Recent national conferences on advanced manufacturing have placed the sector firmly in the spotlight, signaling a shared consensus on driving its continued growth and consolidation.
Entering the 15th Five-Year Plan period, the strategy for strengthening advanced manufacturing hinges on leveraging existing foundations and aligning with industrial transformation trends to convert scale and system advantages into innovation, competitive, and developmental edges.
Manufacturing is the foundation of national prosperity and strength, with advanced manufacturing serving as a key pillar of the real economy. Since the 18th National Congress, this sector has seen steady expansion, with manufacturing value-added ranking first globally for 16 consecutive years and accounting for nearly 30% of the global total. Leading areas like photovoltaics, communications, high-speed rail, and shipbuilding now set international benchmarks, while robotics, artificial intelligence, and innovative pharmaceuticals are emerging rapidly, signaling a surge in new productive forces and robust momentum.
However, bottlenecks in key core technologies remain critical hurdles to overcome. Growth in advanced manufacturing is not about simply scaling up capacity or volume but about pursuing intelligent, green, and integrated development to elevate quality and efficiency.
Innovation serves as the primary driver for expansion. Today's competition increasingly revolves around technological innovation, achievement conversion efficiency, and industrial organization capabilities. Progress requires guiding research through industrial demand, strengthening the role of enterprises as innovation leaders, and deeply integrating innovation, industrial, capital, and talent chains. This approach will move more scientific results from laboratories to production lines, transform samples into products, and eventually grow them into industries. New technologies, particularly artificial intelligence, must be embedded across design, production, management, and service processes to enable comprehensive and systematic change.
Sustained growth cannot rely on individual enterprises alone; it depends on supply chain coordination and cluster development. Achievements like the C919 large passenger aircraft, cruise ships, new energy vehicles, and industrial robots result from collaboration across materials, equipment, software, components, and services. Strengthening the industrial base, cultivating advanced manufacturing clusters, fostering integrated development across enterprises of all sizes, and encouraging cooperation in technology, standards, talent, and application scenarios will build ecosystems supported by leading enterprises and specialized small and medium-sized firms.
Expanding resource allocation and development space is also essential. China's vast market offers abundant application scenarios for new technologies and products, enabling continuous iterative innovation. High-quality supply should create new demand, with premium products and services winning domestic and international markets. Simultaneously, steady expansion of manufacturing openness and cooperation, encouraging multinational enterprises to participate deeply in innovation, will raise industrial standards through competition.
Transitioning from "Made in China" to "Innovated in China" marks a higher stage of sector evolution. Turning these goals into reality requires a better combination of an effective government and an efficient market. One side calls for refining policy support, public services, standards systems, and factor guarantees while optimizing a fair competitive environment. The other side emphasizes respecting enterprise autonomy and allowing the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation so that companies with real technology, market demand, and potential can stand out.
The 15th Five-Year Plan period represents a vital window for building a modern industrial system and accelerating the development of new productive forces. By continuously strengthening advanced manufacturing and consolidating the real economy's foundation, China’s economy will gain stronger industrial support and greater momentum, opening new prospects on the journey toward Chinese-style modernization.