Jets, fusion, moon shots: China unveils ambitious mega-projects in five-year blueprint

BEIJING, March 6 (Xinhua) -- China has unveiled an ambitious slate of mega-projects in its five-year blueprint, featuring faster bullet trains, homegrown aircraft engines and wide-body jets, AI chips, controllable nuclear fusion, reusable heavy-lift rockets and lunar exploration missions.

In the draft outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) submitted on Thursday to the country's top legislature for examination, China proposes a total of 28 major projects to spearhead the development of new quality productive forces, covering four key areas: upgrading industrial infrastructure, fostering emerging industries, breaking through with cutting-edge technologies, and enhancing innovation capabilities.

China plans to put the CR450, the world's fastest bullet train engineered for a top test speed of 450 km/h, into operation after trials, while developing homegrown operating systems and industrial software, high-end digital machine tools, large cruise ships, and liquefied natural gas carriers.

The country is seeking to accelerate breakthroughs for the C929 aircraft and validation of the CJ-1000A engine. The C929 is China's first independently developed jet-powered long-range wide-body aircraft, while the CJ-1000A is a high-bypass-ratio turbofan engine designed for commercial jetliners. It also vows to boost production capacity for the C919, as well as design and roll out plateau-variant C919 models and new-energy aircraft.

To break new ground in growth, China also looks to ramp up advanced semiconductor manufacturing, deploy high-density batteries and humanoid robots in real-world scenarios, strengthen proactive space defense capabilities, create long-range VTOL aircraft, discover more gene therapies, and apply brain-computer interface (BCI) products and intelligent surgical robots over the next five years.

BCI was also included in this year's government work report for the first time, listed alongside future energy, quantum technology, embodied AI and 6G as China's future industries.

In frontier innovations, the outline aims to develop high-performance AI chips and general-purpose quantum computers, engineer controllable nuclear fusion, and build brain-inspired artificial general intelligence systems.

China has also laid out programs for deep-sea mining and oil and gas extraction, and is preparing to build a deep-sea "space station." In outer space, it proposes studying or implementing new planetary probes, near-Earth asteroid defense and solar system boundary exploration, advancing the building of an international lunar research station, and developing reusable heavy-lift rockets.

The five-year plan also charts a course to build national laboratories and a host of major sci-tech facilities, and establish three world-class innovation centers, in a bid to enhance China's foundational innovation strength. ■