Green Supply Chains Enter Scale-Up Phase: 126 Chain-Leading Enterprises, 1,382 Green Factories — But SMEs Face 8.3% Revenue Cost Burden

China’s green supply chain transformation has decisively shifted from pilot experimentation to systemic rollout, marking a pivotal inflection point in the nation’s dual carbon strategy and consumer market evolution. In February 2026, nine ministries—including the Ministry of Commerce, MIIT, and the National Development and Reform Commission—jointly issued the Notice on Advancing Green Consumption Initiatives, formally elevating ‘building green supply chains’ to the status of a core innovation model for green consumption. This is not merely regulatory signaling; it reflects a structural recalibration where supply chain integrity has become the primary conduit through which environmental ambition translates into consumer behavior change. As China enters the critical decade of its comprehensive green transition, the supply chain—once viewed as a logistical backbone—is now recognized as the central nervous system of sustainable consumption, bridging upstream industrial decarbonization with downstream purchasing power.

The Strategic Architecture: From Fragmented Pilots to Integrated Ecosystems

What distinguishes today’s phase from earlier green initiatives is the deliberate construction of an interlocking institutional architecture. The 2024 National Green Manufacturing List—published by MIIT—documents a quantum leap in scale and coherence: 126 chain-leading enterprises, 1,382 green factories, and 123 green industrial parks now form a coordinated triad. This ‘factory–park–supply chain’ governance model represents a sophisticated spatial and operational layering: green factories serve as certified production nodes; green parks provide shared infrastructure (e.g., renewable energy microgrids, circular water systems, and centralized waste-to-resource facilities); and chain-leading enterprises orchestrate cross-tier alignment across hundreds of suppliers.

This ecosystem approach directly addresses historical fragmentation. Prior green efforts often targeted single facilities or isolated certifications (e.g., ISO 14001), yielding limited ripple effects. Today’s framework embeds accountability vertically: a Tier-1 OEM cannot claim ‘green’ status unless ≥85% of its Tier-2 material suppliers meet verified low-carbon criteria—and those Tier-2s, in turn, must cascade requirements downward. Crucially, national standardization has accelerated this integration. Between 2023 and 2024, China published 10 national standards directly related to supply chain management, three of which specifically govern green supply chain governance—covering scope definition, data disclosure protocols, and lifecycle assessment (LCA) harmonization. Complementing these are industry-led frameworks like the Green Supply Chain Management Implementation Guidelines and Maturity Evaluation Index released in April 2025 by the China Federation of Logistics & Purchasing—tools that introduce multi-dimensional scoring across strategic planning, performance improvement, social responsibility, and digital traceability.