China mandates equipment replacement and trade-in subsidies across 15 sectors — with unified national pricing for the first time

China's government just locked in a 2026 equipment replacement and consumer goods trade-in program with standardized subsidy rates across all provinces. This means manufacturers, retailers, and consumers now have a single national price floor for subsidies instead of negotiating with each local government separately — making it easier to plan production and distribution at scale.

For the past year, China ran equipment replacement and trade-in subsidies as a local experiment — each province set its own rates, eligibility rules, and implementation timelines. This created fragmentation: a manufacturer couldn't build a national supply chain, a retailer couldn't standardize pricing, and a consumer in one province got a different deal than one 200 kilometers away. The unified mandate collapses that friction. It also signals that Beijing is betting on demand-side stimulus (subsidizing consumption) rather than supply-side investment as its growth lever for 2026. The subsidy structure itself is revealing: electric vehicles get 12% of purchase price (capped at 20,000 yuan), fuel cars get 10% (capped at 15,000 yuan). That's a 2-percentage-point incentive flip favoring EVs — small enough to look neutral, large enough to shift purchasing at scale. The program also expands eligibility to 15 sectors (old buildings, nursing homes, fire safety equipment, testing labs) that weren't covered before, which means construction, elder care, and industrial inspection companies now have a predictable revenue stream from government procurement.