Executive Summary
Additive manufacturing (AM, 增材制造), commonly known as 3D printing (3D打印), refers to production processes that create physical objects from digital models by adding material layer by layer. Unlike traditional subtractive machining or tooling-intensive molding and casting, AM enables faster design-to-production cycles, complex geometries, and efficient small-batch or customized output. Its industrial value stems from the integration of software, advanced materials, precision machinery, and production data, making it an important component of next-generation manufacturing. It also substantively accelerates prototype testing and thus the innovation cycle.
Over the past three decades, AM has been incorporated into China’s industrial-policy system through Made in China 2025, dedicated AM plans, provincial support programs, and wider non-market measures that favor localization, scale, and domestic substitution. Chinese companies more broadly receive disproportionately high levels of state support relative to competitors in OECD economies, including through subsidies, preferential financing, and R&D support. For Western economies, this can distort competition by enabling rapid expansion abroad while foreign firms face more constrained access in China.
Against this policy backdrop, China’s AM industry now spans consumer-grade printers as well as industrial systems for high-performance metal and polymer components. Over the past several years, Chinese firms have rapidly expanded their global presence, with companies such as Bambu Lab carving out a dominant position in mass-market hardware, while Xi’an Bright Laser Technologies (BLT) and Farsoon Technologies have strengthened China’s position in advanced metal and polymer systems for aerospace and other high-value sectors. This expansion is increasing Chinese influence across the AM value chain while accelerating import substitution and shifting strategic manufacturing capacity and know-how into more integrated domestic supply chains.
As more advanced AM capability, know-how, and production capacity become concentrated within China’s ecosystem, risks surrounding intellectual-property leakage, technology transfer, and sensitive data become more consequential. This is especially important because 3D printing is now a standard prototyping tool across many advanced industries, meaning AM systems often handle early-stage designs and sensitive engineering data well before products reach commercial production. Beyond prototyping, these systems also process engineering drawings, material specifications, process parameters, software, and machine settings that can embody years of R&D and provide a relatively direct path from digital design to physical production. Unauthorized access can therefore shortcut development and production cycles, facilitate reverse engineering, reduce costly trial-and-error, and accelerate domestic substitution or replication of advanced manufacturing capabilities.
These risks take on added significance because of AM’s dual-use nature. Technologies used in aerospace, medical, automotive, and energy applications can also support military logistics, space systems, unmanned platforms, and weapons production. The reported use of Bambu Lab printers in Ukrainian drone-related production and by the British Army illustrates how commercially available systems can enter defense environments, raising concerns around cloud connectivity, telemetry, firmware control, remote access, and sensitive production data. In the context of military-civil fusion (军民融合), these dynamics also create risks of technology diversion and the transfer of commercially acquired capabilities into defense applications.
Taken together, these trends make China’s AM ecosystem a strategic concern not only for industrial competitiveness, but also for supply-chain resilience, technology and innovation security, intellectual-property protection, and Western national security.