At the Chimelong Spaceship Park in Zhuhai, a tea-art robot lifts a purple clay teapot to pour a cup of tea for visitors; beneath the Canton Tower in Guangzhou, robot dogs high-five with tourists; in a Shenzhen commercial district, a coffee robot methodically creates latte art... During the recently concluded National Day holiday, a batch of intelligent robots went on duty intensively at scenic spots across Guangdong, becoming a new sight in holiday consumption. Behind the bustle is the solid support of Guangdong's advanced manufacturing. In recent years, the added value of Guangdong's manufacturing industry has continuously remained above 30% of its GDP; in 2025, the operating revenue of industrial enterprises above designated size reached 19.34 trillion yuan, ranking first in the country, while industrial robot output grew by 31.2%, placing it among the top nationwide. Since the beginning of this year, more than 2,000 embodied intelligent robots have entered industrial scenarios across the province, accelerating the empowerment of manufacturing. Manufacturing is the ballast of the real economy, and advanced manufacturing is the core engine of a modern industrial system. On October 9, Guangdong held a provincial advanced manufacturing conference, anchoring the direction of intelligentization, greenization and integration, and deploying a new blueprint for building a strong manufacturing province. Forging the "steel and iron bones" of advanced manufacturing and erecting the "resilient backbone" of a modern industrial system, Guangdong is once again striving to lead.

Forging "Steel and Iron Bones" as the Manufacturing Foundation Supports Trillion-Yuan Clusters

In Beijiao, Shunde, Foshan, on the assembly line of the Midea Kuka Intelligent Manufacturing Science and Technology Park, a row of orange Kuka robots is busy "manufacturing" another robot — robotic arms tighten screws, install joints and secure bases, and a new industrial robot rolls off the line every 20 minutes. This is Guangdong's first fully automated production line where "robots produce robots." A decade ago, when Midea acquired Germany's Kuka, outsiders still questioned whether a Chinese company could digest German technology; today, the localization rate of core components at Kuka's Shunde base exceeds 90%, annual capacity has jumped from 10,000 units to 33,000 units, making it the largest industrial robot production base in the country. "The models that German factories can produce today can all be produced in China; but the models that Chinese factories can produce may not necessarily be producible in German factories," said Shu Yang, Director of Product and Pre-sales Technology at Kuka China. Supporting this production line is an "ecological legion" of nearly 3,000 robot enterprises centered on Shunde — sheet metal, injection molding, motors and surface treatment, links that originally served the home appliance industry, have almost all found new customers. Of every 20 domestically produced industrial robots nationwide, one comes from Beijiao Town in Shunde. The thickness of the cluster is the most distinctive foundation of Guangdong's intelligent manufacturing. From 2020 to 2025, the operating revenue of industrial enterprises above designated size in the province leapt from 14.9 trillion yuan to 19.34 trillion yuan, maintaining the largest scale in the country; it has cumulatively created 8 national advanced manufacturing clusters and 30 national-level specialized and characteristic industrial clusters for small and medium-sized enterprises, forming 10 trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters. The thickness of the foundation stems from the completeness of categories. Guangdong has all 31 manufacturing categories, and among the 104 industrial products with published output nationwide, 44 account for more than 10% and 11 account for more than 30%. The thickness of the foundation has also spawned an echelon trend. A total of 9 manufacturing enterprises in Guangdong are listed among the Fortune Global 500, and it has cumulatively cultivated 236 national-level manufacturing single champions and 2,777 specialized and sophisticated "little giants"; the province has 76,000 industrial enterprises above designated size and 74,000 national high-tech enterprises, both ranking first nationwide. "New technologies need scenarios for implementation, and cluster density determines scenario density; new industries need supporting facilities to start, and the thickness of the industrial chain determines the ability to share trial-and-error costs," said Huang Shaona, a senior engineer at the Fifth Electronics Research Institute of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. In her view, this foundation is also the historical mission Guangdong shoulders. The National Advanced Manufacturing Conference deployed "building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone," and as a major manufacturing province, Guangdong must further explore the path for the nation in intelligentization, greenization and integration.

Activating the "New Engine" with Deep Integration of Innovation and Industrial Chains

How long does it take to turn a sketch into a humanoid robot that can walk autonomously? Shenzhen Youibot's answer is 25 days — its humanoid robot "Lingshu" completed bionic design, learning and training, and real-machine walking in one go. Supporting it is Shenzhen-based Jialichuang, which provides everything from circuit board design, prototyping and assembly to mechanical parts in one stop. "The domestic electronics innovation cycle is as short as 1 to 3 months, far faster than Silicon Valley's 18 months; sample unit prices are as low as under 20 yuan, while abroad they are generally above 2,000 yuan," said Ding Hui, Chairman of Jialichuang, calculating the account: domestically, a humanoid robot can produce a sample from design to assembly in one to two weeks, while Europe and the United States need at least half a year. The confidence behind this account comes from production changes on the workshop floor. On Jialichuang's digital production line, tens of thousands of design orders pouring in daily are disassembled and reorganized, and scattered prototyping needs are combined onto the same large board for collaborative manufacturing, with fixed costs such as startup and line changes diluted to almost negligible levels. The price of a single prototyping run has dropped from thousands of yuan to dozens of yuan, with delivery in as fast as 12 hours, compressing the trial-and-error cost of hardware innovation to days and weeks. This innovation revolution from workshop to market is a vivid portrayal of the deep integration of Guangdong's innovation chain and industrial chain. At present, Guangdong's regional innovation capability has ranked first nationwide for nine consecutive years, and its number of valid invention patents, high-value invention patents, PCT international patent applications and China Patent Awards all rank first in the country. In 2025, the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou" innovation cluster ranked first among the world's top 100 innovation clusters for the first time, and retained the top spot in 2026. Behind the accelerated rise of the cluster is the support of high-level innovation platforms. Guangdong has 6 national-level manufacturing innovation centers, ranking first nationwide, with 22,000 patent applications cumulatively, and has incubated innovative products such as the domestic extracorporeal membrane oxygenation system (ECMO), domestic 8K cameras and 5G ultra-high-definition video broadcast vehicles, breaking foreign monopolies and filling domestic gaps. The weight of innovation ultimately falls on industry. The domestic large amphibious aircraft AG600 and the "Dream" ocean drilling ship have been unveiled one after another; GAC Group's fully domestically designed chip new energy vehicle "Pandeng" officially rolled off the line; the HarmonyOS operating system has become China's first independently controllable domestic operating system and the world's third-largest mobile operating system; and openEuler ranks first in China's server operating system market by newly added installed capacity. In 2025, the added value of advanced manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing accounted for 56.2% and 34.7% of the province's industrial added value above designated size, with the share of high-tech manufacturing added value up 2.7 percentage points from five years ago. The mutual reinforcement of industry and technology continues to inject a steady stream of new momentum into Guangdong's advanced manufacturing.

Nurturing a "Rainforest" Industrial Ecosystem with Competing New Vitality

At Gree's smart factory in Jinwan, Zhuhai, an air conditioner rolls off the line on average every 15 seconds. In this one of the country's first "lighthouse-level" smart factories, more than 2,000 Gree self-developed industrial robots work in coordination, the self-development rate of equipment exceeds 80%, and AI inspection models learn to "identify faults by sound" from more than 300,000 pieces of data. "AI applications must start from actual business needs and combine large models with industry knowledge and industrial data to truly deliver value," said Li Shaobin, Vice President of Gree Electric Appliances. Gree will base itself on manufacturing realities, continue to deepen AI applications, and precipitate practice-verified capabilities into replicable and promotable construction solutions to drive the intelligent upgrading of the industrial chain. The birth of a benchmark factory reflects Guangdong's manufacturing industry's overall leap from "single-point breakthroughs" to "chain-based transformation." Guangdong has innovatively explored the "chain-based transformation" model for manufacturing digitalization and promoted it nationwide, cumulatively advancing the digital transformation of more than 55,000 industrial enterprises above designated size, and has created 660 national green factories, 12 green industrial parks and 104 green supply chain management enterprises. With intelligentization as the base, greenization as the color and integration as the highlight, they jointly paint a picture of high-quality development of advanced manufacturing. The reason a rainforest is lush is not only because of towering trees, but also because of the nourishment of sunlight and rain. A first-class business environment is precisely the most fertile soil for Guangdong's industrial ecosystem. In recent years, Guangdong's level of foreign investment utilization has continued to improve, with the actual use of foreign investment in manufacturing rising from 16.8% of the province's total in 2021 to 22.9% in 2025, and a number of major projects such as the BASF (Guangdong) integrated base and the ExxonMobil Huizhou ethylene project have been completed and put into operation. "Looking at the global chemical market, China currently accounts for more than half of global demand. We expect future growth momentum will still come from China. The Zhanjiang base will help BASF produce more competitive products," said Lin Hanping, Chairman and President of BASF Greater China. He said BASF's commitment to China will not change due to changes in the external environment. "We decided to make such a large investment in Zhanjiang eight years ago, and that decision will not change today." Behind foreign companies voting with their actions is Guangdong's transformation of the "soft services" of the business environment into the "hard support" of institutional guarantees. In recent years, Guangdong issued the country's first local manufacturing regulation, the Guangdong Province Regulations on Promoting High-Quality Development of Manufacturing, turning policies, experiences and practices in manufacturing development into legal institutions and providing legal protection for "manufacturing as the foundation." Only by cultivating fertile soil can lush growth be achieved. Guangdong is building a "rainforest" of advanced manufacturing through institutional innovation, ecosystem cultivation and service upgrading. Here there is both the leading and driving force of towering trees and the competing coexistence of countless species. Seizing the historical opportunity of industrial transformation, Guangdong, relying on its complete industrial clusters, vigorous innovation vitality and open industrial ecosystem, is making the foundation of advanced manufacturing more stable and the backbone of its modern industrial system stronger.