China’s economic resilience and strong innovation momentum, combined with its unwavering commitment to high-standard opening-up, are ushering in “China Opportunity 2.0” for businesses worldwide, officials, experts and executives said, adding that the country’s development has brought the world vast opportunities and considerable room for growth.
In a world facing rising protectionism and geopolitical tensions, they said, deeper innovation cooperation is emerging as a key pathway to reviving global growth, while China Opportunity 2.0 is bolstering investor confidence through stronger innovation empowerment and high-return investment prospects. For the global economy, China Opportunity 2.0 is broadening access to advanced technologies and enabling the benefits of innovation to be shared more widely across countries and economies, they added.
China Opportunity 1.0 was largely associated with China’s emergence as a fast-growing market and the “world’s factory”, said Liu Tiezhi, Researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council. The 2.0 version, he said, is taking shape in a more mature and rules-based market, where China’s vast domestic demand is creating new opportunities on the demand side and its highly efficient industrial system is opening up fresh possibilities on the supply side. “China Opportunity 2.0 is also about fostering a two-way flow of resources and factors through higher-standard opening-up,” Liu said, adding that deeper development cooperation could equip countries with more resources and capabilities to narrow development gaps.
A key pillar of China Opportunity 2.0 is the resilience and steady growth prospects of China’s economy, providing greater certainty for global businesses and reinforcing confidence in long-term investment and development amid a more volatile external environment. China’s economy expanded 4.7% year-on-year in the first half of 2026, with GDP reaching CNY69.57 trillion, keeping the economy on track to meet the government’s full-year growth target of 4.5% to 5%, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Putting China’s growth in a global context, Huang Hanquan, Dean of the Chinese Academy of Macro-economic Research, said the performance is particularly noteworthy at a time when high inflation and elevated interest rates are weighing on the world economy and overall global growth is losing momentum. “Against such a backdrop, maintaining growth at this pace is no small achievement,” Huang said at a seminar hosted by the academy in Beijing last month.
Zhu Feng, China Chief Economist and head of Greater China Economic Research at JPMorgan, told China Daily that he expects the Chinese economy to grow around 4.6% this year and meet the official growth target. “High-tech and advanced manufacturing, AI-related exports, renewable energy and public investment should remain key sources of manufacturing resilience, while exports continue to support growth,” Zhu added. Goldman Sachs has also forecast China’s economy will grow by 4.6% this year, with exports remaining a key source of resilience thanks to the country’s strong manufacturing competitiveness. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) struck an optimistic note in July, raising its 2026 growth forecast for the Chinese economy by 0.2 percentage point from its April projection to 4.6%, making China one of the few major economies to receive an upward revision.
For multinational corporations with deep operations in China, that resilience is more than a macro-economic story, it is increasingly reflected in day-to-day business activity. For United States-based leisurewear company Skechers, strong resilience is visible in recovering foot traffic at major commercial districts and malls, growing demand for sports products and steady sales growth. China’s vast market, well-developed supply chains and steadily improving business environment are delivering tangible returns for global companies. Similar confidence is evident among the broader business community. An annual member survey released in June by the U.S.-China Business Council found that 95% of respondents considered China “somewhat to very important” for staying globally competitive. Rogier Janssens, President of Merck China, said the latest first-half figures were consistent with what he had observed on the ground: solid momentum in high-end manufacturing and resilient trade in high-value-added products, trends that point to the emergence of China Opportunity 2.0. To gauge the resilience of China’s economy, one needs to look beyond the headline GDP figures and examine where the growth is coming from, Janssens said.
New growth drivers contributed more than two-fifths of economic growth in the first half. The industrial sector maintained solid momentum, with value-added output of industries above designated size (with a revenue above CNY20 million) rising 5.4% year-on-year, while high-tech manufacturing output grew 13.3%.
Meanwhile, China’s technological advances and industrial upgrading are yielding growing innovation dividends for global businesses, as more foreign companies establish research and development (R&D) centers and become more deeply embedded in the country’s innovation and industrial ecosystems, shifting from “manufacturing in China” to “innovating in China”, the China Daily reports.
