China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, alongside nine other government departments, has officially released the "15th Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises."
The plan sets ambitious targets for 2030, aiming for a qualitative leap in the overall development of the nation's SMEs. Key goals include maintaining stable growth in business revenue and total assets, steadily increasing labor compensation and productivity, and achieving a cumulative growth of around 15% in per-capita business revenue for SMEs above a designated size. Innovation capabilities are expected to strengthen significantly, with annual internal R&D spending by industrial SMEs above a designated size projected to grow over 8%. The plan also targets the cultivation of 22,000 specialized and innovative "little giant" enterprises and the establishment of 600 national-level SME industry clusters. Furthermore, the plan emphasizes a rapid acceleration in digital, intelligent, and green transformation, creating typical application scenarios for this shift. It aims for over 95% of specialized and innovative SMEs to reach a secondary level of digital maturity and over 80% to reach a tertiary level, alongside notable improvements in energy and resource efficiency.
To bolster the service system, the plan seeks to significantly enhance the efficiency of a national "one-stop" SME service network, recognize a number of national public service demonstration platforms, and expand Sino-foreign SME cooperation zones to 50. The development environment will be further optimized, with a long-term mechanism for preventing and resolving late payments to SMEs being fundamentally established and diversified financing channels broadened.
Enhancing Direct Financing Support
A key focus is strengthening support for direct financing. The plan outlines measures to intensify efforts in cultivating SME listings, establishing a repository of high-quality enterprises for public offerings, and promoting regular equity financing connections. It also involves deepening the construction of specialized "little giant" boards within regional equity markets and developing a "technology board" in the bond market to facilitate bond financing for eligible SMEs. Additionally, the plan advocates vigorously developing venture capital by establishing the second phase of the National SME Development Fund to attract social capital for early-stage, small-scale, long-term, and hard-tech investments.
Refining the Cultivation of High-Quality Enterprises
The plan emphasizes improving the gradient cultivation system for high-quality enterprises. This includes refining mechanisms for nurturing specialized and innovative SMEs, strengthening policy support, and implementing dynamic management for enterprise recognition with clear entry and exit criteria. Efforts will continue to cultivate these specialized and innovative enterprises and "little giant" firms, while integrating the evaluation systems for tech-based and innovative SMEs. The plan also calls for enhanced monitoring and services for "gazelle" and "unicorn" companies to efficiently identify high-growth enterprises in emerging and future industries.
Encouraging and Facilitating SME Creation
To foster entrepreneurship, the plan encourages the efficient use of government investment funds at all levels in the innovation and entrepreneurship sector, channeling more patient capital toward seed-stage and start-up SMEs. It proposes exploring typical application scenarios and viable business models in emerging industries such as new energy, new materials, and robotics, as well as future industries like quantum technology, brain-computer interfaces, and embodied intelligence. Efforts will be made to integrate entrepreneurial incubation resources, offering services including office space, business guidance, consultation, training, and investment and financing. The plan also supports hosting innovation and entrepreneurship competitions to identify and nurture promising projects. Furthermore, it promotes the development of national university science parks and encourages researchers from universities and research institutes to establish tech-based enterprises, facilitating the market application of their proprietary research outcomes. A mechanism for re-entrepreneurship guidance and assistance will also be established.