The China Association for Science and Technology (CAST) published on July 15, at the opening of its 28th annual congress in Beijing, a list of 30 major scientific and technological challenges for 2026. Among the ten frontier scientific questions is burning plasma in magnetically confined fusion — the key issue separating today’s experimental reactors from a fusion plant capable of sustained energy production.
The list was selected from 84 proposals submitted by 70 scientists and reviewed by 23 academics and experts. It is organized into three categories: ten frontier scientific questions, ten engineering challenges, and ten industrial technology bottlenecks, spanning fields from artificial intelligence and life sciences to deep-sea exploration and outer space. Nuclear fusion is not just one item among many: it is one of the topics the Chinese scientific community considers decisive for the country’s energy future.
The context behind this selection is anything but abstract. Earlier in 2026, researchers working on the EAST tokamak — the superconducting experimental reactor at the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences — surpassed the Greenwald plasma density limit, a parameter that since 1988 has defined the threshold beyond which magnetic confinement tends to collapse. The plasma remained stable at densities 1.3 to 1.65 times the conventional limit, achieved through control of reactor wall conditions during the startup phase. In July, the CRAFT project completed testing on the largest superconducting magnet ever built for a fusion reactor, clearing one of the most demanding engineering hurdles on the road to stable plasma confinement.
Against this backdrop, China’s 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) has listed controlled nuclear fusion among its top national priority projects, with extraordinary measures in place to ensure concrete advances. Chinese public spending on fusion research is estimated at $1.5 billion per year, roughly double the U.S. federal budget allocated to the same field. Since 2018, CAST has published a total of 279 scientific and technological challenges: the decision to include burning plasma in the 2026 edition is no coincidence, but reflects the maturity reached by domestic research and the perceived proximity of a qualitative leap forward.
The step China still needs to take is the transition from experiment to demonstration: producing a plasma in which fusion reactions themselves supply most of the heat needed to sustain them, without relying on external energy sources. That is the minimum condition for ignition. Next-generation devices — including the pilot reactor CFETR — are designed precisely for this purpose. If EAST and CRAFT continue to deliver useful data, and if the Five-Year Plan maintains the momentum it promises, China could be in a position to test that condition within the next decade, ahead of anyone else.
