Chemical new materials refer to new materials produced through chemical synthesis methods, as well as composite materials obtained through secondary processing based on chemical new materials. They are an important component of the new materials industry. High end chemical new materials mainly refer to advanced polymer materials, including functional film materials, electronic chemicals, special coatings, special adhesives, inorganic functional materials (graphene, nanomaterials, etc.), new energy materials, etc. Accelerating the development of high-end chemical new materials has important strategic significance for promoting technological innovation, supporting industrial upgrading, and building a manufacturing powerhouse.
The new generation of information technology and new materials are the two major "chassis technologies" in the manufacturing industry. The new generation of information technology is the driving force of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and new materials are an indispensable material foundation to support strategic emerging industries and major projects. The deep integration of information technology and new materials promotes the high-end development of manufacturing industry.
The global new materials industry is developing rapidly and expanding in scale. The global output value of new materials will reach 7.2 trillion US dollars in 2023. According to statistics from the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Federation, the global production of new chemical materials will exceed 110 million tons in 2023, with an output value of approximately 470 billion US dollars. It is expected to reach 480 billion US dollars by 2025. The chemical new materials industry is an important field for future technological development and economic growth, a key to building a world manufacturing power, and a hot spot in comprehensive national strength competition.
From a global perspective, the monopoly of the new materials industry is intensifying, and technological barriers to high-end materials are becoming increasingly apparent. Large multinational corporations, with their advantages in technology research and development, funding, and talent, have taken a dominant position in the development of most high-tech and high value-added new material products, using technology and patents as barriers. Leading enterprises are concentrated in the United States, Europe, and Japan, presenting an overall three-tier competitive landscape. The first tier consists of enterprises with mature global layout, high global reputation, and rich experience in the chemical industry, such as Dow Chemical in the United States, BASF in Germany, ExxonMobil in the United States, Mitsubishi Chemical in Japan, etc; The second tier consists of top ranked companies in developed countries, which also have a global presence but still focus on certain areas, such as Germany's Evonik, the United States' 3M, Japan's Mitsui Chemicals, and the United States' Air Chemicals. These companies have a deeper regional presence in their own countries and their revenue is mainly based on their own regions; The third tier mainly focuses on domestic enterprises, which are in a state of striving to catch up and undertake industrial transfer with the support of governments in emerging economies such as Brazil, India, and South Africa.
The global chemical new materials industry maintains a rapid growth trend with the development of advanced manufacturing, presenting characteristics such as high-tech leadership, new product iteration, industrialization expansion, and demand expansion, and developing towards green, low-carbon, refined, and economical directions. The innovation process of new material research and preparation methods is accelerating. The emergence of new material design methods represented by material genetic engineering has significantly reduced the research and development cycle and cost of new materials, accelerating the innovation process of new materials.
The production system of China's new materials industry is basically complete, and the scale of the industry continues to grow, forming the world's most comprehensive and largest materials industry system. China ranks first in the world in terms of production of over a hundred materials, including steel, non-ferrous metals, rare earth metals, cement, glass, chemical fibers, advanced energy storage materials, photovoltaic materials, organic silicon, polyurethane raw materials, superhard materials, and special stainless steel. We have gradually established a new material innovation system with enterprises as the main body, market orientation, and the combination of industry, academia, research and application. Relying on regional resource advantages, new material industry clusters have been formed in Bohai Rim, Yangtze River Delta, the Pearl River Delta, central and western regions, Northeast China and other regions.
At present, the development of China's new chemical materials industry has a certain foundation. The sales revenue of new chemical materials in China in 2022 is about 900 billion yuan, which is 2.7 times that of 2015 and accounts for about 30% of the global output value. But overall, the overall technological strength still lags behind developed countries and regions such as the United States and Europe, facing some challenges and problems:
Firstly, the increase in production capacity of major chemical products far exceeds the growth in demand. For example, the production growth rate of synthetic resin in China is relatively fast, while the consumption growth rate of traditional industries is relatively slow, and the domestic supply-demand contradiction is more prominent; The growth rate of consumption of most basic chemical raw materials continues to slow down. With the expansion of production capacity, the total production capacity to consumption ratio of 24 major chemical products in China in 2022 has risen from 110% in 2021 to 118%, and the phenomenon of overcapacity is intensifying.
Secondly, the structural contradictions of major chemical products are more prominent. The domestic high-end manufacturing industry and strategic emerging industries are rapidly developing, and the demand for high-end new materials continues to grow. However, the innovation capability of the domestic petrochemical industry is insufficient, and the level of green and safe development is not high, which restricts the high-end development of the industry. In 2022, the average self-sufficiency rate of high-end chemical materials in China is about 54%. Some products have a large annual import volume and high external dependence, such as metallocene polyethylene, which has an external dependence of over 90%. The foreign trade deficit of China's petrochemical industry is mainly concentrated in the fields of high-end synthetic materials, high-end membrane materials, high-performance fibers and composite materials, high-purity reagents, and high-end electronic chemicals.
Thirdly, market competition is becoming more intense. With the intensification of supply and demand contradictions, the market competition for bulk general products has become more intense. Market competition has shifted from single product competition to integrated competition across the entire industry chain. A pattern of integrated development of large, medium, and small enterprises is taking shape, and the strategic cooperation development model of complementary industrial chains will become the norm in the industry. The industrial layout of more enterprises will shift from expanding the scale of bulk basic products to strengthening, refining, optimizing and refining products, and "specialization, refinement, novelty" will become the mainstream of market efficiency creation. The pace of multinational corporations' sole proprietorship layout in the domestic high-end market is also accelerating.
The urgency of tackling key core technologies in high-end materials has become increasingly prominent. Since the 13th Five Year Plan, most of the newly launched high-end polyolefin projects in China have introduced technology from multinational companies. High purity electronic chemicals, some key catalysts, high-end medical membrane materials, high-performance fibers and composite materials, carbonization furnaces for carbon fiber production lines, and other large-scale complete sets of technologies, high-end products, and core equipment are still not mastered by China's petrochemical enterprises. There is still a significant gap compared with international leading enterprises in terms of technological engineering and achievement industrialization.
Currently, although facing many challenges, the future development space of China's chemical new materials industry is enormous. Terminal manufacturing enterprises are accelerating the localization and substitution of high-end materials, and there is an urgent need for the localization of new chemical materials. In the future, there is a huge space for domestic materials to replace imports in high-end polyolefins, engineering plastics, high-performance fibers, functional film materials, and electronic chemicals. At the same time, domestic downstream emerging industry users have a strong demand for high-end chemical new materials, providing new market opportunities for the chemical materials industry.
In terms of innovation chain, domestic material basic research is increasingly receiving attention. With the improvement of China's technological development level and changes in the international environment, original innovation capability has become a key element for China to further enhance its international competitiveness, and the importance of basic research has gradually been highly valued by the country. In the field of chemistry and materials science, China ranks first in the world in terms of research activity. Taking 2022 as an example, the number of cutting-edge research in the top three in this field in China accounts for 92.31%, and the research frontier heat index is about 2.5 times that of the second ranked United States; The connection between large-scale scientific facilities and material research is closer, playing the role of a source of original innovation.
In terms of the industrial chain, China has the advantage of the entire industry chain from crude oil extraction to refining, from raw materials (monomers) to processes, products, processing, applications, recycling, etc. After 40 years of innovative development, Sinopec has formed a raw material system mainly composed of petroleum, coal, and natural gas, supplemented by needle coke, biomass, and other materials. It is accelerating the integration of the "dual chain" and has achieved industrialization of major chemical material technologies such as synthetic resins, synthetic rubber, and synthetic fibers. Some high-end products have made breakthroughs and accelerated the layout of green resource utilization of waste materials. It has widely developed physical and chemical recycling technologies to solve the problem of reusing waste polymer materials, and used resource utilization technologies to solve the pollution problem of waste and the resource utilization problem of hydrocarbons.
During the 14th Five Year Plan period, China's chemical new materials industry will focus on developing high-end polyolefins, engineering plastics and special engineering plastics, special rubber and elastomers, high-performance fibers and composite materials, functional film materials, electronic chemicals and other series of chemical new materials, striving to increase the comprehensive self-sufficiency rate to 80% by 2025.
In the future, the development of new chemical materials technology will be more deeply integrated with other disciplines and fields. Technologies such as machine learning, generative artificial intelligence, interpretable artificial intelligence, and automated laboratories (such as robots) may completely change the paradigm of materials science research; The technological revolution and industrial transformation will increasingly rely on the innovation of information functional materials. The new generation of information technologies represented by artificial intelligence, big data, quantum computing, etc. will become the focus of competition and promote a sharp increase in demand for information functional materials and technological progress; The requirements for green and low-carbon development will promote the development of material green production technology and bio based materials. With green materials as the link, they will organically link new energy technology, high-efficiency energy-saving technology, clean production technology, resource recycling technology, etc., and become an important engine for green and low-carbon development; New materials that meet extreme environments such as deep space, deep sea, and deep earth, as well as high-end equipment manufacturing, will ignite the next wave of technological upgrading. High performance composite materials such as carbon fiber are replacing traditional materials to support more advanced new energy vehicles, aerospace equipment, and other iterative upgrades.
To promote the high-quality development of China's chemical new materials industry, we must adhere to the "four orientations", pay attention to major national strategic needs, and carry out solid basic research and applied basic research. With the continuous improvement of China's technological level, it is necessary to continue to aim at the forefront of world science and technology, proactively layout basic research and applied basic research, attach importance to original innovation and disruptive technological innovation, and seize the high ground of future competition in the new materials industry. We should support basic research and applied basic research in traditional materials such as polyolefins, continuously improve material performance, and support high-end applications.
We need to strengthen top-level design and mechanism innovation. Tackle cutting-edge materials, meet national strategic needs, accelerate the high-end development of bulk materials, and reduce costs and expand the use of mid to low end basic materials. At the national level, the top-level design role of the leading group for the development of the new materials industry and the expert advisory committee should be fully utilized; At the disciplinary level, we should strengthen the innovative role of technology leading enterprises, enhance the integration of disciplinary development and industrial application, and leverage the advantages of "industry university research application" joint innovation; At the enterprise level, it is necessary to layout high-end materials and bulk materials, and low-cost basic materials.
To leverage the advantages of integration and do a good job in extending and integrating the industrial chain. Strengthen the construction of collaborative innovation systems and joint research and development of key core technologies in the chemical new materials industry chain, break through key "bottlenecks" such as raw materials, polymerization processes, and processing applications, and achieve the extension of the industry chain and value chain. Promote the "four chain integration" of "innovation chain+industry chain+capital chain+talent chain". Deeply understand the significant importance of strategic raw material resources for the sustainable development of new materials, and attach great importance to new processes for raw material extraction, recycling, and substitution research.
To apply artificial intelligence technology to assist in the screening and development of new materials. The basic concept of material genomics is to transform the traditional "trial and error" material research model, and develop a new material research and development model that deeply integrates and collaborates with "rational design efficient experimentation big data technology artificial intelligence". Through data-driven machine learning algorithms, material performance prediction models are established and applied to material screening and new material development.
To promote the development and application of green chemical technology. Under the background of "dual carbon", green chemical industry is the trend of industry development. Guided by the principles of green chemistry, continuous efforts should be made in the fields of raw material greening, catalyst greening, reaction engineering greening, energy greening, product greening, and resource utilization to achieve high conversion rates, high selectivity, and efficient energy utilization in industrial applications. Raw materials, media, and products should be non-toxic or low toxic, and waste and by-product emissions should be minimized.