Not long ago, the National Advanced Manufacturing Conference was held in Beijing.
Convened in the opening year of the 15th Five-Year Plan period, this important meeting underscored the weight of advanced manufacturing in the overall cause of Chinese-style modernization and set a clear direction for continuing to expand and strengthen advanced manufacturing.
The outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan proposes maintaining a reasonable share of manufacturing and building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as its backbone.
At present, China's manufacturing sector is at a critical stage of moving from large to strong, with the value added of manufacturing accounting for nearly 30% of the global total.
Data show that from January to August this year, the value added of industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide grew 5.3% year on year, and new growth drivers represented by high-tech manufacturing and digital product manufacturing contributed more than half of that growth.
However, the development of China's advanced manufacturing still faces deep-seated challenges, including a poor match between factor supply and industrial demand, unbalanced regional development, and weak coordination in industrial organization.
Cross-sector integration is an important driving force for the development of advanced manufacturing.
A pair of AI glasses, equipped with artificial intelligence, sensors, wireless communication and other technologies, integrates services such as translation, navigation and speech recognition; Hefei Luogang Park brings together more than 10 types of typical scenarios, including sightseeing and cultural tourism and high-speed inspection, giving new technologies a place to be applied.
In recent years, breakthroughs and cross-applications of technologies in different fields such as information technology, new materials and biotechnology have given rise to a number of highly integrated innovative products and comprehensively capable innovative scenarios.
Many places in China are actively exploring practices, seeking to cultivate new industrial growth drivers through opening scenarios and breaking down barriers between business forms, and to embark on a differentiated path of upgrading.
Hubei is promoting integration from a single field to the overall picture, making clear that it will "promote the deep integration of advanced manufacturing and modern services and drive the coordinated development of the real economy with the digital economy and the primary, secondary and tertiary industries"; Guangdong has proposed "5 pluses" and "5 manufacturings," including "advanced manufacturing plus services," translating high-end, intelligent, green and integrated development into an executable "industrial grammar."
Looking ahead, to continue expanding and strengthening advanced manufacturing, breakthroughs in single-point technologies are certainly important, but integrated development thinking is even more critical.
Market entities need to actively connect with digital technology, urban scenarios, livelihood needs and the global market, and use cross-sector innovation to reconstruct products, business forms and business models.
The development of the industry, meanwhile, must continue to break down barriers among industries, regions and supply and demand, and build an integrated ecosystem featuring "technology empowerment, scenario implementation, industrial clustering and service support."
It is necessary to deeply cultivate cross-sector exploration in frontier fields, promote deep coupling between manufacturing and artificial intelligence, biotechnology and other areas, and continue to cultivate new growth points for future industries.