Striving for world-class scientific journals is a critical strategic objective to enhance national scientific competitiveness and cultural soft power, as well as a key initiative to build China into a global technological powerhouse. Scientific journals, as essential platforms for knowledge dissemination and academic exchange, are entrusted with the mission of aggregating research outputs, facilitating academic communication, and advancing scientific progress. This paper systematically reviews the major progress and achievements of scientific journals of China during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, including policy support, implementation of key projects, improvements in citation metrics, and innovations in publishing models. Concurrently, it delves into the multiple challenges faced by scientific journals during this period. First, the number of high-quality journals remains insufficient to meet the rapidly growing demand for publishing scientific findings, causing many high-caliber papers to be submitted to international journals. Second, efforts to enhance international impact have been hindered, as scientific journals of China lag behind top-tier global journals in terms of paper impact, citation frequency, and recognition within the international academic community. Third, there is a lack of support in terms of talent and operations, with a shortage of skilled editors and technical personnel, and inadequate capabilities in digital publishing and operations. Fourth, publishing resources are fragmented, and clustering remains underdeveloped, hindering the formation of globally competitive publishing ecosystems. In light of the new development landscape under the 15th Five-Year Plan, this paper identifies several persistent challenges, such as small journal scale, insufficient capacity to accommodate scientific output, scattered and weak publishing units, a lack of high-impact journals, limited capacity to publish high-quality research, incomplete tiered journal development, low open access levels, and a shortage of top-tier editorial talent. It proposes measures to optimize the disciplinary layout of scientific journals, emphasize the development of foundational science journals, leverage AI technologies to enable the high-quality development of Chinese-language journals, accelerate the digital transformation of scientific journals, and expedite the clustering process. This paper further explores trends and opportunities for scientific journals of China in global scientific development, digital publishing, policy support, and market competition. It highlights three key strategies: The widespread application of digital and intelligent technologies provides robust support for the comprehensive digital transformation of journals, revolutionizing content production, dissemination, and service models through smart tools and big data. Sustained government efforts in policy support, funding, and intellectual property protection inject strong momentum into the high-quality development of scientific journals. Evolving market demands and improvements in academic evaluation systems offer new opportunities for domestic scientific journals to expand their global influence. Furthermore, the paper envisions that scientific journals of China will occupy a more prominent position in global academic competition, gradually becoming vital drivers of international scientific innovation. In the context of emerging new quality productive forces, the publishing industry is undergoing accelerated transformation, characterized by advancements in labor, tools, and production materials. Scientific journals of China are set to fully embrace internationalization, digitization, clustering, and intelligent development, thereby strengthening their voice and impact in the global academic community, promoting the publication and international dissemination of high-quality domestic research, and aligning with the demands of global scientific competition and technological innovation.