China targets global tech leadership by 2035, eyes next five years as crucial

China aims to become a global leader in science and technology by 2035, and has identified the next five years as a critical, decisive period for breakthrough advancements towards that goal.
This push comes as international competition intensifies in strategic fields such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

At a State Council press briefing on September 18, the minister of Science and Technology, Yin Hejun, reported on China’s progress during the ongoing 14th five-year plan period (2021 to 2025).

National R&D investment has surged by 48 per cent compared to 2020, the number of researchers remains the world’s largest, and China has climbed to 10th place in the Global Innovation Index. It has led the world in the volume of high-impact international journal publications and patent applications for five consecutive years.

While China has achieved front-runner status in areas like space exploration, 5G and new energy, the semiconductor and AI sectors remain key battlegrounds, especially as US-led export curbs hobble Beijing’s access to advanced chip manufacturing technology.

“The core challenge for China’s chip industry is transitioning from a strategy of ‘catching up’ and ‘import substitution’ to one of pioneering new technological pathways,” according to Professor Ye Tianchun, a leading academic in integrated circuits at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

“The semiconductor industry is facing the dual challenges of a technology blockade and supply chain decoupling,” Ye noted in a May article. “The paramount development needs remain in the independent R&D of advanced process nodes, exploring new technical routes and cultivating a collaborative ecosystem.”

China has achieved a degree of self-sufficiency in mature process nodes, specifically those of 28 nanometres and above. However, the high-end market is still dominated by American, Japanese and European companies. Systematic breakthroughs are still needed in the development of advanced process equipment, such as lithography machines and their core components.

At the same time, as transistor sizes approach their physical limits, the global semiconductor industry is actively exploring new frontiers, with emerging technologies such as photonic chips and quantum computing offering potential for performance leaps.

“Domestically, fully depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) technology presents an opportunity,” Ye said.

Compared to the mainstream FinFET or “fin field-effect transistor” technology, FDSOI offers advantages like simpler manufacturing processes, lower manufacturing costs, high speed and low power consumption – and has less demanding requirements for advanced lithography tools. Such transformative innovations could provide China with alternative pathways to high-end chips.

“Another pressing issue is the problem of low-level, redundant internal competition. In almost every segment where localisation has been achieved, there are more than five domestic companies competing,” Ye said.

“This is partly a result of US restrictions pushing firms into horizontal expansion, and partly due to policy incentives attracting capital and new entrants who replicate mature products, thereby wasting innovative resources.”

The strategy of catch-up and substitution, while building capabilities within the global ecosystem, has also created a dependency on foreign technological road maps, leaving China strategically passive.

In the face of decoupling efforts led by the United States, China must now establish its own development model, Ye said, describing it as “building our own house with our own blueprints”.

According to Professor Li Xianjun of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences,“China must not only overcome existing bottlenecks, such as developing EUV (extreme ultraviolet) lithography, but also make forward-looking investments in emerging and disruptive technologies.”

Li said this included advancing chiplet packaging to achieve near-advanced performance using mature nodes, actively building the RISC-V open-source chip ecosystem to break traditional architecture monopolies, and exploring entirely new manufacturing techniques, such as nanoimprint lithography.

“Growth in areas like computing infrastructure, intelligent driving and smart manufacturing is expected to be a key market driver during the 15th five-year plan period (2026-2030),” he added.

The rapid development of AI is a dual catalyst for the chip industry. It creates explosive demand for specialised AI chips while simultaneously transforming chip design and manufacturing processes through automation, advanced materials screening, and improved equipment efficiency.

The 15th five-year plan period will be crucial for the accelerated innovation and widespread application of AI, Chen Xiaohong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said in an interview with the state-owned China Economic Times newspaper.

She said China must accelerate the creation of an ecosystem that integrates scientific and industrial innovation, calling this a strategic choice for boosting national competitiveness and fostering high-quality economic development.

This AI strategy involves three key pillars.

First, concentrating efforts to make breakthroughs in foundational algorithms, development frameworks and high-end chips.

Second, promoting the development of brain-inspired computing to reduce the energy consumption of training and running large models; advancing explainable AI to tackle issues of model “hallucination” and opaque decision-making; and enhancing cross-modal representation and generation technologies to improve the understanding and creation of multi-modal information spanning text, images, sound and video.

Third, fostering the integration of data, algorithms, computing power and computing networks. This involves improving data markets, promoting authorised use of public data, building open-source algorithm ecosystems and establishing national computing power scheduling platforms.

“Application integration will be prioritised in fields like humanoid robots, intelligent connected vehicles, smart green transport and the low-altitude economy,” Chen said.

Echoing this direction, the minister of industry and information technology, Li Lecheng, announced at the China International Industry Fair last month that the 15th five-year plan period would focus on creating AI and manufacturing application scenarios.

It would also actively pioneer future industries such as brain-computer interfaces, the metaverse and quantum information, Li said. South China Morning Post