China's tech drive puts it at the forefront of global innovation, AI race

The Annual Meeting of the New Champions of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in China alternates each year between Tianjin and Dalian. This year, the meeting will be held in Dalian starting this week. 

For China, the event is an opportunity to showcase its accelerating technological prowess. According to market research firm CCID Consulting, the country’s artificial intelligence (AI) industry is expected to make great strides over the next 10 to 15 years, with market size reaching 1.73 trillion yuan ($240.4 billion) by 2035, representing 30.6 per cent of the global total. In 2025, China issued a guideline to implement the ‘AI Plus’ initiative, to promote deep integration of AI across multiple fields to accelerate industrial development. The WEF assessed that China’s recent breakthroughs in generative AI (GenAI) — from DeepSeek to MiniMax — reflect years of national strategy, public-private alignment, and investments in talent and infrastructure. Despite United States (US) export controls on advanced chips, Chinese AI firms have adapted through innovation, efficiency, and open-source collaboration — signalling a shift from dependency to resilience and self-reliance. 

The WEF also reports that more than 80 per cent of China’s advanced industrial enterprises operate within various clusters and development zones, which together generate over half of the country’s industrial output. New champions of China identified by the WEF in 2025 represented a diverse range of technological innovators: Deep Principle integrates AI with quantum chemistry; GS Biomats develops renewable furan bio-based materials; and HiNa Battery produces sustainable sodium-ion batteries. Further, KaiOS is expanding affordable internet and financial access for unserved populations; while Lightstandard leverages photonic computing to improve large language models (LLMs). Noematrix is developing hardware-compatible embodied intelligence systems; Novlead is building a molecular platform for nitric oxide-based clinical solutions; and Shengshu Technology concentrates on multi-modal generative AI infrastructure. Transtreams and Turing both address future intelligent computing needs. 

These company-level advances are within a broader national strategy: China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP), announced earlier this year, outlines a push for technological self-reliance amid geopolitical tensions and export restrictions. The plan targets leadership in sectors such as semiconductors, AI, robotics, quantum computing, 6G communications, aerospace, special materials, and advanced manufacturing. It signals a deliberate move from low-cost manufacturing toward high-value industrial production that has historically been led by the US and Europe. The 15th FYP calls for “extraordinary measures” to reduce reliance on foreign science and technology while strengthening domestic innovation capacity, placing “indigenous” innovation at the core of national development. In practice, this strategy often leverages foreign commercial and research ties to fill capability gaps while advancing national goals. 

The FYP emphasises boosting self-reliance in areas where China still depends on the US, Europe and Japan, including aircraft, agriculture, advanced equipment, instruments and tools, energy systems, gas turbines, software, and semiconductors. It also prioritises upgrading legacy industries such as steel, petrochemicals and shipbuilding, while driving advanced manufacturing through decisive breakthroughs in materials, equipment, machine tools, high-end instruments and the industrial application of AI and robotics. The ultimate aim is to establish Chinese leadership in strategic emerging sectors and secure further breakthroughs in core areas like biotechnology, semiconductors and software. 

China’s strong focus on self-reliance comes as concerns about tech sovereignty spread globally. Anthropic recently restricted use of its AI models by foreign individuals and countries, underscoring why many nations are doubling down on investments in domestic digital technologies. India, too, should learn from the models pursued by China and the US. 

As large consumer market with a growing industrial base, India will have to significantly scale up investing in domestic capacity and capabilities with a clear emphasis on technological sovereignty.

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The writer is an economic analyst and author