Becoming More Industrial To Compliment Agricultural Profile

High-tech manufacturing grew by double digits last year as crop yields, cuisine, education, innovation, per capita wealth, urbanization and above all, persistence and spirit from local residents also reached new heights, Yuan Shenggao reports.

Many people know Hunan for its spicy food. The province in Central China has been hot on industrial development as well.

It is China's largest manufacturing and export center of rail transport equipment and the country's largest production, research and development hub of construction machinery, to name just a few highlights. Its achievements started from nothing, but local people's persistence, hard work and the spirit of never giving up has progressed the province to new heights.

In the 1950s, Ke Yinuo, a fresh college graduate, packed up his things and settled down in a barren valley in Zhuzhou. With decades of efforts by Ke and many others, the CRRC Zhuzhou Institute has turned the city in eastern Hunan into the highland of China's rail transport.

In May, a demo locomotive with a design speed of 600 kilometers per hour rolled off the assembly line, stunning the world. The locomotive's "heart", "brain" and "neural system" were made in Zhuzhou, which is now home to an advanced rail transport production cluster with the sector's annual industrial output value surpassing 100 billion yuan ($13.95 billion).

Just around 100 km away from Zhuzhou lies Lianyuan, a smaller city. In 1986, a local man named Liang Wengen decided to start his own business with a starting fund of just 60,000 yuan.

In a few years, the company shot to fame in the market and saw its annual output value skyrocket to more than 100 million yuan.

In 1989, Liang named the business operation Sany, which in Chinese means three firsts: first-class company, first-class employees and first-class contribution. He moved the company to Changsha, the provincial capital.

As Sany embarked on its engineering equipment R&D in the late 1990s, it decided to make inroads into the long-reach pump market, which was almost completely dominated by international brands.

Thanks to the team's hard work, Sany developed China's first self-developed long-reach concrete pump. It broke the dominance of international brands in China and changed the landscape of the global concrete machinery market.

In the first half of this year, Sany recorded revenue of approximately 3.04 billion yuan, up 38.6 percent from the same period last year, while its R&D expenses reached 209.2 million yuan, up 145.5 percent year-on-year, the company said.

Besides Sany's industrial machinery and the CRRC Zhuzhou Institute's high-speed trains, Hunan is also home to many other world-class technological achievements, including hybrid rice, magnetic levitation and deep sea drills.

Companies and institutions from Hunan won 27 awards at last year's national congress of science and technology, accounting for 10 percent of the country's total.

The Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan independent innovation demonstration zone is emerging as the core driving force of the province's high-quality development.

Official statistics show Hunan's equipment manufacturing, high-level processing and high-tech manufacturing saw their added values in 2018 grow 11.9 percent, 18.3 percent and 10.1 percent year-on-year respectively, much higher than the average growth of businesses above designated size.

Hunan is gaining even more momentum in smart manufacturing thanks to a slew of policies and measures. The province has set up a leading group headed by its governor and an advisory committee composed mainly of academicians in the country. The authorities have also set aside 1.18 billion yuan for a fund focusing on smart manufacturing.

A number of demonstration projects have emerged in the province in important segments, and their experiences can serve as examples for other sectors.

The industrial cluster is making rapid progress. Official statistics show the Changsha-Zhuzhou-Xiangtan zone was home to 63 provincial-level model companies and workshops by the end of 2018, accounting for around 70 percent of the province's total.

Hunan is hosting meetings and forums on smart manufacturing and robot competitions, which help set up platforms for information exchanges. In November 2018, China's smart and connected vehicle testing zone was established in the Xiangjiang New Area in Changsha, which is helping to build the cluster of smart vehicles in the province.

"With our persistence and hard work, we have transformed Hunan from a major agricultural province into an industrial powerhouse," said Cao Huiquan, head of Hunan's department of industry and information technology.

(China Daily 09/12/2019 page25)