Politburo Meeting Unveils 'Emerging Pillar Industries' Plan, AI Among Six Sectors with 2025 Output Near RMB 6

The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, in its meeting to arrange second-half economic work, explicitly proposed actively promoting breakthroughs in frontier technologies and the development of future industries, striving to build emerging pillar industries, and continuously pushing forward the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries. This is the first time the term "emerging pillar industries" has been raised at the Politburo meeting level, marking a shift in the positioning of emerging industries such as artificial intelligence from growth points to pillars, becoming a key layout for driving the conversion of old and new growth drivers.

In the first half of 2026, AI-related industries maintained high growth of over 30%. The output of integrated circuits by industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 23.1% year on year, with the second quarter setting new monthly historical highs for three consecutive months; integrated circuit exports grew by 88.7% year on year, contributing nearly one-third of the growth in total merchandise exports. The total value of outbound technology licensing for innovative drugs reached approximately USD 100 billion, and emerging industries have become an important engine of China's economic growth.

The 2026 Government Work Report proposed implementing industrial innovation projects, encouraging central and state-owned enterprises to take the lead in opening application scenarios, and building emerging pillar industries such as integrated circuits, aerospace, biomedicine, and the low-altitude economy. Zheng Shanjie, chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), stated during the Two Sessions that the 15th Five-Year Plan period will see a number of high-growth industries gaining momentum, creating several trillion-yuan or even larger markets through incremental creation and tapping existing potential.

The State Council executive meeting held on July 10 studied work on cultivating emerging pillar industries, proposing to promote the large-scale development of emerging pillar industries across the entire chain, strengthen basic research and key software and hardware breakthroughs, support multiple technology route layouts, highlight application-driven approaches, and accelerate technology iteration and ecosystem improvement. On July 31, Jiang Yi, director of the NDRC's Policy Research Office, said at a press conference that accelerating the cultivation of emerging pillar industries, related industries are developing rapidly, innovation is accelerating, and their pillar role is becoming more prominent. Breakthroughs continue in key core technologies for integrated circuits. The first integrated circuit technology roadmap led by a Chinese enterprise, the "Tao Law," was released, and a number of major projects have started construction, with some reaching the hundred-billion-yuan scale.

In the field of artificial intelligence, the first fully domestic 100,000-card AI supercluster was officially put into operation. As of the end of June, the national intelligent computing power scale reached 2.8 times that of the same period in 2025. Local enterprises such as DeepSeek and Moonshot AI have successively released multiple open-source large models with trillion-level parameters, and the total global downloads of domestic large models exceeded 10 billion. More than 120,000 high-quality datasets have been built, and a virtuous cycle of mutual promotion among computing power, models, and data is accelerating. The NDRC will accelerate the layout and construction of national AI application pilot bases, focusing on areas with high value, high contribution, and good benefits, opening up a batch of high-value scenarios and creating a number of benchmark applications.

In July 2026, the "Scene Vientiane" special action for central enterprises, led by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), was launched in Beijing. The first batch of ten landmark scenarios for central enterprises was released on site, involving fields such as artificial intelligence. The first batch of central enterprise opening lists plans to launch about 100 scenarios. By establishing a normalized scenario project cultivation database, the scenario resources of central enterprises will be transformed into a shared platform for industrial innovation. During the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, SASAC released the second batch of central enterprise AI strategic high-value scenarios and industry high-quality datasets, launched AI open-source "Renewal Community" 2.0, and initiated the joint foundation project for the intelligent software factory of state-owned enterprises.

SASAC stated that it will deepen the "AI+" special action for central enterprises, focus on high-value scenarios, accelerate AI empowerment across various industries, and proactively open scenario resources to the industrial chain. It will strengthen the supply of key elements, accelerate the construction of computing power infrastructure, deepen computing-power-electricity collaboration, and enhance data governance capabilities across the entire chain. It will promote open source and openness, and cultivate a mutually beneficial and win-win industrial ecosystem. On July 31, 100 security robots jointly developed by SDIC Intelligence, together with ecological partners such as China Insurance Huai'an and Guangdong Huilun, were assembled and put into service. China's security industry, with an annual market size exceeding RMB 360 billion, is moving from traditional manpower to a new digital-intelligent stage of "human-machine collaboration." A relevant person in charge of SDIC Group said that SDIC Intelligence focuses on embodied intelligence scenarios, and the security robot is the latest exploration in embodied intelligence security, aiming to let robots undertake repetitive basic work and promote the transformation and upgrading of the security industry.