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All Reports
Every report from the institute in one place, filterable by section and province: industry reports, industry history, regional maps, and insights.
High-Speed Rail: China's Two Decades of Acceleration (2003-2026)
In 2003, the average commercial speed of China's passenger rail was still only 48 km/h; two decades later, China has built a network of more than 50,000 km of high-speed rail — longer than the rest of the world combined. What it won was not a single train, but an entire system, from traction motors, IGBTs, train control to aluminium-alloy car bodies. This is the story of how China grew that whole system, segment by segment, into its own industrial clusters.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
Photovoltaics: How China Made Sunlight the Cheapest Electricity (2001-2026)
In 1954 the solar cell was invented in the United States, yet for decades sunlight stayed the most expensive electricity there was. A country that two decades ago imported even its polysilicon now makes 85% to 97% of the world's solar supply chain, and has driven the cost of solar power down by 90%. This is the story of that climb.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
Power Batteries: China's Thirty-Year Comeback in Manufacturing (1995-2026)
In 1991, China imported even consumer batteries from Japan by the crate; thirty years on, two of every three power batteries in the world come from Chinese companies. This contest was decided not by a single cell, but by the supply chain behind it. This is the story of that comeback.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
The Mother Machine: Seventy Years of China's Climb in Machine Tools (1953-2026)
In 1949, China built just 1,582 machine tools in an entire year; seventy years later, one in every three machine tools on Earth is made in China. The machine tool is called the "mother machine of industry" - it sets the ceiling on what every factory in a country can build. This is the story of that climb.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
Returning to the Order That Ought to Be: One Hundred and Eighty Years of Industry Between China and Japan
The Opium War of 1840 and the Black Ships of 1853 were the same starting gun, pushing China and Japan onto the track of industrialization together. In the hundred and eighty years since, East Asia has tried three times to become a single industrial whole — by extraction, by conquest, by exchange; the first two collapsed. This is a history of how steel, railways, home appliances, and semiconductors moved between two neighbours — and an inquiry into what kind of whole East Asia ought to be.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
Built, But No One Dares Use It: The Four Gaps in China's Marine-Equipment Industry
“Marine equipment is the weak link” — a verdict repeated for years about China’s shipbuilding. But it is not one gap; it is four, of different kinds: design, craftsmanship, electronics, and trust. The first three are capability problems that time will close. The fourth is the hardest — it lies not in the workshop, but in the shipowner’s ledger of risk.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
A Ship Is a Map of an Industry Chain: Anatomy of China's Shipbuilding, Upstream to Downstream
A ship is the convergence of parts from a thousand suppliers. This piece dissects China’s shipbuilding industry chain tier by tier — upstream materials, midstream marine equipment, downstream final assembly — arriving at one structural reality: final assembly has reached the summit, while marine equipment is still catching up.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
One Bloodline: From the Jiangnan Arsenal to the Three Pearls (1865–2026)
From the Huiji of 1868 to the carrier Fujian of 2022, the institutional bloodline of Jiangnan Shipyard has run unbroken for 160 years. What a nation can build at sea is, roughly, a measure of how far its industry has come — this is a history of how a complete industrial system grows.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
The Reversal of Teacher and Student: Seventy-Seven Years of China-Russia Industrial Interaction (1949–2026)
From the 156 Projects to the pipelines of Siberia, China and Russia have, across seventy-seven years, completely traded their industrial places.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
Symbiosis and Rebalancing: 48 Years of China–US Industrial Engagement (1979–2026)
From the 1979 thaw to the competitive rebalancing of 2026 — how China–US manufacturing went from complementary symbiosis to rivalry, and how that history built the factory landscape China has today.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
China's 2024 Energy Transition Accelerates: National Targets and Provincial Roadmaps
The NEA's 2024 Guiding Opinions on Energy Work set a non-fossil power capacity share target of 55% and a wind-solar generation share target of 17%. Tianxia Gongchang Industrial Research Institute reviews all 31 provincial government work reports to map three structural storylines: western resource export, eastern grid absorption upgrades, and storage expansion. We also trace the manufacturing supply-chain implications of this policy cycle.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research
China's Chemical Project Map in 2024: Where the Investment Is and What Is Driving It
Drawing on China's 2024 active construction and planned chemical project pipeline, this report examines the regional distribution across East China, Northwest China, and South China, analyzes the industrial logic of five key provinces — Shandong, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, and Guangdong — and assesses how the large-scale expansion of integrated refining-and-chemical bases and the policy push to 'reduce oil, grow chemicals' are redrawing the national industrial map.
— Tianxia Gongchang Research