An engineer’s short social-media post captured the mixture of technical grit and quiet triumph behind a milestone in China’s fast-growing private fusion sector. Zhang Zhewen, a high-temperature superconducting magnet technician at Energy Singularity, wrote that months of painstaking testing had paid off after the company’s tokamak, Honghuang‑70, sustained a steady plasma for two minutes during its 5,319th experiment. That run, followed by later experiments lasting 335 seconds and 1,337 seconds, marks not just an engineering achievement for one machine but a symbolic advance for China’s efforts to move controllable fusion from laboratory curiosity toward an industry.
Honghuang‑70 is billed as the world’s first high‑temperature‑superconductor (HTS) tokamak built by a commercial company. Its magnet system — the most costly and technically demanding part of any tokamak — uses HTS coils for toroidal, poloidal and central solenoid fields intended to confine the plasma. Long‑pulse operation matters because a commercial fusion power plant must sustain plasma for extended periods to produce stable, continuous power; achieving multi‑minute steady states is a necessary step toward that goal even if it stops short of net energy gain.
The runs by Honghuang‑70 have overtaken previous public records for duration by other Chinese superconducting tokamaks: the state‑run EAST facility once held the world record for long‑pulse operation at 1,066 seconds. Energy Singularity’s successive experiments now demonstrate the engineering reliability of HTS tokamak designs in an industrial setting and illustrate how private firms are narrowing the gap between exploratory physics and repeatable engineering.
The human story behind the headlines is familiar to large‑scale engineering projects: a small team learning through repetition. Zhang, who trained in mechanical engineering and worked in aerospace cabling before joining the startup in 2023, describes the toll of long campaigns, the millions of parameter checks and the morale swings of early tests that fell short of expectations. For him and colleagues, the runs are validation that design choices for magnets, power supplies and heating systems are robust enough to keep the plasma confined without damaging the hardware.
The progress is happening against a backdrop of capital flows and policy nudges that make fusion a legitimate commercial bet in China. Venture financing for private fusion firms climbed at the start of 2026, and the country’s new Atomic Energy Law (effective January 2026) explicitly encourages controlled thermonuclear fusion research and development. Shanghai, where Energy Singularity is based, has positioned fusion among its “future industries” and local funds have already backed multiple domestic fusion ventures, signalling both political and financial support.
Despite the momentum, major hurdles remain. These experiments do not yet demonstrate net energy production — producing more usable energy than consumed — which remains the defining technical milestone for a fusion power plant. Engineering questions around material endurance under neutron flux, tritium handling, system integration at reactor scale, and the high up‑front capital cost of HTS magnet systems must still be resolved. The company’s roadmap includes a larger machine, Honghuang‑170, intended to test critical engineering nodes and target net energy gain; it is planned to be completed by 2028, which, if met, would be an aggressive schedule.
Commercial and strategic implications are wide‑ranging. If private firms in China can turn demonstrable long‑pulse stability into net energy and scalable reactor designs, they could shorten the path to fusion electricity, attract more private and public capital, and intensify global competition in an area previously dominated by national laboratories. Skeptics — from industry figures who question the economics of building terrestrial fusion reactors to technologists who point to alternative clean energy solutions — remain a counterweight, stressing that scientific breakthroughs must translate into viable, affordable systems at utility scale.
For now, Honghuang‑70’s runs are an engineering vote of confidence for HTS tokamak concepts and a sign that China’s fusion ecosystem — a mix of startups, state institutions, investors and provincial champions — is maturing. Whether that maturation will deliver commercial fusion within a decade is uncertain, but the recent streak of long‑pulse experiments makes the question less theoretical and more an engineering timeline to be watched closely.