- Early-year investment growth beats China average by double digits
- Mega projects and tech upgrades drive momentum in EVs, chips and advanced materials
Manufacturing investment in Zhejiang Province accelerated at the start of the year, underscoring regional momentum in industrial upgrading even as China’s broader economic growth faces headwinds.
Investment in Zhejiang’s manufacturing sector rose 13.7% year-on-year in the first two months of 2026, outpacing the national average by 10.6 percentage points, according to data released April 4 by the provincial Department of Economy and Information Technology.
The growth has been fueled in big part by an aggressive pipeline of large-scale industrial projects.
In January and February, Zhejiang has scheduled 1,147 major manufacturing projects worth more than 500 million yuan ($72.65 million) each for the year’s first batch, with total planned investment reaching 2.23 trillion yuan and annual investment targets of about 208.9 billion yuan.
Among them, 747 projects exceed 1 billion yuan in value, accounting for nearly 1.98 trillion yuan in total investment.
At the same time, the province launched 5,325 technology-upgrade projects under a broader industrial modernization initiative, with planned investment totaling 694.3 billion yuan.
Zhejiang is traditionally a major manufacturing powerhouse, home to a number of the nation’s high-value-added industry clusters spanning automobile, petrochemical, new energy equipment and industrial machinery.
Capital spending in the January-February period has been concentrated in strategic sectors including new-energy vehicles and components, semiconductors, biopharmaceuticals and medical devices, green petrochemicals, and advanced materials — industries viewed as central to China’s push toward higher-value manufacturing.
Authorities are also pressing for faster project execution to translate investment plans into real economic activity. By the end of February, 95 out of 212 newly approved projects had already broken ground, representing a start rate of 44.8%.
Zhejiang has set an aggressive rollout timetable for the year, targeting construction commencement for half of all major manufacturing projects by the end of the first quarter, 80% by the second quarter, and full project launches by October — a schedule aimed at sustaining industrial growth through accelerated capital allocation.
