At an October 20 State Council Information Office press conference on the first three quarters of 2026, MIIT chief engineer Wang Weiming said the ministry is studying and drafting policy measures for a new generation of smart manufacturing to accelerate the deep integration of AI with manufacturing.
The data released alongside the policy direction highlight rapid infrastructure buildout. By the end of September 2026, China's intelligent-computing scale reached 2,592 EFLOPS, up 146% year on year, while 5G base stations numbered 5.254 million and 5G-A coverage is being progressively rolled out. More than 20 AI phones and computers were released in the third quarter, and over 100 AI terminal products now meet L3 auxiliary-level capability requirements.
Wang said the next steps include a broadband-quality upgrade campaign — pushing gigabit upgrades and ushering in 10-gigabit, expanding compute capacity, piloting 6G, and supporting more enterprises to apply for satellite-IoT commercial trials. Fixed-asset investment in electronic information manufacturing rose 9.6% in the first three quarters, with domestic PCB disclosed investment up more than fourfold.
Together, the signals point to compute and intelligent manufacturing becoming the central pillars of China's industrial-policy agenda for the "15th Five-Year Plan" period.
Source: China Securities Journal / Globe Network
