Global Times: Charting China's growth path in H1 through Xi's footprints
BEIJING, Aug. 6, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- When Francesco Faiola first arrived in China, he had no long-term plans. Yet he stayed - because, as he puts it, "China made me feel like I belong to a scientific community that's now helping set global directions." A decade later, the stem cell toxicologist leads a lab in Beijing and has taken a front row seat to China's rising technological innovation. And it's not just him - his family back home has also caught the wave.
"My parents are old and live in a small Italian town. They don't speak English, they don't understand molecular biology, and they can't read a scientific paper. But over the past few years, they've called me more than once, excited, telling me about a Chinese airplane, a humanoid robot, or some AI breakthrough they saw on Italy's main TV news or in the newspapers," Faiola, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the Global Times in a recent interview.
Faiola's story is just one illustration of how China's technology-driven industrial transformation is drawing growing global attention.
For years, China's growth narrative was defined by scale - the world's largest manufacturing base and one of its biggest consumer markets. But now, a structural shift is underway. New and emerging technologies are no longer playing a supporting role; they are becoming genuine drivers of growth, turning scale into speed and capability.
Following footprints
As China released economic data for the first half of 2026 in mid-July, there are many analyses of the performance of the world's second-largest economy. What's the best way to view the actual state of the Chinese economy? The inspection tours of the top leader offer the best clues.
In February, when visiting a national information technology innovation park in Beijing, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, stressed self-reliance and strength in science and technology, hailing it as the "key" in building China into a great modern socialist country.
In March, Xi, also Chinese president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for efforts to build the Xiong'an New Area in North China's Hebei Province into an innovation hub in the new era and a model of promoting high-quality development.
In June, during an inspection trip to the city of Dezhou, East China's Shandong Province, he called for solid measures to advance the modernization of agriculture and rural areas.
In July, he called for advancing high-quality urban renewal during an inspection trip to Shanghai.
From sci-tech self-reliance and strength to innovation, from modernization of agriculture and rural areas to high-quality urban renewal, the focuses of the inspection tours also highlighted various aspects of China's economic performance in the first half of 2026 as well as its future growth path: innovation-driven high-quality development, emergence of new growth points and vast potential for growth.
Innovation-driven growth
From the beginning of 2026, the recovery of the world economy has remained under sustained pressure amid increasingly turbulent and unstable international landscape. Meanwhile, China's economy has braved the storm and forged ahead with unyielding momentum, demonstrating a resilient, steady and upward trajectory since the start of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30).
New growth engines, including advanced manufacturing, the digital economy and modern services, accounted for more than 40 percent of China's economic growth in the first half of the year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
During the period, the country's value-added output of high-tech manufacturing climbed 13.3 percent, while value-added of the manufacturing sector accounting for 26.2 percent year-on-year, up 0.4 percentage points compared with three years ago, underscoring the dynamic, innovation-driven and high-quality development of the Chinese economy.
When attending a symposium on strengthening basic research in Shanghai in April, Xi urged greater efforts and more concrete measures to strengthen basic research, enhance China's capacity for original innovation and further solidify the foundation for building the country's strength in science and technology.
At a meeting on July 8 in Beijing that brought together the national science and technology award conference, the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the 11th national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology, he stressed that "We must seize the historic opportunity, rise to the challenges of the times, accelerate efforts to achieve high-level self-reliance and strength in science and technology, and make steady progress toward the 2035 goal of becoming a leading country in science and technology."
A series of technological breakthroughs has highlighted the momentum behind China's innovation-driven industries, including the T1200 ultra-high-strength carbon fiber achieving the world's first ton-scale mass production, a humanoid robot shattering the human half-marathon record in April, the Kimi K3 open-source large model unlocking new frontiers of cognitive computing.
In the much-anticipated "city of the future," Mech-Mind stands as a microcosm of this ascent. Specializing in physical AI, its "eye-brain-hand" solution has migrated from lab prototypes to automotive lines, logistics hubs and service sectors across nearly 50 countries.
"China possesses the world's most complex manufacturing scenarios and the largest pool of application data, hence the richest experience in intelligent manufacturing," Shao Tianlan, founder and CEO of Mech-Mind, told the Global Times. This global footprint is no isolated incident; it is the crystallization of unparalleled industrial advantages nurtured under a policy ecosystem that prioritizes scenario-based innovation.
"China's march toward an innovation-driven, higher-quality economy is gathering real pace, as industrial transformation is now visible, tangible and making solid progress," Cao Heping, professor at the School of Economics of Peking University, told the Global Times.
Such momentum was palpable at the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC) in Shanghai. "Never has there been an AI conference this fervent," a veteran participant of the WAIC told the Global Times at the event. Recalling 2018's niche gatherings, the participant noted how AI agents have evolved from chatterboxes to task-doers, Tokenomics is rewriting economic metrics, domestic computing power has leaped from usable to high-performing and embodied intelligence is marching from labs to shop floors.
China's 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30) highlights the development of a modern industrial system anchored by advanced manufacturing. Major manufacturing provinces are already aligning with this strategic thrust. For instance, Hebei Province is leveraging hubs like Xiong'an New Area to incubate future industries, while Shandong - a major grain producer - aims to lift the contribution of agricultural sci-tech to over 71 percent by 2030. Meanwhile, Shanghai is targeting basic research expenditure at around 15 percent of its total R&D spending by 2030.
Such alignment at the macro level finds its echo in the lived experience of individual researchers on the ground.
"[China's tech innovations] aren't niche stories for tech insiders. They are real global news, landing in the living rooms of retirees who barely use a smartphone. I'm not bragging to them about China's progress. They are telling me. When achievements get that far into everyday European life, it's a sign China is doing something the world finds worth talking about," Faiola said.
The C919 plane, DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics, these aren't one-off hits. They prove China can now conceive, design, and build complex, original systems on its own, whether it's an airliner, an advanced AI model, or an agile robot. That takes deep integration across different fields, aerodynamics, materials, real time control and AI. It tells me the culture of working together across disciplines has really grown up, the Italian expert said.
New growth points
While breakthroughs in frontier technologies like AI and robotics are reshaping China's supply side, a parallel transformation is unfolding beyond the high-tech hubs. In the country's vast rural heartlands, a powerful new engine of growth is emerging - rural consumption.
"Rural retail sales of consumer goods reached 3.32 trillion yuan ($491.96 billion) in the first half of the year, up 2.5 percent from the same period last year and 1.3 percentage points higher than urban growth. This underscores the vast untapped potential of rural consumption. The resilience of rural spending has continued to stand out, making it an important force in expanding domestic demand," Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Zhang Xingwang told a press conference.
Rural industries are improving in both quality and efficiency. The value-added of large-scale agricultural and sideline food processing enterprises nationwide rose by 4.8 percent year-on-year in the first half of the year. Meanwhile, new business forms and models such as rural leisure tourism and e-commerce are flourishing, official data showed.
In the process of accelerating the building of a new development pattern, the potential of China's rural consumer market is being continuously unlocked and gradually transformed into new drivers of economic growth, providing a solid underpinning for the sustained, stable and long-term development of China's economy, Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.
Ensuring both development and security is a principle that must be followed in economic and social development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30).
Thanks to the diligent work of hundreds of millions of farmers, robust policies to strengthen agriculture, benefit farmers and enrich rural areas, as well as a considerable number of scientists and technicians offering hands-on services, China has secured a bumper summer grain harvest in 2026 with total output topping 150 million tons for the first time, a milestone achieved despite challenges such as late sowing and unfavorable weather conditions.
Vast potential
Beyond the farmlands, a massive reconfiguration of urban space is adding another layer to China's growth momentum.
In May, China's first national-level guideline for urban renewal was released. Under the urban renewal plan during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-30), recently released by the State Council, the country's cabinet, China aims to build its cities into places that ensure a high quality of life for the people by 2030. The plan outlines targets for this period, including the renovation of 500,000 units of dilapidated urban housing, 4,000 shanty towns and 115,000 old urban residential communities. It aims to upgrade and transform 1,500 old streets and factory areas, build and upgrade 128,000 hectares of space dedicated to sports, and renovate 20,000 hectares of green space in urban parks.
"In addition to improving people's living standards, urban renewal serves as a new engine for igniting urban innovation," Li Changan, a professor at the Academy of China Open Economy Studies at the University of International Business and Economics, told the Global Times. By upgrading old neighborhoods, industrial sites and urban villages, the plan will free up fresh space and provide new platforms for advancing technological innovation and fostering new quality productive forces. Through spatial restructuring and the reconfiguration of driving forces, it essentially installs an innovation engine to urban areas, Li said.
For example, in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, renovation work in the Xiaoshan district is prioritizing housing improvements for young employees and workers employed under new business models.
This is the vibrant vitality of China's economy today, and it is also the powerful momentum driving the country's high-quality development in the years to come.
The CPC Central Committee Political Bureau meeting held on July 30 pointed out that to do a good job in economic work in the second half of the year, it is imperative to adhere to the general principle of pursuing progress while ensuring stability, urging efforts to accelerate the transition from old growth drivers to new ones and effectively implement a more proactive fiscal policy and an appropriately accommodative monetary policy.
"Halfway through the inaugural year of the 15th Five-Year Plan, China's economy - powered by innovation, buoyed by new consumption drivers and backed by vast untapped potential - is fully equipped to weather domestic and external pressures and keep moving forward, writing a stronger story of high-quality development," Cao said.
SOURCE Global Times
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