--- date: 2026-10-13 subject: "Beijing curbs copycat tech spending | CXMT's denser DRAM cell | New military gear" --- **Beijing ordered local governments to stop copycat spending on favored tech industries**, telling them to pick industries that fit their own resources rather than chase the same emerging sectors, and banning bidding wars for investors and bandwagon projects. **China's industry and planning agencies set 2030 targets for electronics makers**, aiming for more than 30 trillion yuan ($4.5 trillion) in revenue and research spending equal to 3.5% of revenue. **CXMT reported progress on denser DRAM** over the weekend, saying it plans server memory built on its 4F² cell design by the end of 2026, news that helped drive a selloff in U.S. memory chip stocks. **State defense groups will debut new military systems at Airshow China**, spanning technologies from space-based defense and missile air defense to drone swarms and unmanned ships. # Top Stories - **Beijing orders local governments to stop copycat spending on favored tech industries** — The Party Central Committee and the State Council, China's cabinet, issued a directive on developing "new quality productive forces," Xi Jinping's term for growth driven by advanced technology, a planning official told Xinhua on Oct. 9. Beijing is admitting that provinces and cities have been chasing the same industries, such as AI and new energy, with subsidies and copycat projects regardless of local conditions, a domestic version of the overcapacity problem China's trading partners complain about. The directive "strictly forbids" using the slogan as cover for bidding wars to attract investors, bandwagon projects or "burning money." It sets 19 tasks for the 2026 to 2030 planning period and puts breakthroughs in chokepoint technologies first. It also tells officials to keep old industries running until new ones can replace them, a lesson from the 2021 power shortages that followed rushed coal cuts. [China Military Online](http://www.81.cn/ss_208539/16491796.html) [state media] - **China sets 2030 revenue and research spending targets for electronics and chip manufacturing** — China's industry ministry and its state planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, recently issued a 2026-2030 plan targeting more than 30 trillion yuan ($4.5 trillion) in revenue for larger electronics makers. The plan fixes the yardsticks China's electronics and chip makers will be measured against through 2030, including research spending equal to 3.5% of revenue and significantly improved supply chain security. It names integrated circuits and advanced computing among areas of targeted strength, and its tasks include a push across the full integrated circuit supply chain and faster development and use of smart sensors. [Science and Technology Daily](https://epaper.stdaily.com/statics/technology-site/index.html#/home?isDetail=1¤tNewsId=169f6f71b1814178b5916994f82c3af0¤tVersionName=06%C2%B7%E7%AC%AC06%E7%89%88%EF%BC%9A%E6%94%BF%20%E7%AD%96¤tVersion=6&timeValue=2026-10-13) [state media] - **Memory chip maker CXMT reports progress on denser DRAM cell, plans server memory by year-end** — ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) said over the weekend it has made key progress on a 4F² cell design for DRAM. It plans server memory built on the design by the end of 2026. The design in theory fits about a third more bits per area than the mainstream 6F² cell, which lowers what each bit costs. CXMT is aiming it at high-margin AI server memory. The news helped drive a selloff in U.S. memory chip stocks on Monday, which some AI analyst called an overreaction. TrendForce data put CXMT at 9.5% of global DRAM revenue in the second quarter, fourth worldwide. [Wallstreetcn](https://wallstreetcn.com/articles/3783500) [The Herald Business](https://biz.heraldcorp.com/article/10866656) - **Chinese defense groups to debut dozens of military systems at Airshow China** — State owned defense groups will show a batch of new military systems at the 16th Airshow China in Zhuhai, organizers said today, giving outsiders a first look at their latest gear. China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) exhibits will focus on space access and utilization, including integrated space-air-ground defense. China Electronics Technology Group (CETC), a state-owned maker of military electronics, will show 73 military products publicly for the first time. China Electronics Corp., another state electronics group, will debut a drone swarm combat system. China State Shipbuilding Corp. will bring a new 500-tonne unmanned surface vessel, and the Chinese navy will display active-duty ships at a new exhibition area at Gaolan Port. Missile maker CASIC will show a new integrated air defense system and an upgraded counter-drone system. [Global Times](https://mil.huanqiu.com/article/4TamesJk4DY) [state media] [Global Times](https://mil.huanqiu.com/article/4TamftT1rgo) [state media] # Policy & Regulation - **China's industry ministry drafts longer new car testing and restates a ban on fully hidden door handles** — The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), which approves car models for sale, and three other agencies on Saturday proposed requiring at least 30,000 km of reliability testing and restated a ban on fully hidden door handles. Automakers that have tried to cut development to as little as 12 months would have to finish a full year of environmental validation before a model can apply for approval. That validation covers two winters and a summer. Driver assistance systems would need real-vehicle testing in extreme-risk scenarios, and over-the-air software updates, pushed to cars after sale, would need full validation. [EV Industry News](https://www.evchanye.com/2026/1012/53572.shtml) [EV Industry News](https://www.evchanye.com/2026/1013/53721.shtml) [The Straits Times](https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/china-proposes-stricter-car-design-testing-rules-including-ban-on-fully-hidden-door-handles) - **China's rail regulator makes domestic train control and power chips a 2030 research target** — China's National Railway Administration, the rail regulator, said yesterday it has issued a 2026-2030 technology plan calling for breakthroughs in high-voltage silicon carbide (SiC) chip processes and domestically controlled train control chips. SiC power chips switch high voltages with lower losses than ordinary silicon. With train control processors, they run the systems that drive and control trains. The plan also asks for preliminary 6G research for rail and a network that folds in low-orbit satellite broadband. Its targets include about 30 new railway innovation bases and a demonstration of a 400 km/h operating system. [Science and Technology Daily](https://epaper.stdaily.com/statics/technology-site/index.html#/home?isDetail=1¤tNewsId=8fa7de946a2c4d9fbbf819dab86901a4¤tVersionName=02%C2%B7%E7%AC%AC02%E7%89%88%EF%BC%9A%E8%A6%81%20%E9%97%BB¤tVersion=2&timeValue=2026-10-13) [state media] # AI & Foundation Models - **Huawei lab's AI agent clears all 25 public games of a reasoning benchmark** — Huawei's Noah's Ark Lab and University College London report in a preprint that their AI agent, Memento 3, cleared all 25 public games of the ARC-AGI-3 benchmark with a perfect efficiency score of 100. The benchmark drops AI systems into unfamiliar puzzle games whose rules they must work out, and scores how few moves they need compared with humans. Run alone, its base model, Anthropic's Claude Opus 5, averages about 40.7 on that score. The model's weights, the numerical parameters set during training, were never changed. The gain instead comes from the agent writing and correcting its own program that predicts what each game will do next. [BAAI](https://hub.baai.ac.cn/view/58623) # Quantum & Frontier Science - **Huawei says chip stacking technique raised Kirin phone chip transistor density 53.5%** — Huawei gave its first detailed account today of "logic folding," the technique behind the Kirin 9050 AI gains CTD reported [October 5th](https://chinatechdaily.org/archive/china-daily/2026-10-05/), saying it reached volume production in those chips and raised transistor density 53.5%. Shrinking transistors yields less with each manufacturing generation, so stacking a chip's logic in bonded layers gives Huawei, by its own account, another route to more capable phone chips. The layers are joined by hybrid bonding, direct copper-to-copper contacts spaced 1.5 microns apart on the Kirin 9050 Pro. Huawei plans to tighten that spacing to 1 micron in 2027 to fit denser links. Chip executive Xu Songyu said the 2027 Kirin is "already in our hands." [Jiemian News](https://www.jiemian.com/article/15184408.html) [state-affiliated] - **Rocket maker Deep Blue Aerospace builds stainless steel propellant tank for reusable Nebula-2 rocket** — Deep Blue Aerospace said yesterday that a stainless steel propellant tank for its Nebula-2 rocket has rolled off the line, which it says moves the rocket into intensive engineering development. A rocket designed to carry 25 tonnes to low Earth orbit and fly more than 20 times would lower the cost of each launch, which large satellite constellations depend on. The company plans "chopsticks"-style recovery, catching the returning booster at its launch site. Its Super Thunder kerosene engine, 11 of which power the first stage, has completed multiple full-duration ground firings and entered batch production. [Science and Technology Daily](https://epaper.stdaily.com/statics/technology-site/index.html#/home?isDetail=1¤tNewsId=5917179e4cac425cb17b81916d41857e¤tVersionName=02%C2%B7%E7%AC%AC02%E7%89%88%EF%BC%9A%E8%A6%81%20%E9%97%BB¤tVersion=2&timeValue=2026-10-13) [state media] # Strategic Context - **China's commerce ministry vows response if 14-economy overcapacity statement yields trade measures** — A Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) spokesperson said Friday that China will make "necessary responses" if economies behind a U.S.-convened statement on "structural overcapacity" use it as a pretext for measures that harm Chinese interests. Governments cite overcapacity findings as grounds for tariffs and other trade defenses, the kind of measure the warning covers. Fourteen economies signed the statement, the U.S. trade representative's office said on Oct. 7. The MOFCOM spokesperson reiterated countries should adopt a comprehensive, objective, and fair attitude, towards overcapacity and should not politicize economic and trade issues out of concern for their own industrial competitiveness and market position. [China Military Online](http://www.81.cn/fyr/16491856.html) [state media]