The plan that lost its name, kept its budget, and missed its 70%.
Made in China 2025, signed by Premier Li Keqiang on 8 May 2015, set escalating
self-sufficiency targets across ten priority sectors. The headline number was
70 percent of core basic components and key basic materials produced
domestically by 2025. By 2018 the brand had been quietly retired from official
speeches. By 2024 the tally was in. This is what was hit, and what wasn’t.
Promulgated 8 May 2015
Author State Council / MIIT
Drafted by ~150 academy fellows over 24 months
Self-sufficiency by 2025: target vs. estimated reality
MET / EXCEEDEDPARTIALMISSEDTARGET LINE 70%
i
Electric Vehicles
New-energy vehicles, batteries, charging
EV PRODUCTION
~95%
Exceeded
By 2023 China produced >60% of the world’s EVs. Domestic EV sales hit 11M in 2024 (+40%). BYD, NIO, SAIC dominant.
ii
Industrial Robots
High-end NC machinery and robotics
DEPLOYMENTS
~78%
Met on volume
China’s share of global industrial-robot installations grew from ~20% to >50%. Output +51.5% YoY April 2025. Still gaps in high-precision controllers.
iii
Power Equipment
Solar, wind, transmission
DOMESTIC SHARE
~88%
Exceeded
Solar-cell production now >80% of global supply. Grid equipment, inverters, polysilicon mostly domestic.
iv
Advanced Rail
High-speed locomotives, rolling stock
DOMESTIC SHARE
~90%
Met
CRRC dominant globally. Fuxing trainsets entirely domestic. Some signaling and bearings still imported.
COMAC C919 entered service 2023 — still uses GE/CFM engines, Honeywell avionics, Western flight controls. CJ-1000A engine years out.
viii
Ocean Engineering
High-tech ships, offshore platforms
DOMESTIC SHARE
~60%
On track
Largest shipbuilder by tonnage 2024. LNG carriers and cruise ships catching up. Marine engines still partly licensed (MAN, Wärtsilä).
ix
Agricultural Machinery
High-end tractors, combine harvesters
HIGH-END SHARE
~48%
Partial
Mid-power tractors mostly domestic; high-power and precision-ag equipment still John Deere / CLAAS / Kubota.
x · THE HEADLINE
Semiconductors
Integrated circuits — the chip self-sufficiency target
DOMESTIC SHARE
~30%
Missed by ~40 pts
From ~15% in early 2010s to ~25–30% by 2024. The 70% target was quietly deleted from the 15th Five-Year Plan.
CATEGORY · TARGET BY 2025
0%20%40%60%70% TARGET100%
VERDICT · AS OF 2024
The 70% target did not actually apply to all chips.
The headline that haunted the document for the next decade — that China would be
70% chip-self-sufficient by 2025 — was a footnote, not a manifesto. The State
Council’s technical road map applied the 70% benchmark to “core basic
components and key basic materials,” a category that included some chip inputs
but explicitly excluded leading-edge logic and memory. Outside China, the
distinction did not survive translation. Inside China, the distinction
was always there.
Either way, the actual figure landed nowhere near the headline. Roughly
30 percent by 2024, mostly composed of mature-node trailing-edge
production. The leading edge — 7nm and below — remained foreign-fabricated
and increasingly restricted.
Stated target
70%
↓ as of 2024 ↓
30%
estimated actual
— a 40-point gap, with the leading edge still entirely foreign.
The brand’s quiet retirement — vocabulary drift, 2018→2024
FROM XINHUA STYLE GUIDES
2015 – 2018
中国制造 2025
Made in China 2025
The original signage. Cited 116 times in the March 2018 USTR §301 report; mentioned 140+ times in Xinhua in H1 2018 alone.
2018 – 2020
高质量发展
High-quality development
First euphemism. Xinhua mentions of MIC2025 dropped 83% YoY into Q1 2019. The plan disappeared from Premier Li’s annual government work report.
2020 – 2023
科技自立自强
Self-reliance & self-strengthening
Confucian-era couplet, adopted at the 5th Plenum, October 2020. Replaced 自主创新 (indigenous innovation) as the operative slogan.
2024 —
新质生产力
New productive forces
The current operative term. The plan beneath the term is, by most outside accounts, structurally identical to the document Li Keqiang signed in May 2015.