Breakthrough from Zero to One: A Complete Guide to the Strategic Layout of New Materials During the 15th Five-Year Plan Period

New materials serve as the cornerstone of scientific and technological innovation and a critical battlefield in major-country competition. If traditional manufacturing lays bricks and tiles for a skyscraper, new materials are the foundation that determines how tall this building can stand. At present, China is in a pivotal stage of transforming from a major material producer to a powerful material nation. Facing the new era of the 15th Five-Year Plan, how should the new materials industry be strategically arranged? What opportunities and challenges lie ahead? This article delivers a comprehensive interpretation.

Core Strategy: New Materials Elevated to an Emerging Pillar Industry

The proposals for the 15th Five-Year Plan clearly call for accelerating the development of strategic emerging industries including new materials and fostering a batch of emerging pillar industries with great growth potential and high technological content. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee further designated new materials as an emerging pillar industry of the national economy, setting a target of lifting its industrial output value to account for 5% of GDP.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has set the goal of meeting the material demands of industrial chains and supply chains in key application sectors, with advanced basic materials, key strategic materials, cutting-edge new materials, and "AI + materials" as core development priorities, to drive coordinated upstream and downstream innovation across the entire industrial chain. The National Industry and Information Technology Work Conference held in December 2025 clarified that in 2026, China will cultivate emerging pillar industries such as integrated circuits, new displays and new materials.

Zhang Yunming, Vice Minister of MIIT, stated that the ministry will fully implement the arrangements outlined in the Outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan, balancing industrial consolidation and emerging sector cultivation. On one hand, it will consolidate the foundation for upgrading traditional industries; on the other hand, it will accelerate the layout of frontier materials and tackle bottleneck key materials to provide robust material support for developing new quality productive forces and advancing new industrialization.

Development Foundation: Dual Leaps in Industrial Scale and Innovation

During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, China's new materials industry achieved remarkable growth in both scale and innovation: its total industrial output value exceeded 8.2 trillion yuan with an average annual growth rate above 12%. Breakthroughs in self-sufficiency were realized for core materials including single-crystal superalloy blades and high-performance carbon fiber, while the domestic localization rate of semiconductor silicon wafers rose from 15% to 25%.

2025 marked a landmark year for technological breakthroughs. Shanxi Huayang Group successfully realized large-scale domestic mass production of T1000-grade high-end carbon fiber, making China one of the few countries worldwide to master this technology. Known as an elite new material, T1000 carbon fiber boasts a density only one quarter of steel and tensile strength over five times that of ordinary steel. A mere 0.5 grams of the fiber can bear a load of more than 200 kilograms, and it operates stably in extreme environments ranging from -200°C to 300°C.

In the field of semiconductor materials, Nanda Optoelectronics achieved annual mass production of 50 tons of ArF photoresist with stable continuous supply to downstream clients, while Shanghai Simgui Technology rolled out mass production of 12-inch silicon wafers, lifting the 2025 localization target to 30%. To date, over 550 billion yuan worth of domestically produced new materials have been launched to market, supporting the maiden flight of the Shenzhou-21 manned spacecraft and the commercial operation of the C919 large passenger aircraft.

Three Core Priorities: Targeted Policies for Differentiated Progress

MIIT has devised a systematic layout for the new materials industry divided into three major segments:

1. Advanced Basic Materials
   Centered on lightweight and high-functionalization demands, efforts will focus on breakthroughs in high-strength and high-toughness aluminum alloys, high-performance magnesium alloys, titanium alloys, alongside copper-based electronic materials and rare metal functional materials to underpin the growth of electronic information and new energy sectors.
2. Key Strategic Materials
   Self-reliance will be prioritized for bottleneck materials such as high-temperature alloys, high-end carbon fiber and semiconductor silicon wafers. Sectors including photoresist, high-purity sputtering targets and single-crystal blades for aero-engines still record a localization rate below 30%, marking core tackling areas for the 15th Five-Year Plan. For advanced non-ferrous metal materials, the plan highlights the implementation of industrial foundation reconstruction projects to resolve supply chain bottlenecks and fully guarantee the safety and controllability of industrial chains and supply chains.
3. Cutting-Edge New Materials
   Forward-looking deployment will cover superconductors, low-dimensional quantum materials, advanced semiconductors, bio-based materials, advanced energy materials and graphene. The country aims to develop a batch of world-leading original innovations and realize their industrialization. Five research institutes for frontier materials will be built relying on national laboratories, with an annual basic research fund of 500 million yuan supporting 100 forward-looking research projects. By 2030, China targets 20 globally pioneering original achievements and 100 proprietary intellectual property rights.

"AI + Materials": An Accelerator for New Materials R&D

The Implementation Opinions on the Special Action of "AI + Manufacturing", jointly issued by MIIT and seven other central departments, call for deep integration of artificial intelligence and new materials research and development. MIIT will build a national big data center for new materials, establish high-precision, long-sequence and multi-modal industry datasets, develop cross-scale computing frameworks for alloys, ceramics, polymers and energy materials, and build industrial large models covering molecular design, synthetic preparation and process optimization of new materials.

Sinopec has put forward cutting-edge directions including AI-driven discovery and rational design of novel materials, and central state-owned enterprises are adopting artificial intelligence as a core engine for new materials research and development.

"AI + Materials": An Accelerator for New Materials R&D

Peng Shou, Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, published an article on MIIT's official website emphasizing that during the 15th Five-Year Plan, the fundamental role of new materials in advancing new industrialization must be fully recognized. The core transformation paths of high-end development, intelligent manufacturing and green development will consolidate the bedrock of new industrialization. He stressed that new materials have achieved accelerated breakthroughs fueled by new technologies since the 21st century, serving as the foundational pillar of future industries with their pioneering, leading and disruptive properties.

Liu Zhongfan, Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, suggested that the 15th Five-Year Plan must align with national strategic priorities to systematically upgrade innovation capacity and consolidate basic research as a stabilizer. Stable funding support will be increased for free exploration and non-consensus research, encouraging scientists to venture into uncharted research territories and deliver more original breakthroughs from zero to one.

Chemical New Materials: Four Core Goals — Fix Bottlenecks, Boost Performance, Expand Applications, Explore Frontiers

Chemical new materials constitute a vital segment of the broader new materials industry. In 2025, the output and output value of chemical new materials rose by 69% and 85% respectively compared with 2020, with the self-sufficiency rate growing by 10 percentage points. Four core development directions will be pursued during the 15th Five-Year Plan:
First, accelerate the resolution of bottlenecks in core products, focusing on ultra-high voltage polyethylene insulating cable materials, special nylons and solid-state battery materials to lift the overall self-sufficiency rate to 90%;
Second, continuously improve the performance of existing materials;
Third, drive wider market adoption of new materials;
Fourth, strengthen research reserves for frontier materials, with focused exploration of graphene, third-generation semiconductors and black phosphorene.

Coexisting Challenges and Opportunities: Low Localization Rates yet Vast Market Potential

Despite remarkable achievements, severe challenges remain. Localization rates for core products such as photoresist for high-end chips, high-purity sputtering targets, single-crystal high-temperature alloy blades for aero-engines and high-performance medical implant materials stand below 30%, resulting in heavy reliance on imports. Functional materials including high-end polyolefins, engineering plastics and high-performance fibers only achieve a self-sufficiency rate of 65% to 80%, requiring large-scale imports.

Nevertheless, this gap represents enormous market opportunities. The rapid expansion of nine national strategic emerging industries and six future industries has created strong demand for high-performance materials in innovative products such as humanoid robots, quantum computing, 6G equipment and brain-computer interfaces. The electronic materials sector posted operating revenue of 715 billion yuan in 2020, projected to reach 1.285 trillion yuan by 2025 at a compound annual growth rate of 12.5%. The overall market size of new materials is expected to hit 1.8 trillion yuan by 2027, with total industrial output value likely to surpass 12 trillion yuan by 2030. Semiconductor materials, biomedical materials and high-performance fibers and composite materials will register an annual growth rate exceeding 20%.

Policy Instruments: First Batch Insurance Compensation to Support Commercialization

To remove barriers restricting the market launch of newly developed materials, MIIT has fully implemented the insurance compensation policy for the first batch of new materials, expanding the scope and duration of support to ease procurement concerns among end users. Local authorities are encouraged to roll out tailored supporting policies to speed up market promotion. Meanwhile, MIIT released the 2024 Edition of the Guiding Catalogue for Demonstrative Application of the First Batch of Key New Materials, identifying R&D directions for 299 types of new materials and offering clear guidance for their commercialization.

At the policy level, coordinated fiscal, taxation and financial measures will be strengthened to advance industry-finance integration, enhance the supply of high-quality standardized systems, and build an all-round support framework integrating policies, capital and standards.

From following and running alongside global peers to leading the industry, China's new materials industry stands at a historic crossroads of transformation. The 15th Five-Year Plan period brings both an arduous campaign to tackle core bottleneck technologies and a strategic opportunity to systematically upgrade innovation capacity. Over the next five years, the new materials industry must not only address the question of material availability, but also strive for superior quality and competitive strength. Every investment in upgrading basic materials and making original breakthroughs in frontier sectors will reinforce the foundation for China's ambition to become a global manufacturing power. We look forward to the remarkable achievements of the new materials industry in the 15th Five-Year Plan, writing a magnificent chapter for Chinese-style modernization.