Support CleanTechnica's work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.
It should come as a surprise to no one that the Chinese government is intent on leading continuing to lead on connected vehicles and electric vehicles, but the industry got a strong indication of support this week from the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT’s) equipment industry department, Guo Shougang.
Guo Shougang, Head of Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s (MIIT’s) equipment industry department. Image courtesy of Xinhua.
During a media roundtable at the 2026 World Intelligent Connected Vehicle Conference — surely planned — Shougang shared that the MIIT will speed up the release of its 15th Five-Year Plan for smart, connected NEVs. It seems the industry is moving so fast and innovating so much that even the MIIT is struggling to keep up and having to pick up the pace. The longer the drafting process takes, the more likely it’s going to be out of date when released!
As state news outlet Xinhua/News.cn summarizes, he also said that the MIIT would “thoroughly implement the ‘National Standardization Development Outline,’ expedite breakthroughs in a number of key core technologies, accelerate the development, international coordination, and implementation of key standards, and further promote pilot applications, production access, and road access for ‘vehicle-road-cloud integration,’ thereby fostering an ecosystem that connects the entire industry chain.”
