China Advances Urban Underground Pipeline Modernization

China is making significant progress in modernizing its urban underground pipeline networks during the first year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), a comprehensive infrastructure initiative aimed at strengthening urban resilience and improving the quality of life for more than 950 million urban residents. According to Xinhua News, the country’s underground pipeline network now spans approximately 3.9 million kilometers, with about 7,700 kilometers of underground utility tunnels completed nationwide.

A City’s ‘Inner Lining’ Project

President Xi Jinping has described urban underground pipeline construction as a city’s “inner lining” project, emphasizing the need to “advance city infrastructure lifeline safety engineering, accelerate renovation and upgrading of old pipelines, and promote underground utility tunnel construction and renovation.” The initiative has been elevated to national strategic priority through the “Six Networks” plan, announced by the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau in April 2026, which encompasses water networks, new-type power grids, computing power networks, next-generation communication networks, urban underground pipeline networks, and logistics networks.

The “Six Networks” initiative represents a structural upgrade of China’s infrastructure investment from the traditional focus on railways, highways, and airports toward a more comprehensive, resilience-focused approach. As Jiemian News reported, over 7 trillion yuan will be invested in the “six networks” and key areas in 2026 alone.

Addressing Decades of Underinvestment

Many of China’s urban underground pipelines were laid in the 1980s and 1990s and now suffer from aging materials, corrosion, and outdated standards. Zhu Dongbin, Director of the Linzhi City Urban Management Bureau, explained the consequences: “In the past, underground pipeline construction standards were low, with combined rainwater and sewage systems and fragile flat-end joints. Once the foundation settles, pipes are prone to misalignment. In dry seasons, sewage leaks out and contaminates groundwater; in rainy seasons, groundwater backflows into pipes, crowding out drainage capacity.”

Jiang Yinghong, Deputy Director of the Underground Space Planning Sub-committee of the China Urban Planning Society, noted that “pipeline deficiencies bring risks such as gas leaks, water supply contamination, and urban flooding. Managing underground pipelines well is guarding the bottom line of urban safety.”

Ambitious 15th Five-Year Plan Targets

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD) has set a target to construct or renovate approximately 770,000 kilometers of urban underground pipelines during the 15th Five-Year Plan period. As Dazhong News reported from a State Council policy briefing on June 8, the breakdown includes approximately 200,000 km of gas pipelines, 175,000 km of drainage pipelines, 175,000 km of water supply pipelines, 100,000 km of sewage pipelines, and 120,000 km of heating pipelines.

These targets are incorporated into the “Urban Renewal 15th Five-Year Plan,” the first national-level special plan in the urban renewal field, which was issued by the State Council on May 28, 2026.

Massive Investment Backing

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and MOHURD have mobilized significant financial resources to support the pipeline construction program. The Xinhua article states that 193 billion yuan was allocated for urban underground pipeline construction in 2026 through ultra-long special treasury bonds. As People’s Tribune reported, China has issued 1.3 trillion yuan in ultra-long special treasury bonds in 2026 to support “two priorities” (major national strategies and security capacity building) and “two new” (large-scale equipment renewal and consumer goods trade-in) initiatives.

According to 10jqka, investment in urban underground pipelines during the 15th Five-Year Plan period is projected to drive the entire industrial chain—including pipe manufacturing, smart sensing, engineering construction, and survey design—with total upstream and downstream industry scale exceeding 5 trillion yuan.

Smart Technology Integration

Cities across China are increasingly adopting digital technologies for pipeline management. The Hefei City Lifeline Engineering Safety Operation Monitoring Center uses 92,000 front-end sensing devices to monitor infrastructure across 8 major sectors, processing over 10 billion data points daily and covering 7,316 km of underground pipelines. As Yuan Hongyong, Director of the Tsinghua University Hefei Institute of Public Safety, explained, “The City Lifeline Safety Engineering uses IoT, cloud computing, big data and related technologies to detect and address potential safety hazards early, driving urban safety operation management from ‘passive response’ to ‘proactive prevention and control.’”

Shanghai has built a unified city-wide pipeline geographic information database, integrating 180,000 km of pipeline data. Chongqing has constructed a digital twin base with 38 attribute types for its entire central urban area, while Beijing is piloting gas pipeline leak detection “sentinels” and transient pressure wave technology for heating pipelines.

Model Projects Leading the Way

Xiong’an New Area has completed 167 km of underground utility tunnels, becoming the first in China to build a large-scale, systematic underground utility tunnel system. President Xi visited the area in May 2023, calling for efforts to “work hard on fully utilizing underground space to build a future city without ‘urban diseases.’”

In Guangzhou, the Dongyong Avenue utility tunnel in the Qingsheng Hub area of Nansha District was completed on June 22, 2026, featuring smart monitoring equipment and 24-hour automated inspection robots. As Yangcheng Evening News reported, Guangzhou’s comprehensive utility tunnel plan targets 564 km by 2030, building an “one ring, N branches, multi-zone” architecture.

From ‘Passive Response’ to ‘Proactive Prevention’

Since MOHURD launched the City Infrastructure Lifeline Safety Engineering program in May 2023, it has been implemented in more than 140 cities across China, with 27 provinces having established provincial-level supervision platforms. Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Development Ni Hong has emphasized the need to “accelerate urban underground pipeline construction and renovation, build underground utility tunnels according to local conditions, and improve long-term construction and operation management systems.”

What to Watch For

As China’s urban development shifts from large-scale expansion to quality improvement of existing stock, the underground pipeline network will play an increasingly critical role in urban governance. The 15th Five-Year Plan period marks a transition away from the traditional “heavy construction, light maintenance” model toward a more precise, intelligent, efficient, and safe full-process system. With ambitious targets, substantial funding, and rapid technological integration, the coming years will test whether China can successfully transform its urban underground infrastructure into a resilient foundation for its modernization drive.

Key indicators to monitor include the pace of pipeline construction against the 770,000 km target, the effectiveness of smart monitoring systems in preventing urban flooding and gas leaks, and the economic impact of the 5 trillion yuan industrial chain investment. The success of this initiative will be measured not just in kilometers of pipe laid, but in the safety and quality of life it delivers to China’s urban population.