China’s infrastructure spending may surge in 2025 to meet 5-year goals

With construction seen as vital to stabilising the national economy, authorities emphasise that there is still a lot of room to increase fiscal spending

Reading Time:2 minutes

A high-speed railway is seen under construction in China’s Anhui province last month. Photo: Xinhua

Published: 4:00pm, 10 Dec 2024

With the clock ticking down on China’s 2021-25 five-year plan, many infrastructure targets remain unmet, setting the stage for a potential acceleration in construction that could spur a rise in investment next year.

Official data shows that progress in key sectors – from railways to nuclear power – lags behind the plan’s goals, leaving large room for next year, according to the Post’s review of the five-year plan progress.

To meet its target of building 50,000km (31,069 miles) of high-speed rail lines by 2025, China still needs to add around 3,800km worth of new lines between the current quarter and next year, according to calculations based on Ministry of Transport data made public.

This required pace far exceeds the progress made in the first three quarters of 2024, when only 1,210km of high-speed lines were added.

In the nuclear power sector, the latest government data from late August showed that China’s installed nuclear power capacity had reached 58.08 million kilowatts.

While this marks an increase of around 7 million kW from the end of 2020, it is still far short of achieving 70 million kW worth of operational capacity under the country’s 14th five-year plan.