China’s ‘Three-New’ Economy Reaches 18.39% of GDP in 2025

China’s “three-new” economy — an official statistical category covering new industries, new business formats, and new business models — generated 25.7869 trillion yuan (about US$3.8 trillion) in value added in 2025, accounting for 18.39 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on July 30.

The value added grew 6.2 percent year-on-year at current prices, 2.2 percentage points faster than the nominal GDP growth rate for the same period. The three-new economy’s share of GDP rose 0.38 percentage points from 18.01 percent in 2024, according to a People’s Daily Online report carrying the Xinhua News Agency dispatch.

What Is the ‘Three-New’ Economy?

The “three-new” economy is a distinctly Chinese statistical and policy construct, first defined in the NBS’s 2018 Statistical Classification of New Industries, New Business Formats and New Business Models. It captures innovation- and technology-driven activity: the internet and knowledge economy, high-tech manufacturing, digital-platform businesses, and integrated services that Beijing groups under the banner of “new quality productive forces.”

Under the classification, new industries are economic activities formed at scale through the application of new technological advances. New business formats are new links, chains, and activity forms derived from existing sectors that rely on technological innovation to meet diversified and personalized demand. New business models are efficient, uniquely competitive operating models created by integrating and restructuring internal and external business factors.

The annual accounts are calculated from national economic census data, “three-new” economy statistics, and national accounts, using value-added rate methods and related-indicator estimation from the production side.

Sector Breakdown

By industry, the 2025 results show a service-heavy structure:

• Primary industry: 986.5 billion yuan, up 4.0 percent, representing 3.8 percent of the total.
• Secondary industry: 10,630.4 billion yuan, up 5.8 percent, representing 41.2 percent.
• Tertiary industry: 14,170.0 billion yuan, up 6.6 percent, representing 55.0 percent.

The dominance of the tertiary sector reflects how far China’s new economy is concentrated in services — from internet-based operations and digital platforms to one-stop consumer, entertainment, and leisure business models.

Outpacing the Broader Economy

The 6.2 percent nominal growth in three-new economy value added exceeded overall nominal GDP growth — implied at about 4.0 percent — by 2.2 percentage points. That gap underscores the structural transition under way in the world’s second-largest economy, even as it contends with property-sector adjustment and external trade tensions.

The NBS figures were also placed alongside other signs of high-tech momentum in an English-language dispatch carried by CCTV.com: high-tech manufacturing’s value-added output rose 13.3 percent year-on-year in the first half of 2026.

The upward trend is consistent with recent years. In 2024, the three-new economy contributed 24.2908 trillion yuan in value added, up 6.7 percent, and accounted for 18.01 percent of GDP — an increase of 0.43 percentage points from 2023. As Global Times analyst Hu Weijia wrote of the 2024 data, it demonstrated “that the ‘new’ component of China’s economy is continuously increasing,” with the expansion of outward-looking new-economy firms generating benefits for global investors and multinational corporations.

What to Watch

The NBS releases its three-new economy accounts annually in late July, and the figures are subject to revision as new census data arrive. After the Fifth National Economic Census, for instance, the NBS revised its 2020–2023 values, meaning earlier baseline shares should be treated as preliminary.

The key question ahead is whether the three-new economy can sustain its growth premium over the broader economy — and whether that expansion continues to translate into rising high-tech output, fresh consumption patterns, and larger contributions to investment and employment. The 2025 results indicate that, for now, China’s new-growth engine remains firmly in place.