National Bureau of Statistics: Investment in high-tech industries increased by 4.6% year-on-year in the first half of the year, with significant growth momentum in new energy, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits, and other fields.

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, on July 15th, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on the economic performance of the country in the first half of 2026. Mao Shengyong, the deputy director of the National Bureau of Statistics, stated at the meeting that in the first half of this year, fixed asset investment reached 22.6 trillion yuan. From the investment data in the first half of the year, investment played a significant role in promoting the development of new quality productivity, technological innovation, industrial upgrading, and improvement of people's livelihood. In particular, investment in emerging areas continued to show momentum. Various regions have emphasized the deployment and requirements for the development of new quality productivity according to local conditions, continuously increasing investment in emerging industries, laying out the future industrial race track, and showing significant growth in investment in areas such as new energy, artificial intelligence, and integrated circuits. In the first half of the year, investment in high-tech industries increased by 4.6% year-on-year, with investments in integrated circuit manufacturing, electronic specialty materials manufacturing, and lithium-ion battery manufacturing increased by 8.8%, 10%, and 24.4% respectively. Enterprises are increasingly focusing their investments on innovation processes, which is a very clear trend. In the first half of the year, investment in intellectual property products increased by 9.4% year-on-year, accelerating by 1.5 percentage points from the first quarter, with growth in intellectual property products including research and development, digital economy, among others, continuing to accelerate and maintain high growth. The optimization of the policy for large-scale equipment renewal has stimulated the demand for enterprise transformation and upgrading. In the first half of the year, investment in equipment and tools purchases increased by 8.1%.