China Unveils 15th Five-Year Plan for SME Development Through 2030

In September 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of Finance and six other departments, jointly issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, setting out systematic arrangements for the overall requirements, main tasks and organizational implementation of SME development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. The plan proposes that by 2030, China's SMEs will have significantly enhanced their capacity for innovative development, with internal R&D expenditure by above-scale industrial SMEs growing at an average annual rate of more than 8%, specialized and innovative little giant enterprises reaching 22,000, and national SME characteristic industrial clusters reaching 600. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's SME innovation capacity improved rapidly, with specialized and innovative little giant enterprises recording an average R&D investment intensity of 7% and average R&D investment of more than 30 million yuan.

On enhancing scientific and technological innovation capacity, the plan proposes supporting qualified SMEs in participating in major national science and technology programs, encouraging government-supported repositories of scientific and technological achievement transformation projects to open free of charge to SMEs, and guiding universities and research institutes to license scientific and technological innovations to small and medium-sized enterprises on a use-first, pay-later basis. On improving the tiered cultivation system, the plan proposes accelerating the formation of a tiered development pattern with science and technology-based and innovative SMEs as the foundation, specialized and innovative SMEs and high-tech enterprises as the backbone, specialized and innovative little giant enterprises and manufacturing single-champion enterprises as the core, and science and technology leading enterprises and world-class enterprises as the leaders.

On digital, intelligent and green development, the plan specifies that by 2030, the digital, intelligent and green levels of SMEs will rise rapidly, a number of typical application scenarios for digital and intelligent transformation will be created, the share of specialized and innovative SMEs at the second level of digital and intelligent development will reach more than 95% and at the third level more than 80%, and energy and resource utilization efficiency will improve markedly. The plan proposes improving the service system for empowering SMEs with digital and intelligent capabilities and building an artificial intelligence application service chain for SMEs; focusing on digital and intelligent transformation scenario maps for segmented industries, promoting leading enterprises to work with industrial software companies to develop specialized digital and intelligent tools and cultivating a number of small, fast, lightweight and precise digital and intelligent products and solutions; and implementing an artificial intelligence SME entrepreneurship support plan, promoting entrepreneurship incubation carriers to strengthen platform development including computing power scheduling and data openness, and providing full life-cycle services for resident artificial intelligence SMEs.

On green development, the plan proposes guiding qualified SMEs to gradually establish full-cycle green production models, implement green and low-carbon transformation, improve environmental performance, carry out carbon footprint and carbon emissions management, and expand the scope and scale of government procurement of green products.

On the supply of production factors, the plan separately establishes a chapter on strengthening the supply of production factors and consolidating the foundational support for development, introducing systematic, tiered and categorized supporting policies around the three major factors of financing, talent and data, and building a factor guarantee system covering the full life cycle of enterprises. On financing, the plan proposes vigorously developing venture capital, establishing a second phase of the National SME Development Fund, driving social capital to invest early, in small enterprises, for the long term and in hard technology, and promoting the open and shared use of new production factors such as data and computing power by SMEs. On talent, the plan proposes building a full-coverage talent supply and retention system, introducing differentiated support policies for three types of entities—business management, professional and technical, and vocational skills—and connecting all links of talent introduction, cultivation, evaluation and incentives. On data, the plan proposes improving the supporting mechanism for data factors in three aspects: data supply, security assurance and asset transformation.