China unveils 15th Five-Year Plan for light industry and textiles, targeting over 30 trillion yuan in revenue by 2030

The light industry and textile sector, a traditional pillar of China's national economy and a key livelihood industry, has unveiled a new development plan with ambitious growth targets.

On September 22, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Ministry of Commerce, and the State Administration for Market Regulation jointly released the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Light Industry and Textile Sector" (hereinafter referred to as the "Plan"). The Plan sets a goal that by 2030, the operating revenue of enterprises above a designated size in the sector will exceed 30 trillion yuan, significantly elevating their position in the global industrial and value chains.

Key Targets for 2030

The Plan specifies that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period (2026–2030), China will:

• Formulate or revise more than 30 mandatory national standards
• Systematically cultivate Chinese consumer brands
• Accelerate the intelligent and green transformation
• Promote AI empowerment and develop vertical domain large models for key industries
• Implement a "Textile+" action

By 2030, the sector aims to achieve:

• Labor productivity of over 400,000 yuan per person for enterprises above designated size
• Approximately 550 industrial clusters
• Digital production equipment penetration rate exceeding 63%

Five Key Tasks

To maintain the sector's scale advantage and significantly improve development quality and efficiency, the Plan outlines five key tasks:

1. Enhancing industrial innovation capabilities
2. Strengthening the alignment between supply and demand
3. Accelerating intelligent and green transformation
4. Expanding pathways for integrated industrial development
5. Coordinating and optimizing domestic and international industrial layouts

Industry Perspectives

Liu Jiangyi, Party Secretary of the China National Light Industry Council, stated in an interview with China Business Journal that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the light industry faces both strategic opportunities—such as a new round of technological revolution, consumption structure upgrades, and green and low-carbon transformation—and challenges, including profound adjustments in international trade patterns, increasing resource and environmental constraints, and changes in the global governance system.

"Overall, the sector is in a development stage where opportunities and challenges coexist, with opportunities outweighing challenges," Liu said. "However, structural and intrinsic pressures have significantly increased, placing higher demands on the sector's resilience, innovation, and sustainability."

Opportunities from Consumption Policies

Liu elaborated on opportunities using consumption-boosting policies as an example:

• The full implementation and expansion of trade-in policies directly benefit the replacement demand for bulk consumer goods such as home appliances, furniture, and kitchen and bathroom products
• The continued expansion of energy-efficient appliances and smart home products into rural areas, coupled with innovations in county-level logistics and consumer credit, is activating grassroots markets
• National support for intelligent manufacturing, green manufacturing, and high-end product R&D provides multi-dimensional policy support

Strategic Significance of the Plan

Liu analyzed that the Plan carries threefold strategic significance:

1. It serves as an action guide for the light industry to support the building of a manufacturing powerhouse and achieve the goals of new industrialization.
2. It systematically answers the questions of "where to transform and how to transform", driving the industry from "scale leadership" to "systemic advantages" and "value enhancement."
3. Together with previously issued policies, it forms a policy combination for "stable growth" and "upgrading" in the light industry.

Shift in Strategic Focus

A relevant official from the Department of Consumer Goods Industry of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology noted that China's light industry and textile sector already holds a global leading position in scale and volume.

In terms of positioning, the Plan shifts from emphasizing the sector's scale status as a major industrial power to focusing more on independent innovation, transformation and upgrading, deep transformation, and value creation.

In terms of orientation, the Plan focuses on integrated innovation, quality improvement and upgrading, and value creation, clarifying the industry's development direction, building consensus, and encouraging enterprises to take proactive action to build a modern light industry and textile industrial system.

Achievements During the "14th Five-Year Plan" Period

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period (2021–2025), the sector implemented relevant policies, persisted in innovation, structural optimization, and transformation, and continuously strengthened the integrity, advancement, and security of the industrial system.

By the end of 2025:

• The number of enterprises above designated size accounted for 34.5% of all industrial enterprises
• Operating revenue accounted for 19.8%
• Total profits accounted for 20.8%
• Total exports accounted for 32%

These figures further solidified China's position as a major light industry and textile manufacturing country.

Accelerating AI Empowerment

The Plan specifies the need to promote AI empowerment by:

• Accelerating the development of vertical domain large models for key industries
• Developing and applying specialized intelligent agents for the entire light industry and textile supply chain
• Deploying systems such as surface defect online detection, process parameter self-optimization, and equipment predictive maintenance in industries like home appliances, furniture, food, ceramics, papermaking, and textiles, to improve quality consistency and production efficiency

AI Applications in Specific Sectors

In industries such as shoes and bags, clothing, home textiles, and jewelry, the Plan promotes:

• Generative AI-assisted creative design
• User experience simulation
• Encouraging "one person, one version" high-end customization

The Plan also calls for:

• Reviewing AI application scenarios and implementation paths by sub-sector
• Cultivating a batch of scenario-oriented digital tools and solutions
• Upgrading industrial control systems on key enterprise production lines
• Guiding enterprises to use 5G and industrial internet to upgrade factory networks
• Promoting the construction of industrial 5G private networks to lay a solid foundation for AI applications

Challenges and Recommendations

Liu Jiangyi noted that the industry currently faces bottlenecks in AI implementation, including:

• A lack of specialized large models
• Difficulty for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to undergo transformation
• AI applications not yet fully integrated across the entire chain

"Enterprise AI applications are still fragmented, and most companies have not yet achieved full-chain connectivity from the demand side to the service side," he said.

He recommended three areas of focus to promote AI penetration from single-point applications to the entire industrial chain:

1. Standards first: Review AI application scenarios and implementation paths by sub-sector, and improve standards for data, interfaces, and security to enable cross-link collaboration of intelligent agents.
2. Platform empowerment: Build innovation platforms for the light industry to provide SMEs with lightweight design tools, vertical domain large models, and scenario-based intelligent applications, lowering the barrier to transformation.
3. Benchmark-driven: Create replicable solutions through benchmark cases, demonstrating that AI is "useful and usable" for more enterprises.

Talent Development

In terms of talent support, the Plan proposes:

• Supporting leading light industry and textile enterprises to form industry-education integration communities with high-level vocational schools and universities
• Promoting industry-education integration and targeted cooperative training
• Facilitating knowledge updates and academic advancement for industrial workers
• Cultivating outstanding engineers, master craftsmen, and highly skilled talent

Liu Jiangyi emphasized that to address the talent shortage through industry-education integration, efforts should focus on:

• Aligning academic programs with industry needs: Establish a dynamic adjustment mechanism for disciplines, focusing on intelligent manufacturing, digital design, bio-manufacturing, and green and low-carbon development
• Bridging classroom learning with workshop practice: Implement joint enrollment by schools and enterprises, work-study alternation, and modern apprenticeship systems, allowing students to participate in the full process of design, production, testing, and maintenance in real production scenarios
• Connecting talent cultivation with career development: Build a multi-level talent training system for the light industry, coordinate talent training, skills competitions, and industry-education integration, and leverage platforms such as national industry skills competitions and industrial design skills competitions to promote learning and innovation through competition

Liu also called on social organizations like the China National Light Industry Council to play a bridging role, uniting the entire industry to promote the coordinated integration of the talent chain, innovation chain, and industrial chain.

(Source: China Business Journal)