Editor's Note: As China launches its 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-30), policymakers are strengthening coordination between the "Export to China" and "Shopping in China" campaigns. The effort signals a clear commitment to expanding imports while promoting high-quality consumption. To explore what this means for global business, we invited executives from multinational corporations to share their perspectives on the opportunities in China's vast market, the role of their China operations in global strategy, and their outlook for the years ahead.

Q1 China's GDP grew 5 percent in 2025, reaching 140.19 trillion yuan ($20.29 trillion). For 2026, the government targets growth of between 4.5 percent and 5 percent, with a planned deficit ratio of around 4 percent. How do you assess the credibility and policies backing this target? Amid moderating global demand, what does China's relative growth certainty mean for your company's global capital allocation, earnings outlook and investor expectations? Does the combination of proactive fiscal policies and accommodative monetary measures reinforce your confidence in sustaining or expanding operations in China?

Yang: Agilent and the analytical instrument industry are deeply intertwined with China's macroeconomic landscape, particularly the high-quality development of its manufacturing sector. We view the 2026 growth target as both steady and pragmatic, and the proactive fiscal policy will also provide important support for achieving it. China is Agilent's second-largest global market. While the current macro environment presents complexities, the market's immense scale, consistent analytical demand, and ongoing industrial upgrades reinforce our unwavering view of China as a cornerstone of our global business and a destination for long-term investment.

Zhao: China's 2026 growth target of 4.5 percent to 5 percent, backed by proactive fiscal and accommodative monetary policies, underscores the government's commitment to high-quality development despite global uncertainties. As the world's second-largest pharmaceutical market, China benefits from aging-driven healthcare demand and supportive policies, creating a stable environment for innovation. For multinational companies like Astellas, the rise of local innovation presents new opportunities for collaboration, ultimately accelerating the delivery of valuable innovative drugs to patients worldwide. China is now one of Astellas' most important markets, with headquarters prioritizing resources to accelerate patient access to innovations. Astellas China's revenue surged 33.3 percent year-on-year in the first nine months of financial year 2025.

An: China's economy has continued to make steady and resilient progress despite a complex global environment, providing a solid foundation for long-term investment and innovation. This year's Government Work Report underscores further high-level opening-up and the acceleration of new growth drivers — from the shift toward high-end, intelligent, and green manufacturing to the expansion and upgrading of the consumer market — offering Henkel ample opportunities across both industrial and consumer businesses. The national priorities of high-quality development, new quality productive forces and green transition align closely with Henkel's strategic direction. We remain confident in the long-term prospects of the Chinese market and will continue investing in local innovation, manufacturing and talent development.

Poon: We are pleased to hear that China has set a target for stable growth in 2026, which underscores the economy's resilience and long-term potential. It's a clear reflection of the country's commitment to high-quality, sustainable development. The 2026 Government Work Report focuses on fostering emerging pillar industries like ICs, the low-altitude economy, advancing new energy and new-type energy storage as well as new energy vehicles. It further aims at nurturing future industries such as humanoid robotics and 6G, and building new forms of smart economy including hyper-scale intelligent computing clusters and power computing coordination infrastructure. This aligns perfectly with Infineon's product offering.

Q2 In 2025, China's exports rose 6.1 percent, newly established foreign-invested enterprises increased by 19.1 percent, and research and development intensity reached 2.8 percent of GDP. Against the backdrop of global supply chain reconfiguration, is China's role in your global strategy expanding? How do you evaluate China's integrated advantages — manufacturing depth, innovation capacity, infrastructure and market scale — in supporting your production networks and supply resilience? Does China function primarily as a market, a production base, an innovation hub, or increasingly all three within your corporate architecture?

YANG: Over the past 40 years, Agilent has consistently regarded China as one of its core investment destinations. China has become a key hub in our global supply chain and manufacturing network. China offers a world-class business environment, a globally leading reserve of high-end talent and a comprehensive supply chain ecosystem. Furthermore, the demands of Chinese customers often represent the most cutting-edge trends in the industry. These advantages drive us to continuously expand our local production, increase R&D investment, and deepen domestic partnerships and innovation.

ZHAO: China's strategic importance to Astellas is rising as our local operations evolve into a comprehensive platform combining market, manufacturing and innovation. In 2025, we launched the first segmented production project for a CLDN18.2 monoclonal antibody in China, enhancing supply chain efficiency and accelerating patient access. Meanwhile, Astellas China has also established the first China innovation R&D center, building an innovation ecosystem that integrates early-stage clinical research and real-world evidence generation. With these milestones, Astellas China has achieved a full industry-chain presence, spanning R&D, manufacturing, commercialization and trade. As this industry-chain moves closer to China, we will further leverage China's production efficiency and quality to better support the improvement of China's innovation ecosystem, serving both Chinese and global patients.

AN: For Henkel, China is not just a market; it is a home for co-creation and sustainable growth, today and for decades to come. China has made impressive progress in technological and industrial innovation. Many sectors are developing rapidly and moving to the global forefront. Increasingly, innovations are emerging from China and reaching the market faster than ever. The 15th Five-Year Plan places even greater emphasis on high-quality development and technological innovation. This encourages us to continue strengthening our local innovation capabilities and working closely with customers to co-create solutions.

POON: China is one of our largest and most dynamic markets. We've nurtured deep local roots here for over 30 years. We are proud to have received multiple industry and regional accolades, including Top 10 foreign-invested enterprises by import and export volume and a spot in the city's Top 100 by operating revenue. We have also won the 2026 HKB Greater Bay Area Enterprises Awards (semiconductor category) this year. The honors reflect the trust from the market and long-term value creation for our customers and society. Our "In China, for China" localization strategy is anchored in four core principles: local production, local product definition, local operation and local ecosystem, with Wuxi as our main manufacturing base in China. China is a major market for EV, AI, humanoid robotics and renewables.

Q3 China is advancing the unified national market, with an urbanization rate of 67.9 percent and total retail sales surpassing 50 trillion yuan. As domestic demand expands, what structural opportunities does this vast, increasingly integrated market present for your portfolio, distribution channels and localization strategy? Does deeper market unification reduce operational fragmentation and compliance costs? How do you position your brand and product mix to capture demand from both top-tier cities and fast-growing lower-tier markets?

YANG: China's continued efforts to advance the development of a unified national market will further release the potential of domestic demand and accelerate capacity building and efficiency improvements for laboratories across various industries. This creates important structural opportunities for companies like Agilent. We are actively responding to growing demand in sectors such as food safety, environmental protection, pharmaceuticals and chemicals by introducing integrated solutions and next-generation laboratory automation technologies. Through innovation, we aim to help modernize laboratory ecosystems and support China's manufacturing sector in advancing toward higher-quality, more intelligent development.

ZHAO: China's unified market and expanding domestic demand create structural opportunities for Astellas. Our product portfolio targets oncology, women's health and transplant immunology, including innovative first-in-class therapies. We are deepening channel partnerships, such as Shanghai Pharmaceuticals and JD Health, to ensure broad patient access upon launch. Local investments, such as our first innovation R&D center and segmented production project, further embed us in China's healthcare ecosystem. Through our R&D, as well as production, we continuously focus on the unmet medical needs of Chinese patients. For example, in the field of gastric cancer, which is highly prevalent in China, we have accelerated the introduction of CLDN18.2.

AN: The 15th Five-Year Plan also highlights the strategic priority of strengthening the domestic economic cycle. This year's Government Work Report further emphasizes boosting consumption and building a strong domestic market. These signals reinforce our confidence in the continued growth of China's consumer market. Through deep local insights and continuous innovation, Henkel Consumer Brands aims to meet Chinese consumers' growing demand for high-quality and personalized products. The Asia R&D center for consumer brands in Shanghai and the acquisition of Suzhou Boke as a dedicated production site for Henkel's consumer business enable us to respond faster and more flexibly to evolving consumer needs.

POON: China's large and integrated market offers great opportunities for Infineon – most notably, a broader market reach and closer ties with our customers, as we grow alongside them. With our broad portfolio across many applications and industries, we are well positioned to support the rapid market development. We work closely with ODMs, OEMs, ecosystem partners and distribution networks, and provide end-to-end system solutions to various customers. By leveraging our leading technologies and local capabilities, we help improve efficiency and drive industrial development. Going forward, we will continue to deepen our cooperation with local partners to jointly unlock the huge potential of China's market.

Q4 China's trade-in program generated over 2.6 trillion yuan in sales in 2025, alongside the "Shopping in China" and "Export to China" initiatives. China's exports grew 6.1 percent year-on-year. How is your company aligning its China strategy to capture both domestic consumption upgrades and export-oriented opportunities? Do you see China increasingly as a global production and innovation base serving international markets? How are you balancing local demand expansion with China's role in your global export ecosystem?

YANG: Agilent operates an integrated global production, logistics and sales network that ensures products manufactured in China meet unified global standards and serve customers worldwide. At the same time, customers in China can readily access products produced in other regions. Against the backdrop of initiatives such as "Shopping in China" and efforts to stabilize foreign trade, we are aligning our strategy in two ways. On one hand, we continue to support China's consumption upgrade and industrial transformation with innovative products and solutions. In particular, our China Solution Center is dedicated to developing solutions tailored specifically to the Chinese market. We support the establishment of industry-academia-research-application systems nationwide to accelerate technological transformation and enhance the global competitiveness of "Made in China".

ZHAO: China's fast-evolving policy landscape enables us to accelerate drug development and launches. In particular, the accelerated drug review and approval system enables faster access to patients, and global pharmaceutical innovators like Astellas are able to introduce our innovative drugs to China at a faster pace. It helps propel further pharmaceutical innovation. China is now integral to Astellas' global innovation. For the phase III clinical trial of our CLDN18.2 therapy, GLOW study, nearly 30 percent of trial participants are from China, with a Chinese expert as the global leading principal investigator. Moreover, early inclusion in global R&D shortens launch delays in China. The establishment of our China innovation R&D center will embody our shift from "in China, for China" to "in China, for global", serving both local patients and global innovation.

AN: Henkel's Adhesive Technologies business serves more than 800 industry sectors worldwide. Drawing on this cross-industry expertise, we actively support the development of emerging sectors in China, such as semiconductors, new energy vehicles and next-generation communications. Through collaborative innovation, we help customers address complex challenges and strengthen the foundations and competitiveness of these strategic industries. Leveraging Henkel's global innovation and manufacturing network, we also support Chinese customers as they expand internationally. From product development to implementation, we help them localize solutions in overseas markets, strengthening their global competitiveness and bringing Chinese innovation to the world stage.

POON: As a global semiconductor leader, China is a cornerstone of our global setup, backed by strong regional sales, marketing and distribution teams that work closely with local partners and provide dedicated support. Our localization strategy and ongoing efforts underpin our actions. The support of our China distribution center enables operational agility for our customers. We seize opportunities from China's consumption upgrades. We enhance local operations with tailored services, adapt to local needs and co-develop solutions to deliver real value to customers, thus strengthening the market's contribution to our global competitiveness and success.

Q5 China last year reduced energy intensity by 5.1 percent, raised the nonfossil energy share to 21.7 percent, and expanded new-type energy storage capacity beyond 130 gigawatts. Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies remain at the forefront globally. Where do you see the strongest partnership potential in China's green transition and AI-driven industrial upgrading? Are you expanding investment in renewables, digitalization, smart manufacturing, or carbon management solutions? How central is China to your global sustainability roadmap and next-generation technology deployment?

YANG: China continues to make significant strides in green transition and artificial intelligence, spearheading a new wave of industrial and energy transformation. This trajectory is highly synergistic with Agilent's core strengths in sustainability and digital transformation. China is not only an important part of our global sustainability strategy, but also a key hub where our next-generation intelligent technologies move from concept to real-world application. At our Shanghai manufacturing center, Agilent is actively deploying advanced smart manufacturing capabilities while building a greener production system. We have also established a lab productivity innovation center in Shanghai to help customers build future-ready automated laboratory platforms.

ZHAO: In terms of the green and low-carbon transition, Astellas is actively advancing sustainable development practices. At the Shenyang plant, a distributed photovoltaic project has generated more than 288,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity, reducing carbon emissions by 168.74 metric tons and earning the title of "Green Factory". At the same time, Astellas has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050, with clear emission-reduction targets, while promoting collaborative decarbonization across the supply chain through sustainable procurement. In terms of AI applications, Astellas has developed the "Mahol-A-Ba" drug discovery platform, expanding experimental scale by 100 to 1,000 fold and shortening the time required to identify candidate compounds by approximately 70 percent.

AN: China's dual-carbon goals are reshaping industrial value chains and driving strong demand for low-carbon and circular solutions. As the 15th Five-Year Plan begins, China has again emphasized accelerating the green transition and developing a low-carbon economy. Henkel's sustainability strategy is closely aligned with these goals. Henkel continues to support local customers and consumers with impactful sustainable innovations and products. We will continue to increase investment in low-carbon products and solutions, and work with partners to advance circular economy initiatives, contributing to China's green transition.

POON: China's green transition and AI-driven industrial upgrading are creating huge opportunities across sectors. We aim to deepen local cooperation in power infrastructure, e-mobility, software-defined vehicles, robotics and AI. Infineon is actively driving growth in the data center market, and we are a leading partner for all major GPU makers and hyperscalers, supported by our innovation strength and broad portfolio. In this sector, we see strong global growth: revenues of around 2.5 billion euros ($3 billion) are expected in the next fiscal year, up from about 1.5 billion euros in the current fiscal year. Power infrastructure is another critical area. We see huge potential in grid modernization to support wind, solar and energy storage system renewables transition, and meet AI's massive electricity demand.