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China Science

Exclusive | Made in China 2025: China meets most targets in manufacturing plan, proving US tariffs and sanctions ineffective

Sanctions and tariffs implemented as part of a US-led trade war have put increased pressure on China’s manufacturing industry
Despite that, a Post investigation can reveal a large proportion of the ‘Made in China 2025’ 10-year targets have been achieved

Science

Zhang Tongin BeijingandDannie Peng

Published: 6:00am, 30 Apr 2024

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In 2015, China set out on an ambitious 10-year plan – dubbed “Made in China 2025” – to achieve self-reliance, innovation and strength in the manufacturing industry within 10 years.

But during that time, a trade war with the United States has done its best to stop China crossing off its list of goals. Now, with only eight months left until 2025, the South China Morning Post has investigated China’s progress.

When the plan was first set out, most cars on Chinese roads were from Western carmakers, and the sky was dominated entirely by aircraft made by American company Boeing or European Airbus. Many Chinese factories could not operate without imported machine tools. Chips, operating systems, and software in computers and mobile phones were mostly sourced from the US. Even the databases used by banks relied on multinational corporations for coding and maintenance.

Back then, China stood at the lower end of the global industrial value chain, producing mostly cheap and technically backward products. Made in China 2025 sought to change that, allowing Chinese manufacturing, through scientific and technological advancements, to produce high-quality, hi-tech and high-value products.

In 2018, then-US president Donald Trump tried to upset China’s plan by initiating a trade war. The US government sanctioned Chinese hi-tech enterprises, put up high tariffs and conducted a nationwide investigation of scientists collaborating with China. After Joe Biden took over as US leader in 2021, he went a step further by imposing measures such as a chip ban on China.

Since the outbreak of the trade war, the Chinese government has refrained from publicly discussing the Made in China 2025 plan, and many related materials have been removed from its websites.

But based on official books published a decade ago and other authoritative sources, the Post has compiled more than 260 goals previously proposed under the plan. These goals span 10 key areas, many involving highly specialised and complex technologies.

And the analysis confirms that more than 86 per cent of these goals have been achieved, with some others likely to be completed later this year or next. Meanwhile some of the targets, such as electric vehicles (EV) and renewable energy production, have been well surpassed.

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As a direct result of the persistence and advancement of the Made in China 2025 plan, there have been profound changes in Chinese society: the number of electric vehicles bought by Chinese consumers has now surpassed that of fossil fuel vehicles, with the most popular being local brands; the Chinese-made passenger plane C919 has begun serving some of the busiest routes; the widespread adoption of 5G technology allows railway passengers in China to enjoy high-speed internet even when passing through tunnels; China has more smart factories and automated terminals than any other country; high-end phones using domestic chips and operating systems have become bestsellers; and the production capacity of Chinese shipyards has surpassed that of the United States by over 200 times, among others.

Some goals remain unfulfilled, including advanced photolithography technology which is used in circuit manufacturing, intercontinental passenger aircraft and broadband internet satellite networks. This year, the Chinese government has proposed another ambitious plan to develop “new productive forces”, which is seen as a continuation of the Made in China 2025 initiative.

Now, faced with high-quality and low-cost hi-tech products from China, especially in photovoltaics, large wind turbines and electric vehicles, the West is considering launching a new round of trade wars and sanctions.

But it is doubtful just how successful they may be. Looking at the restrictive measures the West has put in place to date, they have proven limited in their effectiveness – and sometimes even counterproductive.

A decade ago, Boeing and Airbus dominated Chinese skies, but now the Chinese-made C919 is flying some of the busiest routes. Photo: Xinhua

One of the areas where China has faced the most roadblocks has been the information technology industry.

The United States and its allies not only prevent Chinese companies from accessing advanced chip technology but they also make it difficult for Chinese-produced telecommunications products, such as 5G base stations, to enter European and American markets. The inevitable decrease in revenue in turn puts pressure on scientific and technological research and development.

Despite this challenge, China has achieved most of the goals set in integrated circuits, communication equipment, operating systems, industrial software and smart manufacturing. Chinese companies can now produce high-value products including servers, desktop CPUs, solid-state drives, high-speed fibre optics, industrial operating systems and big data systems. Some of these products have captured a considerable market share.

AI phones became a hot topic at last year’s CES (Consumer Electronics Show), but as early as 2015, China had already included AI-enhanced mobile chipsets in its planning. Nowadays, Chinese smartphones with AI features are highly competitive and have become a much sought-after feature for buyers.

In the field of photolithography technology, Huawei Technologies has achieved double or multiple exposure processes for high-end chip manufacturing. However, China has not yet achieved industrialisation of the most advanced EUV photolithography technology, so this goal has not been fully achieved.

The goal of autonomous measuring and detection equipment has also not been accomplished, in part because there are fewer US sanctions in this field. According to the latest industry data, most smart meters and online compositional analysis equipment used in the Chinese market are still foreign brands.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden. An ongoing trade war between the two countries was started by former president Donald Trump, but continued by Biden. Photo: AFP

In the world of EVs, the technologically advanced vehicles produced in China have been eagerly sought by global consumers, propelling China to surpass Japan as the world’s biggest car exporter last year.

In fact, the more acclaim the Chinese EVs attract, the more sanctions they are hit with; they have become the main target of a new round of sanctions and tariffs with the US and some European countries citing Chinese government intervention as their reasons for the move.

Even the Chinese government did not anticipate the rapid growth in demand for electric vehicles. According to the Made in China 2025 goals, EV annual sales were supposed to reach 3 million by next year, but Chinese carmakers sold close to 10 million last year, with BYD Automotive alone exceeding 3 million.

Chinese electric vehicles are not only price-competitive but also technologically ahead of their competitors. As early as a decade ago, the Chinese government set the development of low-cost, high-performance, vehicle-mounted lidar as a national goal. This has enabled Chinese carmakers to develop more reliable and powerful intelligent driving systems than competitors like Tesla, which do not use lidar.

Nowadays, new Chinese-branded cars can connect to the internet and provide rich entertainment features – something which was also planned a decade ago.

Of course, some goals were set too optimistically. For instance, the energy density requirement for automotive batteries was set at 400 watt hours per kilogram, but the mainstream products on the market now only have a density of just over 200Wh/kg. The goal of achieving fully autonomous driving by next year also seems far off at this point.

Also, apart from Huawei, most Chinese carmakers still rely on US companies like NVIDIA for their autonomous driving chips, falling short of the localisation rate target. However, some insiders believe that the use of Chinese high-end chips in EVs will increase significantly from this year.

The deadline is approaching for the Made in China 2025 plan which was drawn up in 2015. But it seems to be in good shape with at least 86 per cent of targets achieved. Photo: www.gov.cn

Aerospace is one of the longest-sanctioned sectors in China. Chinese satellites and rockets cannot use American chips, components or technology. Non-Western satellites using US technology cannot be launched in China. Nasa scientists are also banned by law from any communication with their Chinese counterparts.

The strict rules meant Chinese scientists and engineers had to rely purely on their own efforts – and it has paid off. They have achieved almost all the goals, including Mars landing exploration, the global BeiDou satellite navigation system, a space station, landing on the far side of the moon and building the world’s largest commercial satellite observation network for Earth observation.

Several Chinese space companies also plan to launch reusable rockets later this year or next, so that goal may be achieved on time.

However, the speed of building a giant internet satellite constellation to compete with Starlink has been slower than expected. Also, the asteroid exploration plan originally scheduled for launch in 2023 has been postponed to 2025.

Meanwhile, in China’s power equipment technology sector, according to the Post’s investigation, the Made in China 2025 plan has seen the country transform from a follower to a leader.

Chinese scientists and engineers have developed the world’s most efficient and clean coal-fired generating units, as well as a new generation of nuclear power technologies including high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, sodium-cooled fast reactors and thorium-based molten salt reactors.

They have also created the world’s most powerful hydroelectric generating units, the most efficient solar power stations, the most powerful wind turbines and the most advanced, largest-scale long-distance transmission and distribution network.

These advances have had a ripple effect, improving the global competitiveness of China’s entire manufacturing sector, and also potentially impacting future artificial intelligence (AI) competition because of AI’s high energy consumption.

The sector’s unmet goals include ultra-high-power gas turbine power generation equipment and a 2 gigawatt nuclear pressurised water reactor.

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In the areas of robotics, agricultural equipment, biopharmaceuticals and marine engineering, all the goals set have been achieved.

Chinese companies can independently design and manufacture the world’s most advanced superconducting magnetic resonance system, which can generate a magnetic field of 5 tesla, 70 per cent higher than the planned target. Its price is just one-tenth of similar Western products, significantly reducing the cost of hospital examinations for Chinese patients needing MRIs.

Anti-cancer drugs developed by Chinese companies have started to enter the US market, with prices just a fraction of similar drugs offered by Western pharmaceutical companies.

Technological advancements have also significantly increased China’s agricultural output. Despite limited cultivated land, China produces more than half the world’s vegetables, thanks to the use of drones, automatic seeders and biotechnology.

Products like robot dogs made by Chinese companies have also beaten international competitors with leading performance and low prices.

Plus, China has now become the largest shipbuilding factory on Earth, capable of producing all types of civil and military vessels, with most key equipment being self-reliant.

The sector with the lowest Made in China 2025 completion rate is new materials, now at only 75 per cent.

The pending targets include the industrialisation of large-size deep-ultraviolet non-linear crystals, low-cost titanium alloy powder, certain special superconducting materials, graphene electrode materials that can double the range of lithium-ion battery-powered cars, and some special chemical materials.

“China has basically achieved the vision set 10 years ago,” according to Zang Jiyuan, a scholar specialising in strategic research on China’s manufacturing sector at the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE).

“Manufacturing development in China has never been at a standstill, and containment by the West has been accelerating China’s efforts to achieve technological self-reliance.”

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Many other countries have initiated similar plans to bolster their manufacturing sector. Germany’s “Industry 4.0”, introduced in April 2013, focused on digitising supply, manufacturing and sales data within production processes. The US launched the “Industrial Internet Revolution” at about the same time, aiming to improve industrial processes through the Internet of Things and big data technologies.

In May 2015, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry initiated a plan for a digital upgrade of the manufacturing sector. France also launched its “New Industrial France” programme to adapt digitisation and smart technologies.

Since 2012, a team led by CAE researchers has been working on a scoring system to measure the performance and strength of the manufacturing sector in nine major countries. The results show that China has made significant progress over the past decade.

While total output is important, the index also measures dimensions such as the economic efficiency, innovation and industrial structure of the manufacturing sector. For example, if a country’s manufacturing sector has more globally recognised brands, higher R&D investment intensity and higher product profitability, it will receive a higher score in the system.

In 2012, China scored 89 points, placing it fourth in the world, with the United States (156), Japan (126) and Germany (119) making up the top three.

By comparison, according to the latest annual report released at the end of December last year, China was still in fourth place in 2022, but the gap between its scores and those of the other three countries had narrowed, with the United States, Germany, Japan and China scoring 182, 133, 126 and 124 respectively.

Going by this index alone, Germany and Japan have maintained a relatively stable pace, while the US is making rapid progress and is well ahead of other countries.

“The US is still the undisputed world leader in manufacturing, especially in industries such as military technology and aerospace,” Zang said.

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