Ahead of Trump-Xi Meeting, China Doubles Down on Tech Ambitions

Days before meeting President Trump in South Korea, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping laid out the next stage in a strategy of long-term competition with the United States and the West that centers on securing a global lead in advanced manufacturing and technology.

The plan makes clear that Beijing wants to double down on industrial and technological strength even as its trading partners worry that China’s expanding exports are undercutting their own industries.

China must “seize the window of opportunity to consolidate and expand our strengths, break past bottlenecks and surmount weaknesses, to gain the strategic initiative in intense international competition,” Mr. Xi told the party’s Central Committee — its council of several hundred senior officials — last week, according to a statement that was released Tuesday.

Mr. Trump is trying to use punishing tariffs to press manufacturers of vehicles, electronics and other goods to shift from China to the United States. Other industrial economies, including Japan and South Korea, worry that China’s growing exports are squeezing their companies.

Many economists have also urged China to devote much more spending to building a social safety net so its citizens have the confidence to spend more. But an outline of China’s next five-year plan, covering 2026 to 2030, shows that Mr. Xi’s vision of national strength in the face of tough global competition remains focused on manufacturing and innovation, which he believes will bring more prosperity to the country’s people.

“The balance of global power is undergoing profound readjustment, and breakthroughs in a new phase of technological revolution and industrial transformation are accelerating,” says the summary of the plan, which was approved by officials at the meeting.

“Unilateralism and protectionism are raising their heads, and the threats from hegemony and power politics are escalating,” the document stated, using terms that in Chinese political speak allude to Western dominance.

Such five-year plans are an important tool for Chinese leaders to set out priorities and steer funds to them.

The plan says China will adopt “extraordinary measures” to pursue breakthroughs in key technologies such as semiconductors, high-end equipment and advanced materials. The document left unclear what “extraordinary measures” meant, but the words conveyed the urgency behind the Chinese leaders’ plans, said Gerard DiPippo, an associate director of the RAND China Research Center who studies the country’s economy.

“In policy terms, ‘extraordinary measures’ means stepping outside normal bureaucratic and market routines to force breakthroughs in choke-point technologies,” Mr. DiPippo wrote by email. “It reflects Beijing’s mobilization mind-set given the urgency of geopolitical tensions.”

Mr. Xi is scheduled to meet Mr. Trump on Thursday for talks focused on defusing their trade tensions, including over U.S. tariffs and China’s sweeping export controls on rare earths, which are used in many advanced technologies, commercial and military.

Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump may agree to a truce that includes pulling back U.S. tariffs and pausing China’s latest export controls. But the plan suggests that Beijing will continue working on using export controls to defend its economic and security interests.

The Chinese government “will improve export control and security review mechanisms,” it says. A section on national security goals also noted that China would “enhance the exploration, development and creation of reserves of strategic mineral resources.”

The plan says that China will do more to expand domestic consumption, and calls for “a marked increase” in household spending and a “sustained strengthening of domestic demand as a primary driver of economic growth.”

But China’s strategy for expanding consumer spending differed from the approach that some Western economists support, which puts a priority on greater spending for health care and other welfare outlays, so that people have more money and confidence to purchase goods and services, Mr. DiPippo said.

To Chinese leaders, the country is unable to spur domestic consumption not from a lack of money for spending but because “the services aren’t of sufficient quality to meet their demands,” he said.

“This approach maps onto their top goal of building a modern industrial system,” Mr. DiPippo said. “For Beijing, strong consumption is an outcome to be achieved through improving the productive side of the economy.”