Industrial Policy & Trade Monitor· 2675 actions· ✨ 91 recent

The New Development Bank (NDB), the BRICS-founded multilateral development bank headquartered in Shanghai, signed a USD 100 million equivalent, five-year RMB-denominated loan agreement with Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank Co Ltd for the "Greener Shanghai Project." The facility is an on-lending line: Shanghai Rural Commercial Bank will channel the proceeds to sustainable sub-projects across the city, including wind and solar power, environmental-conservation infrastructure, and digital-infrastructure development, expected to benefit roughly 25 million residents of Shanghai and the wider Yangtze River Delta. NDB below-market development-bank pricing functions as an indirect state-adjacent subsidy for Shanghai's green and digital-infrastructure build-out.

China's Ministry of Finance, NDRC, People's Bank of China and National Financial Regulatory Administration jointly issued Cai Jin [2026] No. 2 on 2026-01-19, optimizing the central-fiscal interest-subsidy policy for equipment-renewal loans. The central government subsidizes 1.5 percentage points of loan principal interest on qualifying fixed-asset loans for equipment-renewal projects, capped at two years, and widens eligible sectors beyond traditional industrial/energy/transport/logistics categories to include construction, AI equipment, aerospace materials, agricultural facilities, cold-chain infrastructure and elderly-care equipment. It also folds bank-originated science-and-technology-innovation loans issued from 2026 (previously supported only via PBOC relending) into the fiscal interest-subsidy scope, and simplifies disbursement via a "pre-disbursement + settlement" mechanism across 26 participating banks. The policy runs through 2026-12-31, extendable.

On 25 November 2025 China's National Space Administration (CNSA) released a two-year action plan — covering 2025 through 2027 — setting out 22 key measures to formalise and accelerate the development of China's commercial space sector. The plan transitions commercial space policy from a "nurturing" phase (subsidy-pull, loosely regulated) to a "standards-pull / high-quality development" phase, opening national aerospace R&D programmes and launch-infrastructure slots to private operators, establishing a national commercial space development fund, directing government procurement toward commercial launch vehicles and satellites, and unifying previously fragmented provincial regulatory standards. The plan structurally mirrors NASA's COTS/Commercial Crew model and sets commercial operators on course to expand China's ~18% private-firm share of an estimated US$15bn-per-year domestic launch market toward the 2027 horizon aligned with the 15th Five-Year Plan.

On 24 November 2025, six Beijing municipal departments — the Bureau of Economy and Information Technology, Development and Reform Commission, Science and Technology Commission, Health Commission, Drug Administration and Medical Insurance Bureau — jointly issued Notice 京经信发〔2025〕50号 ("Several Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the Beijing Medical Device Industry"), effective immediately through 31 December 2028. The 15-measure package subsidises the full medical-device value chain: early-stage innovation (up to RMB 1m per project), product approval/launch (up to RMB 2m per product, RMB 10m annual enterprise cap), industrial-park and public-service infrastructure construction (up to 50% of investment, capped at RMB 50m), supply-chain-resilience R&D for critical components/materials (up to 30% of investment, capped at RMB 30m), AI-diagnostic-model development (up to RMB 30m), smart-factory digitalisation (up to 30% of investment, capped at RMB 30m per project), and international regulatory approval/market entry (up to RMB 1m per product, RMB 3m annual cap; up to RMB 10m for introducing overseas products to China).

The Chongqing Municipal Government General Office issued Notice 渝府办发〔2025〕58号 on 2025-11-22, promulgating "Several Policy Measures to Promote High-Quality Development of the Low-Altitude Economy," effective immediately through 2027-12-31. The package comprises eight capped-percentage subsidy tracks covering low-altitude public-service procurement, logistics route operating subsidies (up to RMB 150,000 per route), demonstration projects (up to RMB 20 million), test-flight infrastructure (20% of investment, capped at RMB 5 million), manufacturing R&D and first-of-kind equipment support (up to 30% of receipts, capped at RMB 5 million), national innovation/manufacturing centres (up to RMB 20 million), ground-station infrastructure (20% of investment, capped at RMB 10 million), private-equity fund-manager incentives (1% of invested capital, capped at RMB 10 million cumulative), and AI-compute subsidies (20% of service cost, up to RMB 1 million/year). Global Trade Alert classifies all eight interventions as state aid with a "certainly harmful" (Red) rating.

China Development Bank announced a CNY 30 billion (~USD 4.2bn) special loan facility dedicated to the China-Europe Railway Express (中欧班列), financing construction of corridor, port and logistics-hub infrastructure plus working-capital support for enterprises operating the service. The scheme was unveiled at the Second China-Europe Railway Express International Cooperation Forum in Xi'an, alongside a matching CNY 30bn facility from the Export-Import Bank of China. CDB's Jiangsu, Henan and Shaanxi branches signed initial project-financing agreements with Lianyungang Port Holding Group, Henan International Logistics Hub Construction and Operation Co., and Xi'an International Port Group respectively.

The General Office of the Fujian Provincial People's Government issued Min Zheng Ban [2025] No. 30, "Several Measures to Promote the Development of the Artificial Intelligence Industry and Empowerment Applications in Fujian Province," on 2025-11-04. The notice implements the national "AI+" initiative at provincial level via three quantified subsidy tracks: a talent-recruitment supplement of RMB 200,000/year per person for AI engineers registered on a provincial core-engineer roster; a compute subsidy covering up to 50% of annual cloud/compute-service spend (capped at RMB 500,000 per firm) for companies purchasing at least RMB 100,000 of computing services per year; and a one-time capital subsidy of up to 50% of build cost (capped at RMB 5,000,000) for qualifying AI innovation platforms. The measure is in force through 2028-12-31 (per GTA state-act revocation date) and is one of a wave of province- and city-level AI industrial-policy notices issued across China in late 2025.

The Beijing Fengtai District Science and Technology and Information Bureau issued Fengkexinfa [2025] No. 7, "Several Measures to Support AI Science and Technology Innovation and Industrial Innovation Integration and Development in Fengtai District," on 2025-10-30. The notice bundles ten categories of subsidy for AI enterprises operating in the district, covering compute-purchase cost-sharing (20% up to RMB 2,000,000 for general AI firms, 30% up to RMB 3,000,000 for "industrial intelligence" firms), large-model development grants (up to RMB 500,000-600,000), dataset/data-asset subsidies (RMB 100,000-2,000,000), platform and incubator capex (up to RMB 5,000,000 and RMB 10,000,000 respectively), and fund-manager and talent-recruitment support. The measure is in force through 2028-12-31.

China's National Development and Reform Commission announced a new-type policy-based financial instrument worth CNY 500 billion (~USD 70.3 billion), to be used entirely to replenish capital for infrastructure and industrial projects. Funds are channeled through China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, targeting digital economy, AI, consumption-related infrastructure and urban renewal (transport, energy, underground utility upgrades). By mid-October 2025, China Development Bank and the Agricultural Development Bank had disbursed a combined ~CNY 300 billion, coordinated with the Ministry of Finance and People's Bank of China, with NDRC citing over 2,300 supported projects and roughly CNY 7 trillion in projected total investment leveraged.

The New Development Bank (NDB) Board of Directors approved a RMB 1.448 billion (~CNY 1.45 billion, ~USD 200 million) sovereign loan to the People's Republic of China on 14 July 2025 to finance the Shanxi Taiyuan Wusu Zero-Carbon Airport Project. The project will convert Taiyuan Wusu International Airport into China's first zero-carbon airport via over 100 MW of installed solar capacity, a pilot PV-Energy Storage-Direct Current-Flexible Loads (PEDF) system, and 100% renewable-based heating and cooling — a first among China's regional hub-scale airports. Shanxi Aviation Industry New Energy Company (SAINE), a joint venture of Shanxi Aviation Industry Group (SAIG) and two government-owned geological-engineering and industrial-construction enterprises, will implement the project between 2025 and 2029. NDB below-market development-bank pricing functions as an indirect state-adjacent subsidy for the build-out.

The Data Security Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国数据安全法) was adopted at the 29th meeting of the 13th NPC Standing Committee on 10 June 2021 and entered into force on 1 September 2021, constituting the second pillar of China's cybersecurity and data-governance regulatory trinity alongside the Cybersecurity Law (2016) and the Personal Information Protection Law (2021). The DSL establishes a tiered data-classification regime — "important data" and "national core data" — with escalating security obligations including risk assessment, risk monitoring, breach reporting, and classified-protection requirements for data handlers. It introduces a data-export security review for "important data" generated or collected within China, the statutory parent authority operationalised by the 2024 CAC Cross-Border Data Flow Provisions, and enacts a §36 blocking statute prohibiting Chinese organisations and individuals from transferring data stored in China to foreign judicial or law-enforcement authorities without prior PRC government approval.

The Cybersecurity Law of the People's Republic of China (中华人民共和国网络安全法) was adopted at the 24th meeting of the 12th NPC Standing Committee on 7 November 2016 and entered into force on 1 June 2017, establishing the foundational legal framework for network security governance across all sectors. The law creates the Critical Information Infrastructure Operator (CIIO) designation and protection regime administered by the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC), mandates data localisation for personal information and important data collected or generated by CIIOs in China, and establishes cross-border data-transfer security assessment requirements under Article 37 — the provision later operationalised by DSL 2021, PIPL 2021, and the 2024 CAC Cross-Border Data Flow Provisions. The CSL introduced multi-level protection scheme (等级保护制度 / MLPS) obligations for all network operators and network-product/service security-review procedures, under which CAC triggered the cybersecurity review of Didi Global in 2021 and the exclusion of Micron's products from Chinese critical-infrastructure projects in 2023.