The South China Morning Post on April 22 said that the 'Made in China-2025' plan was authored by the Chinese Academy of Engineering in August 2013 and was to counter the reforms announced at the Third plenum in 2013. The Chinese Academy of Engineering at the time initiated nationwide research on what was then called the “Strategy of Innovation Design”. This project, in which, the Ministry of Information and Industrial Technology was a partner  involved interviews with 153 firms in 32 cities, over 50 seminars with local governments and design organisations, as well as a dozen academic lectures, and culminated in a report, which was submitted to Beijing in 2015, and endorsed by Premier Li Keqiang. “Made in China 2025” has two main goals. First, transform China from an assembler of hi-tech products into a manufacturer for advanced industries, such as robotics, advanced information technology, aviation and new energy vehicles. China’s share of processing exports has steadily declined from almost 50 per cent in 2009, but as of 2016 was still almost 35 per cent. Second, by fostering indigenous innovation and subsidising state-owned enterprises to import foreign hi-tech, China hopes to move up the value chain and avoid the middle-income trap. According to the World Bank, out of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 became high-income by 2008. But the West sees “Made in China 2025” not as an effort to join the ranks of hi-tech exporting countries but as a mercantilist strategy to replace them. Though China describes these goals are merely aspirational, but semi-official documents set concrete targets and funding has followed. An advanced manufacturing fund, worth 20 billion yuan, and an Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, worth 138.7 billion yuan, funnel money into Chinese state-owned enterprises. Provincial funds complement these funds. Acceptance of the “Made in China 2025” over the 2013 reform programme has seen Xi Jinping’s government help state-owned enterprises take over private firms by merging large state firms into even larger ones, thereby enhancing their monopolies in pillar industries. In 2015 and 2016, 11 extremely large state-owned enterprises merged, creating monopolistic national champions in the energy, railway, steel, shipping, mining and food sectors, whose technological strengths enhance their global competitiveness. Xi Jinping's objective is to that the Chinese Communist Party is not undermined. Xi’s Chinese dream, his “Belt and Road Initiative” and his goal of making China a world power by 2049 all depend on state-owned enterprises and a powerful Communist Party, hence “Made in China 2025”.

(Comment: “Made in China 2025” was near the top of the list of complaints that the US presented to China in the current trade negotiations. It was mentioned in the United States Trade Representative’s Section 301 report on China’s unfair trade practices 116 times!)