China is currently the only industrial superpower, said Igor Sechin, Executive Secretary of the Presidential Commission for Strategic Development of the Fuel and Energy Sector and Chief Executive Officer of Rosneft Oil Company.

“Providing 35% of the global industrial production, China, in fact, is the only industrial superpower today,” he said during his speech at the opening ceremony of the VII Russian-Chinese Energy Business Forum.

Sechin explained that American manufacturing companies' dependence on Chinese components is now three times higher than Chinese companies' dependence on the US. “twenty years ago it was the other way around,” Rosneft CEO emphasized.

This is the result of the consistent and far-sighted policy of the Chinese leadership: one of the main tasks of China's 15th five-year plan is to create the conditions for building a “socialist modernized power” by 2035, which implies doubling GDP. It is this policy that allows China to take advantage of both a planned and a market economy at the same time. “Due to that synergy effect, China can maintain an accelerated economic growth rate of approximately 5% per year . Clearly, such development trend assumes further growth in energy consumption,” Sechin noted.

Another important priority for China over the next five years, Sechin mentioned, is the development of “new quality productive forces,” which should be accompanied by the formation of “emerging sectors and industries of the future.”

Rosneft’s CEO noted: “China has already become a global leader in research papers in many technology areas. In terms of their number, the country is ahead of both the United States and the European Union. Furthermore, China ranks first in the world by the number of active patents for inventions."

Eight Chinese universities are among the top ten in the world in the authoritative Leiden ranking, which evaluates universities based on the quantity and quality of scientific publications. “These achievements are underpinned by a tremendous increase in investment in research and development. Today, China's R&D funding exceeds the combined total of the European Union,” concluded Igor Sechin.

Department of Information and Advertising
Rosneft Oil Company
November 25, 2025