Advanced manufacturing pushed

Wang Peng, a researcher with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, said: "Advanced manufacturing increasingly depends on how much of that underlying system a country can master. An EV is also a collection of automotive chips, batteries, sensors, algorithms, industrial software and precision components. A humanoid robot depends on reducers, servo systems, force sensors, dexterous hands and AI models. A semiconductor fabrication line draws on a still broader ecosystem of equipment, materials, electronic design automation software and specialist parts."

Zhang Li, president of the China Center for Information Industry Development, said after the Beijing conference that, as international competition in technology and industry intensifies, strengthening advanced manufacturing has become tied both to industrial security and China's ability to move up global value chains.

Chen Xuedong, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Engineering, identifies basic components, electronic parts, materials, software, manufacturing processes and industrial technology infrastructure as the foundation beneath the country's manufacturing machine.

China has made progress in filling gaps, Chen said, but some domestic products still lag in consistency, stability, lifespan and reliability, while areas such as industrial software remain weaknesses.

China accounted for roughly 30 percent of global manufacturing output in 2025 and has been the world's largest manufacturing country for 16 consecutive years. That scale creates enormous advantages, but it also means future productivity gains increasingly have to come from technology, quality and coordination rather than simply adding factories.

Three days after the national conference ended, the World Manufacturing Convention opened on Sept 20 in Hefei, capital of Anhui province, providing a local test case for that transition.

Once better known as an agricultural province and raw-materials base, Anhui has in little more than a decade built clusters spanning EVs, displays, chips, AI and robotics, while trying to digitalize traditional businesses such as cement and machinery.

The Anhui provincial government said that during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, revenue from Anhui's large industrial companies climbed to 5.9 trillion yuan ($879.6 billion) from 3.8 trillion yuan, taking the province to fifth place nationally.

That transition is particularly visible in Anhui. Liang Yanshun, then Party secretary of Anhui, said that every minute, factories across Anhui produce about 190 home appliances, 50 laptop computers and four new energy vehicles.

"Such momentum benefits from Anhui's decades of technological innovation and intelligent transformation. More and more Anhui-made products are setting sail overseas and benefiting consumers around the world," Liang said.