China’s Deep Tech Plans

China has woven Deep Technology into the fabric of its long-term development model, positioning it as a pillar of an innovation-driven, self-reliant economy. While the release of DeepSeek looked like an overnight sensation, it was anything but.

Deep Tech, aka "New Infrastructure" in China, sits at the heart of the country’s strategy for sustainable, innovation-led growth. The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025) spells out an extensive support system,¹³⁷ while the 2021 Science and Technology Progress Law reaffirms Beijing’s determination to keep pushing frontier research.¹³⁸ The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with six other ministries, has spotlighted a roster of "future industries" (quantum computing, 6G, space technologies, next-generation materials) as pillars of China’s new "quality productive forces."

A flagship element is the "20 + 8" cluster agenda, which earmarks twenty strategic emerging industries and eight forward-looking fields, biotechnology, next-generation ICT, advanced manufacturing, and more, and bundles them into regional hubs where companies, research institutes and investors collaborate at scale.¹³⁹ In November 2022 the Ministries of Science & Technology and Education green-lit ten pilot "future industry" parks across eight provinces and municipalities, each combining co-creation spaces, incubators, accelerators and industrial parks, underpinned by a 30-point talent scheme.^140,141

Between 2017 and 2022, Deep Tech’s share of total domestic tech investment jumped from 15% to 71%, reflecting how quickly capital has followed this coordinated policy drive.

The payoff is visible.¹⁴² China’s Deep Tech market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 19.2% through 2034, outpacing the 15.6% projected for the United States and trailing only Australia & New Zealand’s 22% trajectory.¹⁴³ The biotech sector dominated Deep Tech investments until recently, attracting roughly $22 billion in private capital, double the next largest vertical, computer hardware. But 2022 marked a pivot: biotech contracted sharply to $10 billion, while the EV, AV, and Automotive Technology segment surged from $7.9 billion to $11.1 billion, seizing the top position.

# Tangible outcomes of China’s Deep-Tech push

China has begun to harvest visible dividends. In January 2025, Beijing-based DeepSeek released its DeepSeek-R1 model, matching the best U.S. foundation models while training on far leaner compute budgets; analysts describe its open-weight successor as one of the strongest code-generation systems outside Silicon Valley.¹⁴⁴ The same "thrift-at-scale" mindset underpins ManusAI, a Chinese agentic platform many observers rate above current state-of-the-art.¹⁴⁵ A recent paper unveiled Zuchongzhi 3.0, a 105-qubit superconducting processor executing sampling tasks that stump classical supercomputers.¹⁴⁶

Hardware supremacy is most obvious on the road: Chinese brands account for about 60% of global EV sales, and in 2024 BYD shipped 4.27 million vehicles and booked USD 107 billion in revenue, outstripping Tesla’s 1.79 million deliveries and USD 97.7 billion top line.¹⁴⁷ Furthermore, in March 2025 the General-Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party unveiled a US$138 billion public-private fund for quantum computing, advanced semiconductors, AI, and next-generation renewables. The quantum component alone is almost 30 times larger than the combined quantum programmes of the United States and European Union.

# Chinese engagement in LATAM

The United States and Europe still dominate Latin America’s investment landscape. In 2023 they supplied roughly 33% and 22% of incoming FDI, according to ECLAC; China registered a negligible 0.4%, a steep drop from the 3% it posted the year before.¹⁴⁸ Even sources casting Beijing in a brighter light, such as the China OFDI Monitor, put its 2023 outlay at just USD 8.8 billion, about 10% of all FDI.¹⁴⁹ Yet momentum is shifting: the European Union projects that by 2035 China will have become Latin America’s single largest trading partner.¹⁵⁰

Research by Melguizo and Myers shows the number of Chinese projects in Latin America grew by 33% from 2018–2023 versus 2013–2017, even as total value declined, more investments, smaller-scale projects, more focused on "new infrastructure." In 2022, 60% of China’s investments were in frontier sectors.¹⁵¹ Chinese investment shifted from canals, rails and energy infrastructure to Deep Tech, consistent with Beijing’s laser focus on economic upgrading. In 2022, China’s Ministry of Science and Technology explicitly committed to enhancing scientific cooperation with Latin America, emphasizing technology transfer.¹⁵²

When we polled regional stakeholders about China’s footprint, most admitted they have yet to see sizeable cheques hit the ground. Interest is rising, particularly in biotech and ag-tech, but curiosity has not matured into transactions large enough to bend the market’s arc. Still, the real inflection arrives when states unleash large-scale public capital. In March 2025, China launched a US$138 billion sovereign vehicle,¹⁵³ and only two months later rolled out a US$9 billion credit facility for Latin-American governments.¹⁵⁴ The signal could not be clearer: China’s Deep Tech surge is inseparable from its bid to broaden its economic, and therefore geopolitical, ties across the hemisphere.