At the recent 2024 Annual Ceremony for the Top Ten News Stories and Annual Public Opinion Report of the Petroleum and Chemical Industry, Li Yunpeng, Secretary of the Party Committee of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, pointed out that in 2024, China’s petroleum and chemical industry maintained overall stability, playing a pivotal role as the “main force” in fostering and expanding emerging industries, the “ballast stone” ensuring energy supply, and the “stabilizer” supporting economic operations. In the new year, the industry will continue to move steadily forward on the path of high-quality development, with the necessary conditions, solid foundations, and even greater confidence to achieve continued growth.

　　Li Yunpeng stated that 2024 is a pivotal year for achieving the goals and tasks set forth in the 14th Five-Year Plan. Faced with significant challenges—including a complex and evolving international situation, insufficient domestic effective demand, intensifying market competition, accelerating industrial transformation, and a rapidly advancing energy transition—the petroleum and chemical industry, guided by Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, has earnestly studied, implemented, and carried out the important instructions and directives of General Secretary Xi Jinping on the petroleum and chemical industries. It has also fully implemented the decisions and deployments of the Party Central Committee and the spirit of the Central Economic Work Conference, embraced the new development philosophy, fostered new quality productivity tailored to local conditions, and promoted high-quality development, thereby achieving inspiring results in industry development.

　　“The petrochemical industry continues to maintain overall stability,” Li Yunpeng said. In the first 11 months of 2024, the industrial value-added of large-scale petroleum and chemical enterprises increased by 6.9% year-on-year, outpacing the national average growth rate for industrial value-added. Their operating revenue exceeded 14.7 trillion yuan, and their total profits reached 745.88 billion yuan—accounting for 11.9% and 11.2% respectively of the nation’s large-scale industrial sector. Breakthroughs have been made in several key core technologies and critical materials, and a number of major industrial projects have been successfully launched and implemented.

　　“2025 is the concluding year of the 14th Five-Year Plan, the year for planning the 15th Five-Year Plan, and also a pivotal year for thoroughly implementing the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Party and further deepening reform in a comprehensive manner.” Regarding the development direction for 2025, Li Yunpeng believes that the petroleum and chemical industry has entered a new stage of high-quality development. The development path will accelerate its shift from being primarily driven by scale expansion to being driven mainly by innovation, focusing on “intensive cultivation” of refined, specialized, and serialized niche markets. New forms of productivity will rapidly take shape, and new industries, new business models, and new formats will emerge in competition with one another.

　　At the same time, he put forward four recommendations for the industry: First, we must firmly grasp the fundamental task of significantly improving quality, boosting efficiency, and upgrading our industries; accelerate the adjustment and optimization of industrial structures; focus on cultivating new forms of productive forces; and speed up our move toward the high-end segments of global industrial and value chains. Second, we must firmly uphold the fundamental requirement of accelerating the transformation of our development model, achieving intensive development, and promoting smart, circular, and green development. Third, we must firmly recognize technological innovation as the fundamental driving force, speeding up breakthroughs in a number of key core technologies and “bottleneck” technologies that affect the high-quality development of our industries, and enhancing our capacity for independent innovation. Fourth, we must firmly focus on enhancing our ability to provide effective supply—producing more efficient, clean petroleum products, high-performance synthetic materials, and high-end specialty chemicals—to boost our capacity for effective supply.