New central subsidies for scrapping and renewing coastal and inland river ships in China
Policy update
China’s expanded incentives for scrapping and replacing transportation equipment in 2025
Since 2024, China has offered national-level incentives to phase out outdated products and equipment under the Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Trade-in of Consumer Goods Policies. In Jan 2025, the National Development and Reform Commission and the Ministry of Finance jointly announced the enhancement and expansion of the incentive programs in 2025. This update explores the scope and incentives of the 2025 transportation equipment scrappage and replacement program and provides a comparison with the 2024 program.
The incentive policies cover a wide range of transportation equipment, including passenger cars, trucks, new energy buses and batteries, ships, and off-road agricultural machinery. Compared with the 2024 program, the 2025 program broadly follows the previous design, while extending the eligibility criteria and enhancing the incentive levels.
Highlights of the 2025 incentive policies include:
- The eligibility age of scrapping incentive for old passenger cars was extended in 2025, while the subsidy amounts remain at ¥15,000 for the replacement of an old car with a cleaner fossil fuel-powered car and ¥20,000 for replacing it with a new energy car.
- The old commercial China IV trucks are newly eligible for the program in 2025. Truck owners continue to receive subsidies for their early scrapping of old trucks before the mandatory retirement age and can receive additional subsidies for replacing them with new China VI trucks or new energy trucks, with the total subsidy amounts ranging from ¥10,000 to ¥140,000.
- The overall average subsidy per vehicle increased from ¥60,000 to ¥80,000 for the renewal of city buses aged 8 years and older, as well as batteries that are beyond their warranty period or do not meet safe operating conditions.
Table 1. Summary of key changes to incentive policies from 2024 to 2025
