To build a new 100-billion-yuan industrial cluster, the sub-central city in central China does not want to be out of the game.

Henan announced that on August 21, the Press Office of the Henan Provincial Government held the Luoyang Special Session of the series of press conferences themed "Starting the 15th Five-Year Plan Period and Striving to Write a New Chapter", introducing relevant details of Luoyang's 15th Five-Year Plan.

According to the latest targets put forward by Luoyang, the average annual growth rate of regional GDP during the 15th Five-Year Plan period will remain above 5%, the proportion of total economic output in the whole province will rise steadily on the basis of stability, and major progress will be made in building a strong sub-central city of the Central Plains Urban Agglomeration.

Manufacturing is the core pillar industry of Luoyang. To achieve the above targets, Luoyang has put forward a series of quantifiable indicators centering on industrial development.

By the end of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, in terms of traditional industries, the total scale of the advanced equipment manufacturing, aluminum-based materials and non-ferrous metal industrial clusters will exceed 300 billion yuan; in terms of emerging industries, efforts will be made to raise the scale of the two major industrial clusters of new energy batteries and new chemical materials to 220 billion yuan, and the scale of the optoelectronic component industry to 1000 billion yuan; in terms of future industries, Luoyang will further expand the "Artificial Intelligence +" and "Data Elements ×" initiatives, actively seize new tracks such as artificial intelligence and robots, hydrogen energy and new energy storage, and foster new economic growth points.

As the once largest non-provincial capital city in central and western China, Luoyang's economic growth slowed down for a period in the past few years, hitting a development trough.

Data shows that from 2021 to 2024, Luoyang's GDP growth rate was only 4.8%, 3.0%, 3.5% and 4.9% respectively, all lower than the average growth rate of Henan province. The proportion of Luoyang's total economic output in the whole province also dropped from 10.3% in 2010 to 9.1% in 2023.

It was also during this period that Luoyang was successively overtaken by three cities in central and western China: in 2022, the GDP of Yulin and Xiangyang surpassed that of Luoyang; in 2023, Yichang also overtook it.

At that time, local scholars in Henan analyzed that while cities such as Hefei, whose total economic output once lagged behind Luoyang, had already developed high-value-added industries such as chips and new energy vehicles, Luoyang was still engaged in traditional industries such as heavy equipment, bearings and refractory materials as it did decades ago.

Facing the sense of crisis of "being eliminated in the wave of industrial transformation", Luoyang is comprehensively reshaping its industrial pattern.

Prior to this, leading projects including the Luoyang base of CATL, the million-ton ethylene project, and the AVIC Optoelectronics Basic Components Industrial Park have been launched one after another.

On this basis, Luoyang has clearly proposed to build 12 key manufacturing industrial chains covering agricultural machinery equipment, bearings, aviation equipment, aluminum-based materials, new energy batteries, new chemical materials, and optoelectronic components, so as to not only consolidate the basic market of traditional advantageous industries, but also actively seize the new tracks of "trend-leading industries".

The effects are emerging. In 2025, Luoyang's GDP reached 6164.52 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 6.0%, 0.4 and 1.0 percentage points higher than the provincial and national average respectively. In the same period, the added value of industries above designated size increased by 8.5%, ranking second in Henan province, hitting a new high in nearly 6 years, and driving the GDP to grow by 1.1 percentage points year on year. In terms of urban ranking, Luoyang also overtook Xiangyang, and is accelerating to catch up with Yulin and Yichang.

In the first half of this year, the added value of industries above designated size in Luoyang increased by 7.2%, 1.8 percentage points higher than the national average, and the revenue of the 12 key industrial chains and clusters increased by more than 10%.

When interpreting the economic data for the first half of the year, the Luoyang Municipal Bureau of Statistics specially pointed out that the industrial transformation and upgrading has achieved remarkable results: the added value of the city's high-tech manufacturing and strategic emerging industries above designated size increased by 47.6% and 28.9% year on year respectively, accounting for 12.2% and 21.2% of the added value of industries above designated size, driving the growth rate of industries above designated size by 4.4 and 5.2 percentage points respectively.

Not long ago, at the key work promotion meeting for the third quarter of Luoyang and the symposium of secretaries of county and district Party committees, the leading official of the Luoyang Municipal Party Committee emphasized that industry is the lifeblood of the economy, the backbone of the city, and the key variable for Luoyang to gain the initiative in regional competition. A strong industrial support ensures a stable economic foundation.

The meeting also admitted that at present, Luoyang's industrial growth is highly dependent on the driving of major projects, and the hidden worries of weak continuity and insufficient aftergrowth of other industries still exist. This long journey of transformation has just begun.

This article is from the WeChat Official Account "City Evolution Theory", written by Liu Yanmei, and published with authorization from 36Kr.