Framed within the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030), the initiative is associated with an estimated US$3.8 trillion in investment alongside related priority areas.
Mining magnate Robert Friedland estimates that new UHV power lines could add 300,000 tonnes per year to copper demand, while data centres could contribute between 400,000 and 572,000 tonnes annually to global demand for the metal.
China wants to build the infrastructure that will underpin its next stage of development. Under the 15th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (2026–2030), Beijing launched Six Networks, an initiative encompassing electricity, water, telecommunications, computing capacity, logistics and urban utility tunnels, as part of a broader investment drive—together with other priority areas—estimated at around US$3.8 trillion. Behind this transformation lies an inevitable protagonist: copper.
“This matters enormously for copper because it is incredibly copper-intensive,” mining magnate Robert Friedland warned. He argues that the initiative, launched under Xi Jinping’s new planning cycle, could keep China as the main driver of global copper consumption over the next five years.
For Friedland, Six Networks will connect China’s physical economy with the needs of Artificial Intelligence and renewable energy, with particularly strong implications across three areas: electricity, computing capacity and telecommunications.
His estimates provide a sense of the potential pressure on demand. Friedland calculates that new Ultra-High Voltage (UHV) power lines could add around 300,000 tonnes of annual copper demand; electric vehicle charging infrastructure could add another 500,000 tonnes in total; and data centres could contribute to estimated global demand of between 400,000 and 572,000 tonnes annually. On top of this would come the copper required for the deployment of next-generation telecommunications networks.
The initiative and the track record behind it
“The plan is highly significant: the objective is for China to become the world’s leading industrial and high-tech nation, surpassing the United States,” Jean-Pierre Cabestan, an academic at Hong Kong Baptist University, told Señal DF.
The initiative began to take public shape on 6 March 2026, during the annual session of the National People’s Congress. There, Zheng Shanjie, Chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), presented Six Networks, outlining the rollout of 109 major projects and the investment priorities for the new five-year period.
The backdrop is a shift in Beijing’s priorities: amid a weakening property construction sector, the Government is seeking to channel capital towards infrastructure capable of supporting new sources of growth. According to Natalia Cortés, former Director of the Chilean Trade Office in Beijing, the programme represents “an attempt to replace the property sector as an engine of growth—currently in contraction—with investment in hard infrastructure linked to technology and security of supply.”
The initiative subsequently received backing at the highest political level. On 28 April, the Communist Party’s Politburo called for stronger planning across the six areas covered by the initiative, while on 9 May the State Council followed with more specific instructions for its implementation.
A recent analysis by the National Information Center, an institution under the NDRC, described these decisions as part of an infrastructure strategy designed simultaneously to expand investment and domestic demand, develop new productive forces and build competitive advantages for the future.
The programme’s logic lies precisely in ensuring that the six networks do not operate as isolated projects. Electricity infrastructure must keep pace with the expansion of computing capacity; the latter requires higher-capacity communications networks, while water supply, logistics networks and underground infrastructure systems must enhance the resilience and efficiency of cities.
The NDRC itself has described the approach as a transition from infrastructure expansion based primarily on scale towards a model centred on integration across networks, including projects that coordinate computing capacity with electricity supply.
For Cortés, this transformation has particularly important implications from a raw-materials perspective: “Six Networks is, above all, a large-scale electrification plan.”
The implementation machinery is already in motion. In June, Zheng convened private companies to discuss profitability mechanisms, financing, standards and participation in the projects, while the NDRC announced that it would combine public funds, new financial instruments and private capital to accelerate construction. By late July, the agency also reported that implementation was progressing alongside the 109 major projects under the five-year plan. Some targets already illustrate the scale of the ambition: official planning calls for, among other objectives, 500,000 5G-A base stations, one million high-speed optical access ports and the development of an integrated national computing capacity network.
There is also a track record that lends credibility to these targets. Under the 14th Five-Year Plan, China ended 2025 with 4.838 million 5G base stations, significantly exceeding the official infrastructure-density target established for the period, according to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
A similar pattern can be seen in railway infrastructure, where successive national plans expanded the high-speed rail network from around 38,000 kilometres in 2020 towards a target of 50,000 kilometres by 2025.
Beyond traditional infrastructure, a report by MERICS—Europe’s largest think tank dedicated to the analysis of China—concluded that Made in China 2025 delivered significant progress across several of its 10 priority sectors, particularly electric vehicles, advanced railways and green technologies, even though China remained behind in areas such as cutting-edge semiconductors and aviation.
“China has demonstrated over time that its plans tend to be fulfilled,” said Juan Ignacio Guzmán, CEO of GEM Mining Consulting, although he cautioned that Six Networks remains an ambitious undertaking whose implementation will need to be closely monitored.
Appetite for Copper
The relevance of Six Networks for Chile becomes clear when considering the weight China already carries in the copper market. According to Cochilco, the Asian giant consumed 16.2 million tonnes of refined copper in 2025, up 4.9% from the previous year, accounting for nearly 58% of global consumption.
This exposure is also reflected in bilateral trade. Chilean copper exports reached a record US$55.188 billion in 2025, with 50.6% of those shipments destined for China, according to Chile’s Undersecretariat for International Economic Relations.
This starting point magnifies the potential impact of Six Networks. GEM Mining Consulting estimates that implementation of the programme could require an additional 1.2 million to 2.2 million tonnes of refined copper over its five-year duration, with Guzmán estimating an annual impact of somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 tonnes. He compares that volume to the output of “a couple of large mines in Chile” and warns that demand of such magnitude would enter a market already facing supply-side constraints.
The greatest pressure would come from electrical and digital infrastructure. Juan Carlos Guajardo, Executive Director of Plusmining, identifies power grid modernisation as the largest driver of copper consumption, due to the expansion of transmission and distribution networks, the connection of new renewable generation capacity, and the construction of substations, transformers, motors and power supply systems for data centres.
Computing and communications infrastructure would add further demand, although he cautions that the impact would be smaller in water, utility tunnels and logistics, where copper competes with other materials. In his view, China is gradually shifting part of its consumption away from traditional real estate towards power grids, renewables, automation, data centres and Artificial Intelligence, creating a more structural base of copper demand.
Natalia Cortés focuses on the potential mismatch between the two sides of the market. Data centres, she notes, are copper-intensive—requiring between 30 and 40 tonnes per installed megawatt—but the greater impact comes from all the infrastructure required to supply them: generation, transmission, distribution and storage. “A potential mismatch between accelerating demand and supply that cannot respond at the same pace is, in my opinion, the most important structural element at the intersection of this plan and the copper market,” she said.
Cabestan agrees that the impact on copper will be significant, although he introduces a note of caution regarding the programme’s eventual scale. In his view, the next phase of Chinese investment will focus precisely on power grids, 6G, Artificial Intelligence and urban systems, all of which are highly intensive in physical infrastructure. “The impact on copper demand will be significant, which, in my opinion, will lead to higher prices,” he said.
However, the Hong Kong Baptist University professor warned that slower Chinese economic growth, weak consumption and rising external trade barriers could temper Beijing’s ambitions and result in final implementation falling short of the highest estimates.
The most sceptical counterpoint comes from Derek Scissors, a senior economist and China expert at the American Enterprise Institute, who questions both the accuracy of Chinese investment figures and the assumption that the entire amount associated with the programme represents additional spending.
Even so, he expects strong deployment across its core components: “Computing capacity and the power grid that supports it will almost certainly experience rapid growth.” His outlook for copper is more moderate towards the end of the decade: “Demand will be strong and then decline, but not dramatically.”
Competition with the US
Six Networks is also firmly embedded in the technological competition between China and the United States. The connection is particularly evident in the computing capacity network and telecommunications, two areas in which Beijing is seeking to reduce its dependence on foreign technologies while Washington tightens restrictions on advanced chips and other critical components.
For Natalia Cortés, the programme’s computing component should be viewed precisely through this lens. The world’s second-largest economy is seeking to increase the domestic technological content of its economy “as a direct response to US semiconductor export controls.”
This effort is not starting from scratch. A MERICS report had already described the construction of an integrated national computing capacity network as a central element of China’s response to technological decoupling from the United States. The think tank noted that US restrictions were particularly affecting access to advanced hardware and that Beijing was seeking to compensate by developing domestic chips and leveraging its traditional strength in infrastructure to organise, at a national scale, the computing resources required for Artificial Intelligence.
In a separate report published last month, MERICS argued that China had made self-sufficiency in AI an economic and national security objective in response to Washington’s controls.
The architecture of Six Networks also reflects this priority. An analysis published in July 2026 by the National Information Center, which operates under the NDRC, argues that the programme should strengthen China’s economic autonomy, resilience and future competitive advantages.
The document also identifies the development of high-performance chips for computing infrastructure and 6G technologies for the new communications network among its technological priorities. The NDRC subsequently reinforced this approach, stating that both networks should be integrated with the new power system to build “secure and reliable” digital infrastructure.
This emphasis takes on greater significance in light of US restrictions targeting precisely these components of Six Networks. The US Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security maintains specific controls on exports to China of advanced semiconductors used in computing and Artificial Intelligence. Although it partially eased its policy in January for processors such as Nvidia’s H200 and AMD’s MI325X, shipments remain subject to licensing and security requirements. In May, Washington also tightened restrictions aimed at preventing indirect access to these chips through entities located in third countries.
For Cortés, this is why “Six Networks cannot be viewed solely as a domestic industrial policy.” By building computing and telecommunications infrastructure, together with the energy systems required to support them, Beijing is reinforcing precisely the strategic capabilities it seeks to develop within its own borders.
Source: Diario Financiero