Of all the top tax-payers, there are quite a few new faces. They may deal with different products, but they have largely come from the same sector: high-end manufacturing. Jin Yingqiao explains why as tax-payers, they are saving more.

This unmanned car can steer, detect and avoid obstacles. It's made possible in part due to taxation policies. Chang'an Automobile says the company saved 140 million yuan under a national tax reduction policy that supports research and development. That money has gone into the self-driving car.

"If we count all the money R&D targeted tax preferential policies saved for us, that amounts to more than 50 percent of all our investment in intelligence instrument research," Yang Dayong, manager of Chang'an Automobile, said.

The company saved 300 million from tax reduction policies in 2015. At the same time,  it paid 31.4 billion yuan in tax, amost 30 percent more than in 2014.

This makes it one of the top 500 tax payers in China. And it's not alone in that trend. More high-end manufacturing companies are becoming big tax payers. Like Chang'an, many have turned tax reduction into productivity and then back to tax.

"We were able to save more than 1 billion yuan through tax preferential policies. That money went back into research. Now we're more competitive on the market, which enables us to get more tax reductions," Wan Ningna, manager of H3C Technologies, said.

Experts say that tax policies designed to encourage high-tech companies have met their goals with flying colors.

"High-end, high-value-added industries are starting to become pillar industries, as they now contribute more to the economy. In the past few years, high-tech manufacturing companies have benefited from tax reduction policies. And as they grow, the economy overall picks up. So now, it's harvest time," Zheng Xiaoying with State Administration of Taxation, said.

The top 500 taxpayers turned in some 2.7 trillion yuan in 2015. 40 percent of them are manufacturers. As high-end manufacturers take a growing share, they are fast becoming the engine of the economy.