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Speaking to the CERN Courier, Wang stated that while the proposal was unsuccessful, the decade-long international effort behind the project would continue. “Although our proposal that CEPC be included in the next five-year plan was not successful, IHEP will continue this effort,” said Wang. 62-mile ‘Higgs factory’ The CEPC was designed to be a 62-mile “Higgs factory” to study the “God particle” with unprecedented precision. The setback comes just as the CEPC study group completed its full suite of technical design reports (TDR) in October 2025. With the CEPC now on pause, the project is in a race against its European rival, CERN’s Future Circular Collider (FCC). Wang said his team plans to submit the CEPC proposal again in 2030. However, if the FCC receives official approval before then, he indicated that Chinese physicists would likely abandon their domestic project and seek to join the European effort. The CEPC has been in development at IHEP since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012. Following a Conceptual Design Report in 2018, the collaboration entered a detailed technical phase. Several significant innovations Notably, the new technical report proposes several innovations. These include a high-precision tracking detector that can simultaneously measure position (10 µm) and time (50 ps), as well as new electromagnetic and hadronic calorimeters that improve energy resolution by factors of ten and two, respectively. The report also details a new readout chip that achieves state-of-the-art performance while reducing power consumption by 65%. An international review committee, chaired by Daniela Bortoletto of the University of Oxford, concluded in September 2025 that the detector report defined a “coherent detector concept with a clearly articulated physics reach.” Steps for the future Despite the project’s technical maturity and positive reviews, China will consider other large science projects for the 2026-2030 period. Technically, the CEPC project was considered “mature” and ahead of its European counterpart. It had already completed key design milestones. The project, with an estimated cost of US$5.1 billion, involved thousands of scientists from nearly 160 institutes worldwide. In contrast, the European FCC, with a smaller 56-mile ring, carries a much larger projected budget of US$18.4 billion. A feasibility study for the FCC was released in March, and member states are expected to decide on its future around 2028. While the CEPC is now on hold, the CERN Courier reported that another major physics project, the Super Tau-Charm Facility in Hefei, has been shortlisted for further consideration in China’s next five-year plan.
