The policy strongly promotes the renovation and upgrading of outdated chemical equipment, with the latest document issued by seven departments.

According to a notice released on Friday on the website of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), seven departments including the MIIT have issued the Action Plan for Accelerating the Replacement, Renovation and Upgrade of Outdated Petrochemical and Chemical Industry Units (2026–2029). The plan sets out specific arrangements in areas such as promoting quality upgrades, optimizing project management, and strengthening standard-led support.

The plan clearly states that by 2029, all replacement, renovation, and upgrade tasks for outdated petrochemical and chemical industry units that were identified in 2025 will be fully completed nationwide. After 2026, newly identified replacement, renovation, and upgrade tasks will be advanced as scheduled. The safety and environmental risk of outdated units will be significantly reduced, and coordinated efforts to cut pollution and carbon will achieve positive results. The proportion of capacity that is better than benchmark levels will increase significantly, and the levels of intelligence and green development will be greatly improved.

In terms of promoting quality upgrades, the plan mentions that it encourages enterprises undertaking replacement, renovation, and upgrade activities to benchmark advanced levels in the industry and implement safety-, green-, and intelligent-oriented retrofits, accelerate the promotion and application of advanced technologies, and update and replace industrial software and industrial control systems. It will advance full-process automation retrofits or low-risk substitution for hazardous processes under key supervision. It will promote green upgrading of production processes, encourage enterprises to adopt clean production technology and equipment to retrofit and improve, strengthen coordinated pollution-and-carbon reduction governance throughout the entire process, and promote “reduction in quantity” of industrial waste “at the source.”

The plan also mentions that when studying the layout of major petrochemical projects, priority support will be given to the retrofitting and upgrading of outdated units for oil refining, ethylene, para-xylene, diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI), and coal-to-methanol. Provincial-level departments in charge of industry and information technology, together with relevant provincial departments, should establish and improve green channels, strengthen factor support, and optimize procedures for project filing (approval), environmental impact assessment, land use, water withdrawal, energy conservation review, and carbon emission assessment, as well as safety licensing and other related processes, in order to improve review and approval efficiency and accelerate project implementation.

The plan further mentions that it will coordinate and make use of existing policy funding channels such as the “two new” (Two New) initiatives, science and technology innovation, and re-lending for technical renovation, to support the replacement, renovation, and upgrading of eligible outdated units and equipment. It will give full play to the role of relevant government investment funds to provide investment support to enterprises. It also encourages financial institutions, in line with the direction of industrial layout and capacity regulation, to implement credit policies that are both supportive and controlling. By advancing bank-enterprise matchmaking through platforms such as the credit market service platform and the National Industrial and Financial Cooperation platform, it will improve the quality and effectiveness of financial services.

China’s petrochemical industry started relatively early. As time has gone by, due to issues including low design standards, equipment corrosion, and insufficient monitoring facilities, outdated units that have been in operation for more than 30–40 years have increasingly highlighted safety risks.

In a previous report, China Industrial News cited statistics showing that outdated units operating for 20 years or more account for a relatively high share in multiple sub-sectors. Among them, the scale of outdated units in the oil refining industry reaches 300 million tons per year and above, while in the sulfuric acid and synthetic ammonia industries, the scale of outdated units exceeds 10 million tons per year, respectively.

In July 2025, five departments including the MIIT issued the Notice on Carrying Out a Survey and Assessment of Outdated Units in the Petrochemical and Chemical Industry. This is intended to get a clear picture of the baseline number of outdated units in the petrochemical and chemical industry and provide data support for the formulation of the Action Plan for Accelerating the Replacement, Renovation and Upgrade of Outdated Units in the Petrochemical and Chemical Industry.

According to the Notice’s clearly stated requirements, the targets of this survey and assessment are “production units in the petrochemical and chemical industry whose main equipment and facilities have reached their designed service life, or whose actual commissioning and operation have exceeded 20 years, as of May 30, 2025.” The basic information includes the number of outdated units in the locality, the unit names and scale, the enterprise pollutant discharge permit numbers, the industry they belong to, the production site, whether they are located in chemical parks recognized through the relevant process, the time put into operation, the designed service life, and so on.

The Action Plan for Stabilizing Growth in the Petrochemical and Chemical Industry (2025–2026), jointly issued last October by seven departments including the MIIT, proposes that through measures such as improving a scientific assessment and benchmarking retrofit standards system and establishing a project pool for retrofit upgrades, among other steps, it will support comprehensive improvement of outdated units and promote full-process automation retrofits or low-risk substitutions for hazardous processes under key supervision.