that undermine peace and stability. Technology progress should always reflect humanity’s common values and advance global peace and development.”
An integrated growth model that lifts global economy was argued for at Dalian. “The next phase of innovation is about closing the gap between technological potential and real-world economic impact, to translate breakthroughs into tangible progress for industry and people,” said Alois Zwinggi, President and CEO, World Economic Forum. “Innovating at scale requires partnership across a range of sectors, including government, business, and academia. The meeting in Dalian focused on practical solutions that deliver growth for all.”
Global leaders spoke of the role of regional platforms, including APEC and ASEAN in strengthening economic integration and policy coordination in key areas such as the digital economy. “We need to be more ambitions about how far growth can go and more honest about the hard decisions and joint efforts that need to be made to get there,” said Mirek Dušek, Managing Director, World Economic Forum.
Industries are connected and no longer isolated. “When you buy a car, it’s not only that you can save money from electricity compared to gas—you can also create a personal token factory,” said Robin Zeng, Founder, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Contemporary Amperex Technology (CATL).
“Industrial resilience is a shared effort. No single company or country can build it alone; it depends on strengthening core capabilities while keeping value chains open, diversified and technologically connected,” said Kiva Allgood, Managing Director, World Economic Forum. “The latest Global Lighthouse Network members show that industrial transformation is entering a new phase, with leading manufacturers moving beyond isolated technology deployments to scale AI, automation and digital capabilities across operations end-to-end, strengthening productivity, resilience and long-term competitiveness.”
AI PLUS INITIATIVE
In 2025 China issued a guideline to implement the “AI Plus” initiative, promoting deep integration of AI across multiple fields to accelerate industrial development. The World Economic Forum assessed that China’s recent breakthroughs in generative AI—from DeepSeek to MiniMax—reflect years of national strategy, public-private alignment, and heavy investment in talent and infrastructure. Despite U.S. export controls on advanced chips, Chinese AI firms have adapted through architectural innovation, improved efficiency, and open-source collaboration, signalling a shift from dependency to resilience and self-reliance.
The WEF also reports that more than 80% of China’s advanced industrial enterprises operate within various clusters and development zones, which together generate over half of the country’s industrial output.
China dominates because it does. It has been unapologetic about investing in its own capabilities. The world may question it for many reasons, but China has ensured consistent efforts to strengthen its capacity despite several setbacks. There are many learnings in China’s relentless push through five-year plans to further enhance its global clout.
*Pranjal Sharma is a geoeconomic analyst and author of “India Innovates: Technological Sovereignty in a Weaponised World”.
