On December 8, 2025, the 2025 M&A Finance Conference was held in Shanghai, co-organized by Xinhua News Agency Shanghai Branch, China Economic News Shanghai Headquarters, and SPD Bank. Zhou Hanmin, Standing Committee Member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and President of the Shanghai Public Diplomacy Association, delivered a keynote speech emphasizing that advancing corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is crucial for accelerating the development of new quality productive forces.
Zhou highlighted that the "15th Five-Year Plan" period represents a critical window for China's industrial system to transition toward new quality productive forces. In this context, M&A is no longer merely a tool for corporate expansion but a vital institutional arrangement to enhance national competitiveness. Its core function lies in enabling efficient allocation of innovative resources across enterprises, sectors, and regions.
Zhou defined new quality productive forces as high-caliber productivity driven by R&D, algorithms, data, and computing power, with innovation, technology, and ecological synergy at its core. Given this framework, no single enterprise can sustain comprehensive innovation solely through internal R&D; effective resource integration tools are essential. M&A serves as a key institutional mechanism to break barriers and optimize resource combinations, making its strategic value particularly prominent today.
To illustrate how M&A can function in the era of new quality productive forces, Zhou proposed three strategic shifts: 1. From "scale-driven expansion" to "innovation-driven integration," emphasizing technological complementarity, platform consolidation, and ecosystem-based operations—exemplified by NVIDIA's transformation from a hardware company to a global AI infrastructure provider through strategic acquisitions. 2. From "financial investment" to "strategic technological positioning," where M&A becomes a critical exogenous growth variable, as seen in Microsoft's acquisition of OpenAI and domestic renewable energy firms acquiring energy storage companies to build closed-loop ecosystems. 3. From "industrial chain coordination" to "ecosystem construction," fostering cross-sector synergies in computing power, scientific research, and green supply chains through M&A.
Drawing on international benchmarks, Zhou underscored the strategic role of M&A, citing the U.S. "innovation-M&A dual-drive" model, the EU's cross-border integrations to create "European champion enterprises," and Japan and South Korea's policy-guided conglomerate mergers. These examples demonstrate that leveraging M&A for technological leaps is a global trend, requiring China to align with international rules while advancing institutional openness.
Zhou also emphasized the strategic importance of legal service providers in this new era. He argued that M&A is fundamentally a legal issue, and law firms should transcend traditional advisory roles to act as "institutional engineers." They must offer forward-looking legal strategies, design M&A structures conducive to new quality productive forces—such as technology mirroring agreements, ESG clauses, and cross-border frameworks—and actively participate in regional industrial restructuring and legal innovation to help firms navigate global governance scrutiny and compliance.
Zhou concluded by calling for collective recognition of M&A's decisive role in shaping China's future industrial competitiveness. "Accelerating new quality productive forces requires M&A as the driving force and institutional innovation as the foundation. Through government support in creating a favorable environment, enterprises enhancing integration capabilities, capital markets providing funding, and professional services contributing expertise, we can collectively forge new advantages for China's modern industrial system," he stated.
