The shifting qualities of 'Made in China'

The development of manufacturing industry has been a key contributor to China's economic transformation. This will be so in China's next stages of development too.

According to World Bank data, China's manufacturing industry now accounts for almost 20 percent of global manufacturing output. This production quantity is impressive, if not staggering, but the macroeconomic factors that led to China's comparative advantage are now rapidly eroding and giving way to a "new normal", which is characterized by rising labor and operating costs, persistent periods of sluggish international demand, and an increasingly sophisticated domestic consumer with rising quality standards and rapidly changing tastes. As a result, domestic manufacturing growth has been slowing at a more rapid rate than the broader economy.

If China's massive manufacturing base - deliberately developed over many years - to remain a major source of domestic employment and economic activity, it must rapidly transform and upgrade. To engineer this redirection in the industry, Premier Li Keqiang has put forward a concept dubbed "Made in China 2025", and the State Council, China's Cabinet, has set up a leading group for the ambitious plan. Led by vice-premier Ma Kai, the group will coordinate, deliberate and implement plans for becoming a world manufacturing power. This means the government is actively seeking to translate the qualities associated with "Made in China" from a past era of scale and replication to those that are identified with the creation of high value-added products.