Entering 2025, China’s science and technology sector has shown a strong momentum of rapid development, demonstrated by DeepSeek's breakthrough in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models, the growing intelligence shown by UniTree Robotics' humanoid robots, and the global sensation sparked by China's sixth-generation fighters.
These achievements are just the beginning, and more scientific and technological breakthroughs will emerge. China has strong advantages in research and development (R&D), backed up by its talent reserve and policy support, among other favorable factors.
According to a global survey done by KeSkt CNC in 2021, responders from many countries including the US, the EU members and the UK, all agree that China will be far ahead of the US and the EU in tech innovation in the next 50 years.
Now, China has made remarkable achievements in innovation, and the gap with the world's leading players has been constantly narrowing, with China already holding the front-runner position in some fields.
Specifically, the attainments could be manifested in the following aspects. First, in terms of AI, big model technology is set to achieve greater breakthroughs, as the models performance at leading Chinese enterprises will continue to improve and reach the internationally leading level, and as the large model training will shift from seeking expansion in scale to prioritizing efficiency.
In 2025, China's computing power will grow rapidly. According to a report by IDC，China's intelligent computing power scale is expected to reach 1,037.3 EFLOPS (exa floating-point operations per second) this year, an increase of 43 percent over 2024.
Zhang Shuibo Photo: Courtesy of Zhang Shuibo
AI is expected to be able to empower a barrage of sectors from medical diagnosis to autonomous driving, and generative AI will be extensively incorporated in marketing, risk control, smart manufacturing and more.
Second, in new energy transition, China’s battery technology may continue to witness further improvement – CATL's mass produced solid-state battery achieved an energy density of 500 watt-hour per kilogram; BYD's sodium-ion battery pushed down the cost to 0.3 yuan ($0.04) per watt-hour and Honeycomb Energy's short-blade battery realized a range of more than 600 kilometers after 10 minutes of fast charging. The same can be said for photovoltaic technology. LONGi Green Energy's 42.8-percent crystalline silicon-perovskite tandem solar cell efficiency has set a new world record. GCL Technology's 10 gigawatts perovskite module base is already put into production, with the cost per watt falling below 0.8 yuan.
Wind power may further move to the deep sea. Mingyang Smart Energy has launched an 18-megawatt offshore wind turbine, equipped with the world's first integrated floating platform featuring wind power/marine ranch/hydrogen production. Goldwind Science and Technology’s "smart wind farm" based on China’s homegrown BeiDou navigation system has increased power generation efficiency by more than 25 percent.
Third, regarding intelligent manufacturing, there will be more smart-manufacturing demonstration plants.
It is reported that this year, China will strive to build more than 500 smart-manufacturing demonstration plants that will lead the development of the industry and accelerate the transformation of traditional industries from old to new drivers. The industrial high-speed mobile internet will continue to be upgraded, with its platform being constantly optimized to achieve more extensive equipment interconnection and data sharing, promoting intelligent, flexible and services-based transformation of the whole manufacturing sector.
The continuous enhancement of China's scientific and technological innovation has laid a solid foundation for Chinese companies to provide cost-effective and high-quality products in multiple manufacturing and services fields, which will make Chinese companies more competitive in the global market place. In this sense, 2025 could indeed be the year when many Chinese technology companies stun the world.
Zhang Shuibo is an NPC deputy and a professor at the College of Management and Economics of Tianjin University
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