Ten central government departments, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Science and Technology, have jointly issued the 15th Five-Year Plan for Promoting the Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises, as reported on September 3. The plan outlines seven major tasks focusing on stabilizing enterprises and employment, strengthening enterprise cultivation, and enhancing the supply of production factors.
The plan introduces a series of concrete financial support measures. These include intensifying efforts to cultivate SMEs for public listings, deepening the development of the "Specialized, Refined, Distinctive, and Innovative" board within regional equity markets, vigorously developing venture capital, and establishing the second phase of the National SME Development Fund. Experts interviewed for this article believe that, unlike the 14th Five-Year Plan period which primarily focused on inclusive relief and policy safety nets, this new blueprint directly addresses the real and pressing needs of SME development, reflecting a pronounced problem-solving mindset.
The plan sets overall goals for SME development during the 15th Five-Year Plan period, targeting 2030. The goals aim for a qualitative and quantitative improvement in the overall development of SMEs in China. This includes maintaining stable growth in business revenue and total assets while steadily increasing labor compensation and productivity. Specifically, per-capita revenue for SMEs above a designated size is expected to grow cumulatively by approximately 15%. Innovation capabilities are slated for significant enhancement, with internal R&D expenditure for industrial SMEs above the designated size growing at an average annual rate of over 8%. The number of "Little Giant" enterprises is targeted to reach 22,000, and the number of national-level SME industrial clusters with distinctive features is set to hit 600. The plan also prioritizes optimizing the development environment by establishing a long-term mechanism to prevent and resolve defaults on payments owed to SMEs, while further broadening their diversified financing channels.
Strengthening enterprise cultivation to enhance the level of specialized and innovative development is a key task. In this regard, the plan focuses on refining the tiered cultivation system for high-quality enterprises. It aims to build a mechanism that fosters the growth and expansion of specialized and innovative SMEs, strengthen policy support, and enhance the dynamic management of high-quality enterprise certification, including improved certification and withdrawal standards. Efforts will be made to continuously cultivate specialized and innovative SMEs and "Little Giant" enterprises, promote the organic integration of evaluation systems for tech-based and innovative SMEs, and step up monitoring and services for "Gazelle" and "Unicorn" companies. This is designed to efficiently identify high-growth enterprises in emerging and future industries.
In recent years, the innovative capabilities of specialized and innovative SMEs have accelerated rapidly, making them an increasingly important source of innovation. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the overall strength of China's SMEs improved significantly, with business revenue and total assets growing at an average annual rate of 5.7% and 6.6%, respectively. Innovation capacity improved rapidly, with the average R&D investment intensity of "Little Giant" enterprises reaching 7% and average R&D investment surpassing 30 million yuan. Well-known companies, including Hangzhou's "Six Little Dragons" such as Unitree Robotics, BrainCo, and Deep Robotics, have emerged consecutively.
Zhang Xiaoyan, Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, noted that for the new Five-Year Plan period, the plan deploys supporting implementation measures to build a complete cultivation ecosystem. These measures include establishing a proactive discovery mechanism for high-quality SMEs, shifting the work model from passively waiting for applications to actively seeking out potential firms, and leveraging multi-source data on industry chain supply chains, equity financing, intellectual property, science and technology awards, and talent introduction to precisely target and reserve promising start-ups with high growth potential.
Additionally, the plan systematically addresses the key bottlenecks and pain points in SME innovation to fully activate their internal innovation drive. It clarifies a mechanism for converting scientific and technological achievements and promotes a "use first, pay later" model to create a closed loop for bringing innovations from the laboratory to industrialization.
Enhancing the supply of production factors to solidify the foundation of development is another key task. Concrete measures include strengthening the supply of inclusive finance, increasing support for direct financing, and enriching financial products and services. These involve leveraging the National Financing Guarantee Fund system to guide government financing guarantee institutions at all levels in increasing credit enhancement support for small and micro enterprises. The plan also calls for enhancing the cultivation of SMEs for listing, establishing a database of high-quality SMEs for listing, and promoting regular matchmaking for equity financing. Furthermore, it emphasizes vigorously developing venture capital and establishing the second phase of the National SME Development Fund to guide social capital towards early-stage, small-scale, long-term, and hard-tech investments.
Ma Bin, Executive Vice President of the China Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, highlighted that high-quality SMEs commonly face high R&D investment, significant technical uncertainty, and long return cycles. He stated that the plan proposes vigorously developing venture capital and setting up the second phase of the fund to steer social capital appropriately. Simultaneously, promoting the open sharing of new production factors like data and computing power with SMEs is a precise identification of and systematic response to the shortcomings in factor allocation.
Ma Yuan, Deputy Director of the Enterprise Research Institute under the Development Research Center of the State Council, acknowledged that SMEs still face difficulties and high costs in financing. He noted that the plan proposes comprehensively utilizing interest subsidies and monetary and credit policies to guide financial institutions in increasing credit support for SMEs. It also involves establishing a database of high-quality SMEs for listing, enhancing the intensity of listing cultivation, and building a diversified financing promotion system that links credit, equity, bonds, insurance, and guarantees.
To support the implementation of all tasks, the plan simultaneously sets up seven special projects and actions. These focus on detailed supporting measures in key areas such as gradient cultivation of quality enterprises, quality and brand standard enhancement, digital and intelligent transformation, industrial cluster capability improvement, financing promotion, talent services, and public service capability enhancement.