Robotic arms carry out packaging operation at the Global Intelligent Manufacturing Industrial Park of Yili Modern Intelligent Health Valley in Tumd Left Banner in Hohhot, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, April 17, 2025. (Photo: Xinhua)

In 2025, China’s major industrial enterprises achieved profit growth, reversing the downward spiral from 2022 to 2024, with new growth sectors such as equipment and high-tech manufacturing playing an increasingly prominent role, an official from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said on Tuesday.

According to the NBS, last year, profits of major industrial enterprises rose by 0.6 percent year-on-year. Manufacturing profits grew by 5.0 percent, a significant rebound of 8.9 percentage points from a year earlier. 

In December, monthly profit of industrial enterprises turned from a decline of 13.1 percent in November to a growth of 5.3 percent, representing a rebound of 18.4 percentage points, NBS data showed.

NBS statistician Yu Weining said that equipment manufacturing provided solid support for high-quality upgrading of Chinese enterprises. In 2025, profits of equipment manufacturing enterprises rose by 7.7 percent, contributing 2.8 percentage points to the overall profit growth of all industrial enterprises above the government’s designated size, making it the sector with the strongest pulling effect on the profit growth, Yu noted.

The proportion of profits in equipment making enterprises reached 39.8 percent of the total profits of all industrial enterprises last year. Among the eight major sub-sectors of equipment making, profits in seven sub-sectors increased year-on-year, with railway, shipbuilding, aerospace and transportation equipment, as well as electronics, achieving double-digit growth at 31.2 percent and 19.5 percent respectively, the NBS said.

High-tech manufacturing injected strong momentum into the high-quality growth, Yu said. In 2025, profits of high-tech manufacturing firms rose by 13.3 percent year-on-year, 12.7 percentage points higher than the overall growth rate for all industrial enterprises above the designated size.

Smart electronic products created new consumption trends, driving profit growth in intelligent equipment manufacturing sector to 48 percent year-on-year. Within this, profits in intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturing and intelligent in-vehicle equipment manufacturing surged by 102.0 percent and 88.8 percent, respectively.

According to Yu, profits in semiconductor sector grew strongly last year, with integrated circuit manufacturing growing by 172.6 percent, and semiconductor device-specific equipment manufacturing up by 128 percent. In medical care sector, profits in genetic engineering drugs and vaccine manufacturing grew 72.7 percent, and biopharmaceutical manufacturing rose 37.1 percent.

Yu added that the development of new quality productive forces in traditional industries continued to show results in 2025. For instance, in the chemical industry, profits in the manufacturing of biochemical pesticides and microbial pesticides increased by 20.7 percent, exceeding the average profit growth rate of the chemical industry by 28.0 percent.

In addition, profits of small and medium-sized enterprises and foreign-invested enterprises turned from negative to positive growth in 2025. Full-year profits increased by 1.4 percent and 4.2 percent, respectively, compared with declines of 1.9 percent and 1.7 percent seen in 2024, according to Yu.

However, the impact of global uncertainties and changes in the external environment continue to linger, and industrial transformation and upgrading were encountering some pains, and some enterprises still face certain difficulties in production and operations, Yu said.

In the next stage, efforts should go to promote the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation with manufacturing, continuously optimize the industrial structure, and accelerate the cultivation of new quality productive forces, in order to drive sustained improvement in the efficiency of Chinese enterprises, Yu noted.


Global Times