Abstract: Any policy aimed at stimulating demand for manufacturing equipment renewals can be understood at the macro level as “increasing short-term investment demand by raising the current depreciation rate in the manufacturing sector”. This brief attempted to provide an “anchor” for assessing the effectiveness of the manufacturing equipment renewal policy, namely, how much of the annual new investment in China's manufacturing sector reflects investment demand driven by depreciation, without additional policy support. The scale of depreciation in the manufacturing sector and the share of depreciation-induced investment in new investment were estimated through three methods, and the preliminary conclusion is that the natural depreciation scale of China's manufacturing capital stock will reach 8 trillion yuan in 2024. In other words, the scale of “passive” investment driven by the depreciation of capital stock in China is larger than anticipated, and the “5 trillion yuan of equipment investment” cannot be simply understood as the incremental part of China's manufacturing investment for 2024.
