Nation eyes mega-infrastructure investment push

An image captures the construction of a box girder for the Jiaozuo-Luoyang-Pingdingshan High-speed Railway, a project partially undertaken by China Railway Construction Corp's 24th bureau, in Jiaozuo, Henan province, on May 25. [China Daily]

BEIJING — China is mulling multi-trillion-yuan investment through a "Six Networks" initiative, as the country works to expand domestic demand and stabilize economic growth amid external uncertainties and lingering domestic supply-demand imbalances.

The "Six Networks" include water networks, new-type power grids, computing power networks, next-generation communication networks, urban underground pipeline networks and logistics networks.

Bolstering the country's strategic economic positioning, the initiative has been given prominent attention by both the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council Executive Meeting in recent sessions.

China is now moving quickly to implement the investment plans. Li Chao, spokesperson with the National Development and Reform Commission, said at a recent news conference that the commission would promptly issue relevant plans and implementation schemes, further coordinate the construction aspects of the "Six Networks," clarify investment priorities in each area, break down targets into annual tasks and set clear timelines and progress schedules.

Investment in the "Six Networks" and related key areas is provisionally estimated to exceed 7 trillion yuan ($1 trillion) this year alone, said NDRC head Zheng Shanjie.

China expects to invest more than 5 trillion yuan during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30) on the upgraded power grid alone, which will involve the building of power transmission corridors and interprovincial electricity mutual-aid projects, and the upgrading of urban power distribution networks and the strengthening of weak county-level and rural power grids.

While the country has already built a massive, safe and technologically advanced national power grid, surging new energy connection demand, growing regional power supply-demand imbalances, and the increasing complexity of safe grid operations have prompted action towards building a more secure, reliable and environmentally friendly power grid system.

Underground pipelines represent another massive investment front. China had built nearly 3.9 million kilometers of pipelines by the end of 2025, the world's largest such network.

Yet gaps remain, as aging pipelines urgently need replacement, and problems such as insufficient urban drainage capacity and water supply leakage still remain.

During the 15th Five-Year Plan period, China expects to invest approximately 5 trillion yuan to build and renovate about 770,000 km of gas, water supply, drainage and heating pipelines, enhancing urban infrastructure safety and resilience.

The investment wave will ripple across a wide range of sectors, said Zhou Wei, managing director of China Investment Consulting Co Ltd, citing demand for steel, pipes and construction machinery from traditional infrastructure upgrades.

The "Six Networks" should not only serve as an independent network separately, but also can play a part in multi-network collaboration, to promote the optimization and integration of modern infrastructure systems and achieve larger efficiency, the NDRC said.

"In the short term, hardware and some software investments related to the 'Six Networks' construction carry the certainty of incremental investment," said Wang Xiaojie, chief domestic policy analyst at Western Securities' research center.

In the long term, the new infrastructure is expected to boost the improvement of the industrial ecosystem, leading to a virtuous cycle of investment and consumption, further amplifying domestic demand.

XINHUA-CHINA DAILY