ASML announced plans to manufacture at least 60 standard EUV lithography machines in 2026, representing a 36 percent increase over 2025 sales figures. The Dutch company remains the sole supplier of equipment capable of producing cutting-edge semiconductors at scale, and the acceleration reflects relentless demand from AI chip manufacturers.

The bottleneck in AI is not software. It is not talent. The bottleneck is silicon. Whoever can deliver the most advanced chips at the highest volume owns the AI market. ASML manufactures the only tools that produce those chips. This gives ASML extraordinary leverage over every semiconductor company, which gives every semiconductor company leverage over every AI company. The hierarchy is clear and fixed.

The most urgent theme running through China’s 15th Five-Year Plan is technological independence. The document calls for “extraordinary measures” to reduce Chinese reliance on foreign science and technology — language that signals both the scale of the ambition and the degree of vulnerability it is designed to address.

China’s dependence on outside technology remains substantial. In aircraft, advanced manufacturing equipment, precision instruments, gas turbines, enterprise software, and semiconductors, Chinese industry relies heavily on inputs from the United States, Europe, and Japan. The 15th FYP treats this as a strategic liability and funds accordingly.

No sector is more loaded in China’s 15th Five-Year Plan than semiconductors and software. The combination is deliberate: chips without the software to design and program them are limited, and software without the chips to run it at scale is equally constrained. The plan treats them as a single self-reliance problem.

On the hardware side, the FYP targets three categories: mature-node chips (the volume production that Chinese fabs can already partially supply), advanced chips (where China remains substantially behind the leading edge), and optoelectronic chips (a category that intersects with AI hardware, sensors, and communications). The plan does not pretend the advanced chip gap is already closed. It treats closure as an objective requiring sustained investment and policy support.

China’s 15th Five-Year Plan is specific about where state money and policy support will flow. The document’s industrial priority table is worth working through sector by sector, because it tells you what the Chinese state believes it needs and what it intends to build.

Advanced Materials — Specialty steel, high-temperature alloys, ultrahigh-purity metals, advanced ceramics, high-performance fibers, and rare earths. Materials independence underlies every other manufacturing goal on this list.