This week coincided with the May Day holiday. Across counties and districts in Jiangsu province, project advancement maintained a rapid pace, industrial upgrading continued unabated, and regions focused on developing new quality productive forces, striving fully to achieve half-year targets and painting a distinctive picture of determined progress. Industrial machine tools are a key lever for Xuyi County in establishing itself as a supporting base for advanced manufacturing in the Yangtze River Delta. On April 29, the Demart Intelligent Equipment project was declared completed and operational in Xuyi. This project will establish a comprehensive East China base integrating R&D, manufacturing, and sales, precisely addressing gaps in the industrial machine tool components sector in Xuyi. The previous day, Xuyi County, Huai'an City, convened a promotion meeting for the industrial machine tool industry, bringing together representatives from over 20 upstream and downstream enterprises and fund management institutions to discuss topics such as improving key supporting industries, attracting investment across the chain, and building an industrial ecosystem. Xuyi adheres to a dual-chain strategy—focusing both on extending the industrial chain through proactive outreach and investment attraction to accelerate key project implementation, and on optimizing the layout for building localized supply chains to enhance the stability and resilience of the industrial chain.

In the fields of artificial intelligence and high-end equipment, Haian City in Nantong achieved significant results. On April 28, a production project for humanoid robot precision reducers and core transmission systems for intelligent construction equipment, with a total investment of 10 billion yuan, was formally signed and settled in Haian. Invested in and constructed by Sulun Equipment Technology, the project involves approximately 420 million yuan in equipment investment and aims to build a 5G intelligent manufacturing lighthouse factory. Once the technology is implemented, it will effectively fill a domestic gap in the high-end transmission device sector. The following day, Haian saw the concentrated signing and settlement of eight high-quality sci-tech innovation projects: an AI center liquid cooling project focused on R&D for liquid cold plates for AI server GPU cards; an SME digital transformation service project brought by a doctoral team from Suzhou Chien-Shiung Institute of Technology, capable of intelligently matching solutions for different industries; as well as welding robot and quadruped inspection robot projects based on proprietary core technologies, and an OPC project established by teams from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and other institutions.

Simultaneously, Zhangjiagang City in Suzhou also welcomed a "dual signing" for high-end equipment manufacturing projects. On April 28, the Dongbao Haixing automotive lightweight components project, with a total investment of 12 billion yuan, was signed into the Metallurgical Industrial Park. Suzhou Dongbao Haixing is the only domestic enterprise with proprietary intellectual property rights for rolled tailor-welded blanks for automotive lightweighting. This expanded layout will establish a top-tier complete supporting industrial chain for automotive tailor-welded blanks and hot stamping. Upon reaching full capacity, it is expected to produce 21 million automotive lightweight components annually, injecting strong momentum into Zhangjiagang's efforts to accelerate the building of a 100-billion-yuan new energy vehicle and components industrial cluster. On the same day, a high-end manufacturing headquarters base project for intelligent packaging equipment across domains was also signed and settled in Zhangjiagang, with a total investment of 5 billion yuan. The project will be constructed in two phases and, upon completion, will help the enterprise upgrade from a single-product manufacturer to a full-chain integrated supplier.

New materials form the foundation of advanced manufacturing. Guanyun County and Changzhou National Hi-Tech District, among others, have made layouts in the new materials sector. On April 28, the nanocage silicon-based new materials industrial base project broke ground in Guanyun County, Lianyungang City. Spanning 134 acres, the project, upon full completion, will have an annual production capacity of 800,000 tons of nanocage silicon-based powder materials and 400,000 tons of nanocage silicon-based granular materials, directly creating over 300 jobs. The project is high-tech, has broad market prospects, strong driving capacity, and aligns closely with the park's main focus, serving as crucial support for seizing the new materials industry track and cultivating new quality productive forces. The park established a dedicated project task force stationed on-site, working against a set schedule to ensure orderly construction progress. On the same day, the Lanrui Optoelectronics electrochromic materials project was signed and settled in the New Materials Industrial Park of Xinbei District, Changzhou City, with a total investment reaching 10 billion yuan. Lanrui Optoelectronics holds multiple original patents in organic flexible electrochromic dimming technology. This newly signed project is a key link in its strategy to achieve full industrial chain control from raw materials to dimming films to smart glass, and will help fill the domestic supply gap for high-end electrochromic materials, injecting strong momentum into collaborative innovation within the industrial chain.

Industrial breakthroughs rely on a nurturing environment for innovation. On April 28, Beijing Sanqing Interconnection Technology Co., Ltd., a national-level "little giant" specializing in the power Internet of Things, established its East China regional R&D headquarters by registering and setting up a wholly-owned subsidiary, Nanjing Qingshi Zhidian Technology Co., Ltd., in Yuhuatai District, Nanjing. On April 29, the Intelligent Optoelectronics Innovation Center, jointly established by Southeast University and the China (Nanjing) Software Valley, was officially inaugurated. Relying on eight national and provincial-level platforms, including the National (Local) Joint Engineering Research Center for Optical Sensing/Communication Integrated Networks and the MOE Key Laboratory of Quantum Materials and Information Devices, the center focuses on cutting-edge directions like photonic chips, optoelectronic integration, and intelligent sensing, building a "high-speed road" from the laboratory to the production line. On the day of its inauguration, the center signed strategic cooperation agreements with over ten enterprises and institutions and launched the Alumni Electronic Industry Development Alliance and the "Micro-Light · Creation" micro-innovation talent training program, marking the initial formation of an industry-education integration ecosystem. This May Day holiday, with a series of signings, project commencements, and operational launches, the drumbeats of progress sounded a vigorous movement for the high-quality development of county-level economies in Jiangsu.