A medical staff transfers clinical samples to a drone on top of the roof of a hospital in Tongling, East China's Anhui Province on January 7, 2025. The drone will carry the samples to a medical innovation center 6 kilometers away. The market size of China's low-altitude economy is projected to reach 1.5 trillion yuan ($205 billion) by 2025, according to data from the Civil Aviation Administration of China.
Chinese provinces and cities, especially economic powerhouses, have rolled out their economic work plans for 2025, with new quality productive forces, as well as scientific and technological innovation, in focus to boost high-quality growth.
Shanghai, which delivered its Government Work Report on Wednesday, said it will strengthen scientific and technological innovation capabilities in frontier fields such as cell and gene therapy, brain-computer interfaces, 6G, quantum computing and fusion energy.
Meanwhile, Shanghai will strengthen the deep integration of industry, academia and research led by enterprises; support enterprises in leading major scientific and technological projects, and establish and improve new mechanisms for tackling key core technologies. The city will also develop incubators, focusing on nurturing technology enterprises.
The 2025 plan is based on Shanghai's existing foundation of high-tech hubs. Shanghai's Government Work Report revealed that the scale of the municipality's three leading industries - integrated circuits (ICs), biomedicine and artificial intelligence (AI) - reached 1.8 trillion yuan ($245.6 billion) in 2024. Expenditure on research and development accounted for 4.4 percent of the city's GDP, and the number of high-value invention patents per 10,000 people increased to 57.9.
South China's Guangdong Province, another economic powerhouse, on Wednesday released its 2025 Government Work Plan, focusing on 12 major tasks. These include the consolidation and enhancement of Guangdong's leading position in manufacturing, the building of a modern industrial system and the development of new quality productive forces, in accordance with local conditions.
According to the Government Work Plan, Guangdong will accelerate the development of emerging and future industries, as well as the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. It will also vigorously develop the productive services industry.
Efforts will be put into emerging industries such as ICs, new-energy vehicles (NEVs), AI, the low-altitude economy, new materials and biopharmaceuticals. Guangdong will cultivate future industries such as bio-manufacturing, quantum technology, embodied intelligence and 6G.
The province also vowed to advance the construction of pilot cities for intelligent connected vehicles, while improving the systems for low-altitude smart logistics, urban air transportation and emergency air rescue.
Guangdong's leading position in manufacturing is evident from signs of progress in 2024. The added value of advanced manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing accounted for 56.7 percent and 31.6 percent, respectively, of the industrial output of enterprises above a designated size.
The production of NEVs grew by 43 percent, that of industrial robots by 31.2 percent and that of ICs by 21 percent, according to Guangdong's Government Work Report.
Beijing on Tuesday rolled out its 2025 work plan, clearly proposing to focus on developing and expanding high-tech industries, which will be the engines for developing new quality productive forces.
To achieve this goal, Beijing will accelerate the construction of a global benchmark city for the digital economy, promote deep coverage of 5G networks, and establish a comprehensive pilot zone for the market-oriented allocation reform of data elements.
China is strengthening policy support in promoting the development of high-tech industries and increasing investment in sci-tech innovation to generate new industries, new models and new drivers of growth, which is the core factor for developing new quality productivity forces, Pan Helin, a veteran economist, told the Global Times, noting that high-quality development will be promoted in this way.
In December, the Central Economic Work Conference set priorities for the nation's economic work in 2025, including the use of scientific and technological innovation to lead the development of new quality productive forces and build a modern industrial system, according to the Xinhua News Agency.
Enterprises are inspired by the national-level deployment of the development of new quality productive forces with scientific and technological innovation, which aims to build a modern industrial system, Qi Xiangdong, a vice chairman of the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce, also chairman of Qi An Xin Technology Group, told the Global Times.
China's emphasis on high-quality development aligns with its vision of achieving sustainable, inclusive growth while positioning itself as a global leader in advanced technologies and industries,
Jack Perry Jr, chairman of 48 Group Club, a London-based private company dedicated to promoting China-UK trade, told the Global Times in December, noting that "the priorities set for 2025 underscore China's determination to foster sustainable, innovation-driven growth."