China’s Hefei National Laboratory: The Nerve Center of a Quantum Superpower
This is Article 4 of 10 in the China’s Quantum Ambition Deep Dive series.
Table of Contents
Author’s Note: This article is part of my special series on quantum technology in China — a multi-part investigation examining whether China can achieve dominance in quantum computing, the technology that may ultimately determine the balance of global power in the 21st century.
My thesis is direct: China will likely win the quantum cold war. Not because it has better scientists or more qubits today, but because of a convergence of structural advantages that Western analysts consistently underestimate — a proven industrial strategy I call the Leapfrog Doctrine, unprecedented coordinated investment across public and private sectors, a lack of Western visibility into the true scale and status of Chinese quantum programs, an energy and digital infrastructure without parallel, and the adaptive resilience that turns every Western restriction into an accelerant for self-sufficiency.
This article establishes the foundation. It documents the Leapfrog Doctrine across eight sectors, drawing on data, lived experience, and two decades of watching China’s technological transformation from factory floors in Dongguan to boardrooms in London. The companion articles turn to quantum directly — examining what China has already achieved, what it is concealing, how its whole-of-nation approach differs from fragmented Western efforts, and why the comfortable assumption that the West leads may be the most dangerous strategic miscalculation of our time.
The series has been several months in the making. I hope it challenges assumptions — especially comfortable ones.
Introduction
On April 26, 2016, Xi Jinping walked into USTC’s Advanced Technology Research Institute in Hefei and listened to a physicist named Pan Jianwei describe the future of quantum information science. What Xi said next — “Very promising, very important… the country will definitely support this” — set in motion the largest single investment in quantum technology any nation has ever made. Within a year, construction permits were approved. Within five, China had its first new-generation national laboratory. Within a decade, that laboratory had produced quantum computational advantage demonstrations on two separate hardware platforms, launched the world’s first quantum satellite, built a 12,000-km quantum communication backbone, and incubated more than 70 quantum companies along a road the locals simply call “Quantum Avenue.”
The Hefei National Laboratory is not just a research facility. It is the institutional embodiment of China’s belief that quantum technology is too important to leave to market forces — and the most vivid illustration of what state-directed science can accomplish when political will, concentrated funding, and a deep bench of talent converge in a single location.
In my ongoing analysis of China’s quantum program, I have covered the individual pieces — the satellites, the processors, the networks, the companies. This article puts them together. This is the story of the place where most of it happens.
One Visit, One Directive, One Laboratory
The quantum enterprise in Hefei did not begin with Xi’s visit. The roots go back to 1999, when USTC established its first quantum communication lab with Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) support. In 2001, Professor Guo Guangcan founded the CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information — China’s first ministerial-level quantum research group. Pan Jianwei, who had earned his PhD under Nobel laureate Anton Zeilinger at the University of Vienna, returned to USTC in 2008 and built what would become the world’s most prolific quantum physics division.
But laboratories run on funding, and funding in China runs on political patronage. Xi’s 2016 visit transformed quantum from a scientific priority into a political one. Within months, the CAS Quantum Information and Quantum Technology Innovation Academy was formally established in Hefei, designed from the outset to operate as a national laboratory in all but name. On January 10, 2017, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology jointly approved the Hefei Comprehensive National Science Center — China’s second, after Shanghai — with quantum as its cornerstone. By February, Anhui province had approved 37 hectares for Phase 1 construction. By July, Pan Jianwei was installed as president of the Innovation Academy in a ceremony attended by Anhui’s Party Secretary and CAS’s Vice President.
The campus that rose from those approvals now covers approximately 49 hectares — roughly 120 acres — with some 480,000 square meters of planned building space. Phase 1 construction investment came in at approximately 7 billion yuan, roughly $1 billion. The facility was formally inaugurated between 2020 and 2021 as the Hefei National Laboratory, officially China’s first new-generation national lab.
The name shift from “National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences” to the geographically branded “Hefei National Laboratory” reflects a broader reorganization of China’s national lab system under the 14th Five-Year Plan and the Central Science and Technology Commission established in 2023. The scope has broadened modestly beyond quantum, but make no mistake: this is a quantum laboratory with a quantum mandate, and quantum is what it does.
The Funding Question Nobody Can Answer
I have written at length about the opacity of Chinese quantum investment, and the Hefei lab epitomizes the problem. The confirmed Phase 1 construction figure is approximately $1 billion. Anhui Province and Shanghai each contributed roughly 1 billion yuan in initial co-funding. Anhui also established a 10-billion-yuan Quantum Science Development Fund.
Then there are the numbers that circulate in Western policy circles: $10 billion, $15 billion, sometimes higher. These figures appear in reports from the South China Morning Post, Popular Science, the OECD, and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. But they trace back to a single claim by a USTC insider at a 2018 conference, and they appear to encompass long-term, multi-site national quantum ecosystem spending — not the Hefei facility alone. The OECD has cautioned that actual investment expenditures have not been verified. The ECIPE estimates China’s total public quantum investment could be as low as $4 billion.
What we can say with confidence is that China’s quantum spending — even at conservative estimates — is comparable to or exceeds US public investment of approximately $3.8–5 billion. The EU Quantum Flagship stands at €1 billion over 10 years. The UK committed over $4 billion across two program phases. But China’s structural advantage is not the raw number. It is concentration: a single centralized system directing massive resources through a primary hub, versus the distributed, agency-fragmented approach of Western democracies. As I explore in Quantum Sovereignty, this concentration model carries both advantages and risks — but for speed of execution, it is unmatched.
Four Pillars and a Megaproject
The lab is organized around four core research divisions: quantum communication, quantum computing and simulation, quantum precision measurement, and quantum devices and materials. These are not bureaucratic categories — they map directly onto the strategic pillars of China’s Sci-Tech Innovation 2030 Quantum Megaproject, which the Hefei lab directly manages. This is a critical detail that Western analysts often miss: the lab does not merely conduct research funded by the megaproject. It issues the project guidelines, accepts grant applications, and allocates national research funding. It is simultaneously the performer and the program manager of China’s quantum ambitions.
The stated objectives are sweeping: achieve quantum computational advantage on multiple hardware platforms, construct global-scale quantum communication networks, develop quantum sensing instruments for civilian and defense applications, and build a self-reliant domestic supply chain. That last objective has taken on new urgency as US export controls have pushed Chinese firms to localize production of dilution refrigerators, single-photon detectors, and precision lasers — components that were previously imported from Western suppliers.
Perhaps the most telling indicator of the lab’s trajectory is Anhui Province’s “Thousand Scenarios Action” plan: 300 quantum applications by end of 2025, 1,000 by 2027, 3,000 by 2030. This is an industrialization timeline.
Pan Jianwei: The Man Who Built the Machine
Every great laboratory has an architect, and Hefei’s is Pan Jianwei. Born in 1970 in Zhejiang Province, Pan returned from Vienna with a vision that extended far beyond his own research program. He understood — earlier than most Chinese scientists of his generation — that quantum information technology would require not just papers in Nature and Science, but institutions, companies, supply chains, and political champions.
Pan holds an extraordinary portfolio of positions: CAS Academician (elected 2011), USTC Executive Vice President, Director of the CAS Quantum Innovation Academy, member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Foreign Member of the Royal Society (elected 2024). He designed the lab’s organizational blueprint — “one headquarters, two sub-centers plus network” — and personally briefed Xi Jinping to secure the political endorsement that made everything possible.
The laboratory operates under a Board of Directors-led, Director-responsible system. The board includes representatives from the Ministry of Science and Technology, CAS, Anhui provincial government, Hefei municipal government, USTC leadership, and external experts. But the operational authority rests with Pan.
The constellation of talent around him is equally formidable. Lu Chaoyang, who earned his PhD at Cambridge and was called “Quantum Prodigy” by Zeilinger himself, leads the Jiuzhang photonic quantum computing program. Zhu Xiaobo is the chief engineer behind the Zuchongzhi superconducting processors. Peng Chengzhi, the vice chief engineer of the Micius satellite system and chairman of QuantumCTek, was elected CAS Academician in November 2025. Guo Guangcan, who founded China’s first quantum information lab in 2001, co-founded Origin Quantum. Du Jiangfeng, a quantum sensing pioneer who co-founded CIQTEK, now serves as President of Zhejiang University and is an Alternate Member of the CPC Central Committee. The lab reports 23 CAS/CAE academicians and 189 national-level talent awardees on its roster — a concentration of quantum expertise with no parallel outside of perhaps a handful of US national labs.
The USTC Nexus and the “Core Plus Network”
The relationship between the Hefei National Laboratory and USTC is intimate but formally distinct — a subtlety that matters for understanding how the institution actually works. USTC is the “primary constructing institution”: it provided the core academic talent, the physical space, and the institutional scaffolding. Most researchers hold dual appointments. Pan Jianwei wears both hats simultaneously. Lab employees’ children attend USTC-affiliated schools.
But the lab is a separate legal entity with its own budgets, staffing, and governance. This gives it something Chinese universities typically lack: the flexibility to recruit outside standard academic channels, manage industrial partnerships directly, and operate at the speed that a megaproject demands.
The organizational model extends well beyond Hefei. The lab maintains branch bases in Beijing, Shanghai, Jinan, Shenzhen, and Changsha, with university partnerships reaching Peking University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Nanjing University, and the National University of Defense Technology. CAS institutes contribute critical specialized capabilities: the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics builds quantum satellite payloads, the Institute of Semiconductors develops quantum devices, the Shanghai Institute of Microsystems produces the superconducting single-photon detectors that enable extreme-distance quantum key distribution. International collaboration, once centered on the University of Vienna, has narrowed significantly as multiple USTC and CAS entities have been placed on the US Entity List.
Quantum Avenue: From Lab Benches to IPO Bells
The most striking feature of the Hefei ecosystem is not the lab itself but what has grown around it. Along Yunfei Road in Hefei’s High-Tech Zone — known locally as “Quantum Avenue” — more than 70 quantum enterprises now operate. This is not accidental. It is the product of deliberate industrial policy: municipal investment in incubator space, provincial seed funds with risk tolerances of 40–50%, and a governance philosophy that keeps quantum companies physically close to the research teams that spawn them.
Three companies anchor the ecosystem.
QuantumCTek is the flagship. Founded in 2009 from Pan Jianwei’s group, it became the world’s first publicly traded quantum information company when it listed on the Shanghai STAR Market on July 9, 2020 — with a first-day share price surge of 924%, the largest in Chinese market history. QuantumCTek manufactures QKD devices, quantum random number generators, and ultra-low-temperature platforms. It has participated in drafting over 100 quantum technology standards. In 2025, China Telecom’s Quantum Group acquired a 40.43% controlling stake, merging state telecom distribution muscle with quantum hardware capability. Revenue hit 253 million CNY in 2024, up 62% year-on-year. Its Tianyan quantum cloud platform now hosts an 880-qubit superconducting computing cluster and has attracted 37 million visits from over 60 countries.
Origin Quantum, founded in 2017 by Professors Guo Guoping and Guo Guangcan, claims to be the only quantum computing company in the world building the entire full stack in-house: chips, dilution refrigerators, control electronics, operating system, programming framework, and cloud platform. Its Origin Wukong 72-qubit system launched commercially in April 2024. In February 2026, it open-sourced Origin Pilot V4.0, described as the world’s first downloadable quantum operating system. Valued at roughly 6.88 billion RMB (~$950 million), the company initiated IPO counseling for the STAR Market in September 2025.
CIQTEK, founded in 2016 by Du Jiangfeng, commercializes quantum precision measurement instruments: NV-center diamond spectrometers, EPR instruments, quantum magnetometers, and scanning electron microscopes. Its STAR Market IPO was approved in December 2025 at an implied valuation of approximately 11.69 billion RMB (~$1.6 billion). With roughly 700 employees and a motto of “Making instruments for the nation,” CIQTEK represents the commercialization of the quantum sensing pillar.
Supporting these champions is a supply chain ecosystem that includes Guoke Quantum (QKD network integration), Qasky (provincial QKD hardware), ZL Cryogenic (dilution refrigerators achieving a record 7.45 millikelvin base temperature), and QBoson (photonic quantum computing). The localization of dilution refrigerator manufacturing in Hefei is particularly significant — driven partly by US export controls, Chinese firms now produce cryogenic systems at roughly one-third the price of Western alternatives.
The Infrastructure Beneath the Breakthroughs
The lab does not operate in isolation from China’s quantum communication infrastructure — it sits at the center of it. The Beijing-Shanghai Quantum Communication Backbone, a 2,000-km fiber link with 32 relay nodes launched on September 29, 2017, has its total control center at USTC’s Advanced Technology Research Institute in Hefei. The Hefei Quantum Metropolitan Area Network, opened in October 2022, spans 1,147 km of fiber with 8 core nodes and 159 access points, serving government agencies and state-owned enterprises.
This backbone has since expanded into what I have covered as China’s quantum networking dominance: over 12,000 km of QKD fiber, 145 backbone nodes across 17 provinces and 80 cities, integrated with two operational quantum satellites. Hefei is the hub.
Two Platforms, Two Claims to Quantum Advantage
The lab’s research output is where the global significance becomes unmistakable. To assess these achievements against the broader CRQC timeline, I map them to my CRQC Quantum Capability Framework — and while none of these results bring us close to a cryptographically relevant quantum computer, they represent genuine engineering milestones that demonstrate capability progression across multiple dimensions.
The Jiuzhang series established China in photonic quantum computing. Jiuzhang 1.0 (December 2020) detected 76 photons performing Gaussian boson sampling roughly 10¹⁴ times faster than the Sunway TaihuLight supercomputer — making China only the second country after the US to claim quantum advantage on any platform. Jiuzhang 2.0 (October 2021) scaled to 113 photons. Jiuzhang 3.0 (October 2023) reached 255 photons. Each iteration was published in Science or Physical Review Letters.
The Zuchongzhi series is strategically more consequential. Zuchongzhi 2.0/2.1 (October 2021) used 66 superconducting qubits to perform random circuit sampling 2–3 orders of magnitude more complex than Google’s Sycamore — China’s first superconducting quantum advantage. Zuchongzhi 3.0 (March 2025) deployed 105 readable qubits with 182 couplers and ran random circuit sampling 10¹⁵ times faster than the Frontier supercomputer. Gate fidelities reached 99.90% (single-qubit) and 99.62% (two-qubit). Then came Zuchongzhi 3.2 (December 2025), which achieved quantum error correction below the fault-tolerance threshold using a distance-7 surface code — making USTC the first group outside the United States, after Google’s Willow, to cross this critical milestone.
That last result deserves emphasis. Below-threshold error correction is the single most important engineering capability required on the path to a CRQC. Google demonstrated it with Willow. Now USTC has matched it. The gap between these two programs is measured in months, not years.
The Micius quantum satellite, launched August 16, 2016, added a different dimension: satellite-to-ground QKD, entanglement distribution across 1,200 km, and the first intercontinental quantum-secured video call between Beijing and Vienna. In March 2025, the follow-on Jinan-1 microsatellite — one-sixth of Micius’s weight — demonstrated a 12,900-km Beijing-to-South Africa encrypted link.
And in early 2026, the lab announced two more firsts: a scalable quantum repeater building block using trapped-ion quantum memory over 10 km of fiber (Nature, January 2026) and device-independent QKD over 100 km of fiber (Science, January 2026). A 2024 quantum simulation of the Fermi-Hubbard model using the “Tianyuan” ultracold atom simulator — the first to observe the antiferromagnetic phase transition beyond classical computing capability — was published in Nature and described by reviewers as “an experimental tour de force.”
China remains the only country to have claimed quantum computational advantage on two mainstream hardware platforms simultaneously.
What the Hefei Model Means for the Quantum Race
The Hefei National Laboratory is not merely a collection of impressive experiments. It is a model — the most fully realized version of state-directed quantum technology development anywhere in the world. And understanding that model is essential for anyone trying to assess the competitive landscape.
The model has three distinctive features. First, vertical integration: the same institution that conducts fundamental research also manages the national megaproject’s funding, incubates commercial spin-offs, and operates the quantum communication backbone’s control center. There is no US equivalent to this concentration of functions. The closest analogy might be if Los Alamos National Laboratory simultaneously ran DARPA’s quantum program, managed the QKD network, and operated three publicly traded technology companies.
Second, supply chain localization by design. US export controls have added QuantumCTek, Origin Quantum, and key upstream suppliers to the Entity List. The intended effect was to slow China’s quantum program. The actual effect has been to accelerate domestic production of dilution refrigerators, lasers, and single-photon detectors — in some cases at a fraction of Western prices. A 2025 RUSI assessment concluded that export controls have accelerated, not hindered, China’s localized quantum supply chain. This is a theme I explore extensively in Quantum Sovereignty: the paradox of technology denial strategies that strengthen the capabilities they were designed to constrain.
Third, the pivot from science to industry. The 15th Five-Year Plan (2026–2030) elevated quantum to China’s #1 “Future Industry.” This is not a research label — it signals government procurement preferences, manufacturing subsidies, and mandated application deployments. The “Thousand Scenarios Action” target of 3,000 quantum applications by 2030 makes the intent explicit. The Hefei lab is transitioning from a place that produces Science papers to one that produces products.
The Hefei National Laboratory is entering what may prove to be its most consequential phase. The science is proven. The institutions are built. The companies are scaling. The question now is not whether China can build a quantum technology industry — it is how fast that industry reaches the capabilities that matter for cryptography, sensing, and national security.
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