China’s Minister of Science and Technology Yin Hejun stated that the country will continue to boost high-quality development by integrating sci-tech innovation with industrial innovation. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), new quality productive forces have developed rapidly, with the value-added output of large-scale high-tech manufacturing enterprises rising by 42 percent compared to the previous plan period.
Yin highlighted the significant improvement in innovation capabilities of Chinese enterprises. In 2024, 524 mainland companies ranked among the world’s top 2,000 industrial firms in terms of R&D investment. Advances in artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, and big data have upgraded traditional industries into smarter and greener sectors, while innovations in next-generation information technology and new energy have fueled the growth of emerging industries. China has also broken world records in photovoltaic cell efficiency and offshore wind turbine capacity, with new energy technology patents now accounting for over 40 percent of the global total.
Yin emphasized that cutting-edge technologies such as AI and brain-computer interface devices are laying the foundation for future industries. China has developed large-scale language models at an internationally advanced level, creating over 100 application scenarios. Meanwhile, breakthroughs have accelerated the use of humanoid robots in automobile manufacturing, logistics, and power inspection, providing a solid base for the trillion-yuan-scale industries of the future.