2026 China's manufacturing industry is expected to grow steadily into the "big and strong" realm
In the last month of 2025, China's manufacturing purchasing managers' index (PMI) rebounded above the boom-bust line.
The purchasing manager index (PMI) of China's manufacturing industry in December 2025 released by the Service Industry Survey Center of the National Bureau of Statistics and the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing was 50.1, up 0.9 percentage points from November. This is the first time that it has risen to the expansion range after operating below 50% for eight consecutive months in April 2025, indicating that China's manufacturing industry has begun to pick up and improve.
The level of development of the manufacturing industry is the "confidence" for the rise of a country, and it has an important influence on the macro economy. In 2025, driven by the "dual" of global economic recovery and domestic policy support, China's manufacturing industry will show a strong momentum of recovery, and its contribution to industrial development is particularly prominent. When the British political magazine "The Economist" did an inventory, it found that the goal set by China's manufacturing industry had been basically achieved.
In fact, while expanding in scale, China's manufacturing industry is accelerating its transformation to an intelligent and green direction, and the quality of development continues to improve, indicating that it is ushering in a new round of expansion cycle. When analyzing the manufacturing PMI in December 2025, Wen Tao, an analyst at the China Logistics Information Center, believes that in 2026, my country's economic operation has basic conditions. Under the linkage of multiple positive factors, China's manufacturing industry is expected to achieve steady growth. It will steadily achieve effective improvement in "quality" and reasonable growth in "quantity" throughout the year, and the high-quality macroeconomic development will move from "deep" to "real".
China's manufacturing PMI index has rebounded significantly.
At present, China's manufacturing industry is going through the key stage of spatial layout reconstruction and technological intergenerational transition. In particular, the PMI index of China's manufacturing industry rebounded significantly in December 2025, indicating that the market is expected to further improve. Zhang Liqun, a special analyst of the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, said that the study of the spirit of the "Tenth Five-Year Plan" recommendations continues to deepen. The Central Economic Work Conference proposed to adhere to the leadership of domestic demand, especially to increase counter-cyclical and cross-cyclical adjustments, and improve the macro economy. Important ideas such as governance efficiency have further broadened the horizons of the whole country, improved the ideological position, and strengthened confidence in the more brilliant future of Chinese-style modernization, it has improved the courage to overcome the outstanding difficulties such as the current lack of demand, significantly improved the market expectation, and promoted enterprises to speed up the preparation activities of relevant production and operation at the end of the year and the beginning of the year.
At the same time, it should also be noted that the market-guided demand contraction is still strong, and enterprises still face many difficulties in product sales. It is necessary to speed up the implementation of the relevant arrangements of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee and the Central Economic work Conference, and effectively drive the growth of enterprise orders, enterprise and social investment, employment and household consumption through sufficient government investment, the systematic efforts to expand domestic demand and reverse the contraction of market demand will see obvious results as soon as possible, so as to continuously improve market expectations and push China's economy to enter the track of sustained recovery driven by sustained demand recovery as soon as possible.
Since the implementation of the incremental policy package at the end of September 2025, China's economic growth momentum has rebounded significantly. Wen Tao believes that in 2025, although China's economy is affected by external factors such as changes in US tariff policy, the overall operation situation is stable under the support of positive factors such as the strength of macroeconomic policies and the emergence of domestic economic resilience. Especially in December, driven by positive factors such as clear and strong policy signals, relatively stable trade environment and orderly release of domestic market, China's manufacturing PMI rebounded to the boom level, laying a good foundation for the start of the new year. "Under the strength of the stock policy and the package of incremental policies, sales of auto appliances, property market turnover and infrastructure construction data improved significantly in December 2025." Wang Qing, chief macro analyst at Oriental Jincheng International Credit Assessment Co., Ltd., said.
The contribution rate of equipment manufacturing industry to industrial growth continues to increase
China's manufacturing industry occupies an important position in the global industrial chain, especially in the field of high-end manufacturing and high value-added products. It is becoming the focus of global attention with its strong strength and huge potential. In 2025, China's manufacturing PMI index averaged 49.6 percent for the year, essentially unchanged from the 2024 annual average, with some positive signals. For example, the PMI of both the construction and service industries rose sharply in December, and the index of new orders related to demand continued to rise. In particular, the PMI of the construction industry rebounded sharply to 53.2 per cent, the highest since June. Moreover, the construction industry "off-season is not weak" behind the description of the debt, stable real estate and other policy support, the construction and infrastructure investment activities in good improvement, China's economy bottomed out and stabilized gradually obvious.
It can be said that China's manufacturing PMI data not only confirms the resilience of economic recovery, but also injects confidence and momentum into high-quality development throughout the year. Wen Tao said that China's manufacturing industry will end smoothly in 2025, and companies are optimistic about the market outlook, and are expected to achieve steady growth in 2026. First, both sides of supply and demand rebounded synchronously, and the market expanded steadily. The second is the coordinated recovery of the four major industries of high-tech manufacturing, equipment manufacturing, high-energy-consuming industries, and consumer goods manufacturing, and the quality of economic operation is improving. Third, the market price is running well, which is conducive to the realization of benefits for enterprises. Fourth, large and medium-sized enterprises have stabilized and rebounded, and the role of economic "ballast stone" has been strengthened. According to the data, the expected index of production and operation activities of China's manufacturing industry in December 2025 was 55.5, up 2.4 percentage points from November and the highest since April 2024.
With the gradual release of policy effects and the continuous advancement of technological upgrading, China's manufacturing industry is expected to play a greater role in stabilizing the macroeconomic market, while potential challenges such as cost transmission pressure and employment structural contradictions still need to be paid attention. Yan Xiang, deputy director of Founder Securities Research Institute, analyzed that in 2026, my country's science and technology policy will be further increased to promote the deep integration of the innovation chain and the industrial chain. Technological innovation is no longer a concept in the laboratory, but a real growth engine. "China's high-tech manufacturing, green energy, digital economy and other new quality productivity fields have formed obvious growth momentum. The contribution rate of equipment manufacturing industry to industrial growth has continued to increase, and the industrial structure is accelerating to high-end, intelligent and green." Yan Xiang said.
China's manufacturing industry staged a "multi-point flowering" breakthrough
According to the ''Future of Industrialization'' report released by the United Nations, the global manufacturing industry is accelerating its transfer to high-income countries in the Asia-Pacific region. China's manufacturing output value has accounted for 35% of the global total. It is expected that by 2030, China's industrial output value will account for the proportion of the global total. It will further increase to 45%, indicating that China's manufacturing industry still maintains a good momentum in global development. "Nihon Keizai Shimbun" published an article that "Made in China" has changed the global industrial competition pattern.
When deploying the key work in 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology clearly stated that efforts should be made to stabilize the effective investment scale of the manufacturing industry. According to the analysis of China Merchants Bank International, at the end of 2025, my country will introduce a series of supply-side structural reform plans that will bring new opportunities to the development of China's manufacturing industry, but the policy dividend will take some time to appear, and China's manufacturing industry may be in the next few months. It will continue to shrink, and PMI will continue to be below the boom and bust line. However, it is worth noting that my country has built the world's most complete industrial chain system -41 industrial categories, 207 medium categories, and 666 small categories are all covered, providing "application scenario advantages" for technology iteration. The "crown jewels" were picked off one after another, and a breakthrough of "multi-point flowering" was staged.
In fact, China's manufacturing industry is "striving for new strength" and is shifting from a "manufacturing power" to a "technical standard-setter", constantly opening up new tracks and shaping new advantages. When the "14th Five-Year Plan" ushered in the end, China's manufacturing industry has quietly opened the era of "new quality productivity": quantum computing, physical intelligence, atomic-level manufacturing and other future industrial layout accelerated, industrial Internet platform connection equipment more than 80 million sets, the digital economy accounted for 41.5 of GDP. As the German "Economic Weekly" said: The upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is not a copy of Western technology, but a new paradigm of "government-guided market-driven.
China's manufacturing industry faces three major trends in the next five years
In December 2025, among the 21 industries surveyed by the National Bureau of Statistics, the PMI of 16 industries rebounded from November, especially the expansion of both ends of China's manufacturing industry. According to the analysis of China Merchants Bank International, the short-term recovery of China's manufacturing industry does not mean a bottoming rebound: First, the small rebound in China's manufacturing PMI data in December 2025 is likely to be a comprehensive manifestation of some "year-end effects", and these "year-end effects" "May be ignored in the seasonal adjustment of the Bureau of Statistics. Secondly, Caixin China's manufacturing PMI read 48.2 in December, down significantly from November's 48.6, indicating that the manufacturing industry has not yet "bottomed out". Huang Qifan, an academic consultant of the China Finance Forty Forum and the former mayor of Chongqing, said that since the implementation of the manufacturing power strategy, China's manufacturing industry has been "big but not strong" and has basically entered the realm of "big and strong.
The "15th Five-Year Plan" (2026-2030) is a period of gaining momentum for China's modernization in 2035 and a strategic turning point for China to comprehensively enhance its international competitiveness. Kearney (Shanghai) Enterprise Consulting Co., Ltd. believes that China's manufacturing industry will face three major trends in the next five years. Trend 1: Demand slowdown, overcapacity problem is difficult to improve in a short time, the price war will continue, but structural opportunities depend on, high resilience enterprises will usher in the dawn of the industry through the cycle. Trend 2: Green and low-carbon continue to advance, and the green transformation of enterprises has changed from short-termism "supply-side control and discharge" to long-term "demand-side high-quality development. Trend 3: New technology from cutting-edge research and development to commercial application speed up, enterprises side innovation, side application, side iteration, promote industrial transformation.
As a pillar industry of the national economy, the manufacturing industry has released positive signals in many aspects, such as the recovery of production and demand and the improvement of small and medium-sized enterprises, and has become a key force to support the stability and improvement of the economy. According to Wen Tao's analysis, the current market demand has recovered, exports have stabilized, and economic policies have become more active. The "Tenth Five-Year Plan" laid the strategic direction for the next five years of economic and social development. The Central Economic Work Conference made clear arrangements for economic work in 2026, providing guidance and injecting impetus into macroeconomic development. However, the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry is not smooth sailing. As long as we rely on "horizontal expansion and vertical digging", open up the advantages of the "three chains" of industrial chain, innovation chain, and value chain, and promote the manufacturing industry to "horizontal to the edge and vertical to the end", we can achieve the current stability and far-reaching.
Source: China Industrial News Network
