China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) positions advanced manufacturing as enabling infrastructure for future strategic industries beyond 2030. Against this backdrop, Arup’s newly launched report, Advanced manufacturing across multiple horizons, explores opportunities in the next phase of manufacturing development and finds that future competitiveness will depend on ‘designing for optionality’.
Manufacturing is entering a period where long-lived assets and fast-moving technologies no longer align. The report finds that research and development, testing, prototyping, pilot production and high-volume manufacturing are becoming more closely connected, creating a more continuous and dynamic innovation process. Future manufacturing facilities will need greater adaptability and the capacity to support learning, experimentation and evolution.
Within the future ‘Normal’, the report highlights three signals of manufacturing futures that may become more open, innovative and accessible:
- Making Everything?
- Reconfigurable, connected, cross-sector and serviced spaces flex to suit the design or production of anything.
- Making Everywhere?
Small, temporary, mobile and modular approaches enable manufacturing anywhere. - Everyone Making?
Co-owning, co-funding and co-creating can reduce downtime and open manufacturing to new and smaller players.
In addition, the report uses a Three Horizons approach to explore how manufacturers can maintain future viability and strategic optionality as existing systems, emerging transitions and future possibilities coexist.
- Horizon 1 – Enable flexibility within existing systems
- Which existing assets, capabilities and infrastructure continue to create value? Which need greater efficiency or an extended operating life?
- Horizon 2 – Build capability for speed of adaptation
Where is innovation required? Which investments should be phased? Where should optionality be built into assets so they remain flexible and reconfigurable? - Horizon 3 – Position within evolving ecosystems
How should organisations participate in ecosystems while maintaining strategic advantage? Which capabilities should remain within the organisation, and which can be shared through collaboration?
The Three Horizons are not a linear roadmap. They help companies understand how existing systems, emerging transitions and future possibilities will coexist and compete across sectors and markets. For organisations, competitive advantage comes from maintaining optionality and the ability to adapt as conditions change.
The report also highlights workforce readiness and capability transition, cross-sector and infrastructure integration, strategic positioning within evolving systems, and clear data ownership, management and security. New innovation hubs and cross-boundary zones can strengthen collaboration across connected manufacturing ecosystems.
For Hong Kong, the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone offers a relevant signal of this shift. The cross-border platform enables closer integration of research, pilot testing and early-stage commercialisation, while piloting cross-boundary data governance mechanisms. This can strengthen Hong Kong’s role within connected manufacturing ecosystems and innovation-led industrial development.
Clive Szeto, APAC Science & Industry Business Leader at Arup, said:
‘China’s factories are not just places of production. They are ecosystems of innovation, technology, talent and global connection. As Chinese companies are increasingly looking outward, these ecosystems are also reshaping platforms for global growth and collaboration. Understanding this transformation will help organisations identify new opportunities, build stronger partnerships and navigate the next era of industrial growth. Arup works alongside clients and partners at the forefront of this change, helping connect global ambitions with local opportunities.’