A recent phenomenon is noteworthy: China's tech industries across different fields are successively entering the global market and the view of international media.
In the past July, Chinese large model company Moonshot AI released Kimi K3; the official version API of DeepSeek-V4-Flash went live for public beta testing. Beyond these two model updates, China's advanced robotics equipment has also become one of the focal points of attention in the international community. Not long before this, American biopharmaceutical company Pfizer reached a cooperation agreement with China's Innovent Biologics on 12 early-stage oncology and pioneering R&D projects, with an upfront payment of $650 million.
Behind this is the accumulated industrial capacity of China over the long term, now collectively crossing the 'visibility threshold'.
Why are more and more competitive Chinese tech industries collectively crossing this line? What does this indicate about the stage China's sci-tech innovation has reached?
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To answer these questions, we need to extend the observation period a bit longer.
Over the past decades, the labels the international community uses to understand China's industries have been constantly changing, with different industries successively crossing the 'visibility threshold' of the global market and international media.
||In the 1980s and 1990s, the 'old three staples'—garments, furniture, and home appliances—formed the main impression of 'Made in China' for the world. By 1995, the export share of mechanical and electrical products had risen to 29.4%, surpassing textiles and garments to become the largest category of China's exports. Since then, computer and communication equipment manufacturing and equipment manufacturing have continuously become the main drivers of exports.
||By 2023, mechanical and electrical products already accounted for 58.6% of China's total export value. In recent years, the 'new three staples'—new energy vehicles (NEVs), lithium-ion batteries, and photovoltaic products—have become representatives of China's march into the global market.
||Today, artificial intelligence, robotics, and innovative drugs are beginning to enter the view of the global market and international media. These industries are also called the 'new new three staples'.
They belong to different fields and face different markets. However, Tan Zhu's analysis finds that whenever a new batch of Chinese industries becomes the focus of global attention, several common characteristics typically have already emerged:
||First, scale formation. The industry's output value, exports, orders, or technology transactions reach a scale of billions or tens of billions, beginning to have a noticeable impact on economic growth and export structure.
||Second, prominent advantages. Products rank among the global leaders in terms of market share, technical performance, cost-effectiveness, etc., starting to influence the choices of international customers.
||Third, accelerated growth. The industry is in a phase of rapid growth, representing the main direction of China's industrial upgrading.
||Fourth, driving industrial chain development. What goes global is not just a single product; it also drives the joint development of components, equipment, software, and services.
This boundary, from 'the capability already exists' to 'being consistently visible to the global market', is what we refer to as the 'visibility threshold'.
The concentrated appearance of these characteristics also signals a transformation occurring within an industry:
Before crossing this dividing line, technology R&D, product testing, and supply chain construction primarily occur within the industry; after crossing it, the industry begins to influence the judgments and choices of the international market.
A set of data recently released by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) can be observed in relation to this line:
In the first half of this year, China's artificial intelligence-related industries maintained growth exceeding 30%; out of every 10 humanoid and quadruped intelligent robots sold globally, 8 are produced in China; 38 innovative drugs were approved for marketing in the first half, of which 31 are domestic innovative drugs, with the total value of outbound technology licensing reaching approximately $100 billion.
This set of data indicates that artificial intelligence, robotics, and innovative drugs have become the latest batch of representative industries crossing the 'visibility threshold'.
However, the ways in which these rounds of industries crossed the 'visibility threshold' differ.
When garments, furniture, and home appliances went global, global demand was relatively mature. China mainly solved the problem of how to produce products stably with higher efficiency and lower costs. Demand came first, capacity followed.
When new energy vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and photovoltaic products rose, global green transition demand was forming. At the same time, price and large-scale application remained obstacles. China reduced costs through manufacturing capabilities and economies of scale, bringing many demands that stayed in planning and intent into the real market.
By the stage of artificial intelligence, robotics, and innovative drugs, the product forms, application scenarios, and even market rules are still forming, while Chinese enterprises have already entered the stages of R&D, verification, and deployment.
China is no longer merely waiting for a mature market to emerge; instead, it is creating both the product and the market by lowering application thresholds, opening technical interfaces, and building industrial ecosystems.
This means the relationship between China's industries and the 'visibility threshold' has also changed.
In the past, the world first defined what it needed, then decided which Chinese industries would be seen first. Consequently, China could only be narrated and defined.
Today, this relationship is beginning to change. China's technological progress itself is starting to lead global demand, thereby influencing the global market. In other words, China is beginning to lead the narrative, even prompting external markets and public opinion to react following China's actions.
China is no longer merely entering a pre-defined market but is also beginning to participate in defining new products, new demands, and new industrial directions. The cost for the world to ignore China's innovation is also rising.
Simultaneously, the intervals between successive rounds of representative industries crossing the 'visibility threshold' are shortening.
Decades passed from when garments, furniture, and home appliances formed export scale in the last century to when the exports of new energy vehicles, lithium-ion batteries, and photovoltaic products exceeded 1.06 trillion yuan in 2023.
Yet, after the 'new three staples' gained global influence, artificial intelligence, robotics, and innovative drugs entered the global market's view within just a few years.
Jiang Zhao, Deputy Researcher at the Institute of Circulation and Consumption Research of the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation (CAITEC) under the Ministry of Commerce, told Tan Zhu that the shortening industrial iteration cycles stem, on the one hand, from the accelerated breakthroughs in the global technological revolution, speeding up the transformation of technological achievements into industries; on the other hand, it also indicates a change in China's industrial innovation capability, beginning to evolve in sync with the global frontier, with the speed and initiative of independent iteration significantly enhanced.
An industry crossing the 'visibility threshold' also conversely changes the industry itself.
It sends a signal to global customers that the technology is ready for use, attracting suppliers, talent, and capital. Customers bring demand, scenarios generate data, suppliers follow up with supporting facilities; these resources then cycle back into R&D and production.
Therefore, 'visibility' is not just the result of innovation; it also forms new expectations, which in turn drive innovation. Of course, expectations may also run ahead of real demand.
The role of the 'visibility threshold' is to help us judge which industries have already moved from internal accumulation to market validation, which capabilities remain unseen by the outside world, and where the next batch of industries might emerge from.
But being seen only explains the outcome. To explain why these industries can emerge collectively, we need to look at the characteristics of China's innovation behind the 'visibility threshold'.
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These new industries do not appear randomly. They are highly adjacent to China's existing industrial capabilities.
The accumulated capabilities in batteries, motors, electronic controls, sensors, and precision manufacturing from China's new energy vehicle industry are migrating to the robotics industry.
Behind artificial intelligence lies connections to chips, servers, communication networks, and power systems.
Hu Yanping, a professor at the Digital Economy Research Institute of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, observes that computing power demand not only drives GPUs, various ASIC chips including TPUs, but also an entire industrial chain involving storage, optical communication, PCBs, cluster technology, and cooling systems.
Innovative drugs are also built upon long-term accumulation in the chemical industry, clinical resources, and production processes. With AI entering drug R&D, computing power, data, and algorithms are beginning to connect with life sciences.
This also answers a question: China established a complete industrial system very early on, so why have these innovative industries only begun to emerge densely in recent years?
What was called 'complete' in the past mainly referred to the ability to produce the vast majority of industrial products. The change happening today is that this industrial system is moving from 'complete' to 'dense': different industries are beginning to share technologies, talent, suppliers, and infrastructure; the capabilities accumulated in one industry can rapidly migrate to another.
Industry observer Xiao Lei told Tan Zhu that the large model-led artificial intelligence did not grow independently of existing industries; it is built upon the long-term development and iteration of the chip industry. Technological products like chips also do not have a technical endpoint of 'finishing once made'; they must continuously iterate, operate, and promote themselves in the market.
Solving the problem of going from zero to one is only the first step. Whether a sustainable, updating supply chain and market system can be formed determines both whether a technology can enter the next stage and whether it can provide a foundation for new technological breakthroughs.
The distance between production and R&D is also shortening. As robots enter factories and AI enters manufacturing, problems exposed in real-world use can be fed back to the R&D stage more quickly. Large-scale application is no longer just the result of innovation but has become part of innovation itself.
This change is also reflected in system organization capability.
Industry insider Wang Wuyang summarized China's computing power construction as a 'system efficiency' route: organizing different chips into coordinated working systems through high-speed interconnection, heterogeneous computing, and cluster scheduling. The commissioning of China's first fully domestically produced 100,000-card AI supercluster is one practical verification of this route.
Institutional reforms are also shortening the time for technologies to enter the market.
When industrial capabilities can migrate, real-world applications can feed back to R&D, and single-point technologies can be organized into systems, the original industrial scale changes in nature: it is no longer just a production advantage but has become an infrastructure that continuously generates new industries.
This is the internal cause for the ability of more and more industries to cross the 'visibility threshold'.
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What does such innovation capability signify?
An important change is that the competitive advantage of China's industries is extending from 'making the product' to establishing knowledge and organizational systems capable of continuously generating value.
Today, industries crossing the 'visibility threshold' share a characteristic: they are increasingly difficult to fully measure using traditional goods trade metrics. Tangible products increasingly resemble the visible interface of an industrial system.
||Beyond the robot body, there is software, algorithms, data, and their operating environment.
||As artificial intelligence goes global, some provide model services via cloud APIs, and some enter developer ecosystems by opening weights.
||Outbound technology licensing for innovative drugs does not just trade a compound.
The product is only the most visible part of these systems. What truly determines whether an industry can obtain long-term gains are often the patents, standards, and ecosystems behind the product.
This is the industrial moat.
In the past, some U.S. tech companies, even without directly undertaking all production stages, could still occupy a larger share of value chain benefits by relying on patents, operating systems, technical standards, and platform ecosystems.
For China's tech industries to continue advancing, manufacturing capability alone is not enough; the ability to master core technologies and industrial ecosystems is also needed.
However, possessing a moat does not equate to building walls. China needs the ability to master core knowledge and ecosystems but does not need to replicate the closed and exclusionary path.
Open-source models, open interfaces, local deployment, and joint R&D can allow more enterprises and users to enter China's technological ecosystem. A broader application scope, in turn, brings data, demand, and suggestions for improvement, driving continuous technological iteration.
Openness is not abandoning core capabilities but expanding the ecosystem to give technology a broader and more lasting impact.
Jiang Zhao believes that the changes across several rounds of representative industries reflect the continuous upgrading of what China provides to the world: from good and inexpensive daily commodities, to the production capacity and systemic solutions needed for the green transition, and further to more inclusive and accessible innovative results and development capabilities.
How can such an industrial moat be built more solidly?
The 15th Five-Year Plan (FYP) has already proposed developing strategic emerging industries such as robotics, biopharmaceuticals, and aerospace, while also planning for future industries like embodied AI, brain-computer interfaces, quantum technology, bio-manufacturing, and the sixth-generation mobile communication (6G).
In the process of building these industries, technology determines whether an industry can continuously move forward; application scenarios determine whether technology can withstand real-world testing; the ecosystem determines whether a single technological breakthrough can be transformed into a long-term operational system.
Of course, whether the moat is truly formed ultimately depends on whether products can continuously obtain orders, whether technology can iteratively improve, whether revenue can support long-term R&D, and whether the industrial ecosystem can attract more participants.
Crossing the 'visibility threshold' is only the beginning of market validation.
China is entering a stage: pushing more and more new industries into market validation and continuously improving the industrial system through this validation.
One industry crossing the 'visibility threshold' might be just a single-point breakthrough. But successive generations of industries crossing it means a country is forming the ability to continuously generate new industries.
Above the 'visibility threshold', new industries and new things constantly emerge and flourish; below it, China's long-term accumulated capabilities are continuously connecting, growing, and moving forward.
This article is from WeChat Official Account: Yuyuan Tantian , Author: Tan Zhu
