Why maintaining reasonable manufacturing share matters for China's 15th Five-Year Plan

BEIJING -- As China maps out its development blueprint for the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), maintaining a reasonable share of manufacturing has emerged as a key strategic objective, underscoring the country's commitment to bolstering the real economy and building a strong manufacturing power.

The Communist Party of China Central Committee's recommendations for formulating the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) explicitly propose that the share of manufacturing in the national economy should be kept at an appropriate level, and that a modernized industrial system should be developed with advanced manufacturing as the backbone.

This move comes at a critical juncture as China strives to build a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as its backbone, amid profound global changes and accelerated technological revolution.

Manufacturing serves as the cornerstone of China's national economy and a pillar for building a strong nation. Data shows that in 2024, China's manufacturing value added reached 33.6 trillion yuan (about 4.74 trillion U.S. dollars), accounting for 24.9 percent of the country's GDP.

The nation has maintained its position as the world's largest manufacturing hub for 15 consecutive years, boasting a complete industrial system covering all categories in the UN industrial classification.

Its innovation capacity, industrial chain resilience and competitiveness have been significantly enhanced, with marked progress in intelligent and green development, laying a solid foundation for building a modern industrial system.

Maintaining a reasonable proportion of manufacturing is a major strategic arrangement under the new situation, noted Xu Jianwei, a researcher at the Institute of Industrial and Technological Economics under the Chinese Academy of Macroeconomic Research.

He emphasized that the global landscape is undergoing accelerated changes, with intensifying international competition and swift technological breakthroughs. Although China's manufacturing sector is vast, it now stands at a crucial turning point -- moving from scale to strength -- making it all the more essential to advance the strategy of building a world-class manufacturing power.

International experience shows that manufacturing's GDP share usually falls in post-industrialization era, but an overly low proportion causes industrial hollowing-out, weakening economic strength and risk resistance. Some countries fell into the "middle-income trap" by neglecting manufacturing, while developed nations that pursued "de-industrialization" now struggle with "re-industrialization."

For China -- a developing country of more than 1.4 billion people -- manufacturing remains indispensable to its modernization drive and to strengthening the real economy.

To achieve this goal, the recommendations outline several key measures, including advancing industrial foundation reengineering and research into major technologies and equipment; promoting the implementation of high-quality development initiatives for key industrial chains; and accelerating the manufacturing sector's transition toward digitalization and intelligent transformation.

Xu highlighted that the key is to ensure manufacturing growth aligns with China's overall stage of economic development. In practice, this means fostering a broad societal consensus on the importance of manufacturing, upgrading traditional sectors, cultivating emerging and future industries, and steadfastly advancing intelligent, green and integrated development.

Efforts will also focus on establishing and improving an investment growth mechanism, promoting in-depth industrial transformation and upgrading, developing new quality productive forces, and achieving effective improvement in quality and reasonable growth in quantity, Xu said. 

The views don't necessarily reflect those of Qiushi Journal.