Business

Xi Seeks to Preserve China's Rust Belt Heavy Industries
By Reuters | 08 Jul, 2025

Even as he pushes heavy investment in new hi-tech industries like AI and semiconductors, Chinese President emphasizes the importance of maintaining the heavy industries that built the country.

Chinese President Xi Jinping arrives at the Kremlin to attend a festive concert, held on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two, in Moscow, Russia, May 8, 2025. Alexander Kryazhev/Host agency RIA Novosti/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo

Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the country to hold on to its manufacturing capacity while developing new industries, as China seeks to restructure its economy amid flaring tensions with some of its largest trading partners.

"The real economy should not be abandoned, nor should the heavy industries within it," Xi said during an inspection tour in northern China's resource-rich Shanxi province, the official Xinhua news agency reported on Tuesday.

While stressing "industrial transformation and upgrading through technological innovation," Xi said transformation and development cannot overstep the boundaries of security and stability.

In six inspection trips taken across China so far this year, Xi's messaging has sought to balance the call to embrace "strategic new industries" such as artificial intelligence and new energy, and the need to preserve China's edge in heavy industry while securing greater self-sufficiency, all against a backdrop of intensified trade and geopolitical rivalry with the United States.

U.S. officials have long expressed concerns over China's excess manufacturing capacity and the trade imbalance it induced.

During this year's trips, Xi cautioned against doing away with established industries, and instead called for orderly upgrades.

This week in the top coal-producing province of Shanxi, Xi called for the transformation of its "resource-based economy".

The province should drive its coal industry to pivot to high-end, high-value products and build up its solar, hydrogen and wind power industries, and at the same time shoulder the responsibility of ensuring national coal supply, Xi said.

At a bearings factory in central China's Henan this May, Xi urged the country to continue improving the manufacturing industry.

While touring a steel plant in China's northeast rust belt in January, Xi emphasised that "the steel industry is an important basic industry of the country and the real economy is the foundation of the national economy," amid persistent challenges faced by Chinese steelmakers.

(Reporting by Xiuhao Chen, Ethan Wang and Ryan Woo; Editing by Tom Hogue and Hugh Lawson)