Chinese Manufacturing Sector Rides Fourth Industrial Revolution Wave

Cooperative Innovation A Wise Choice

Throughout all these years of development, it is inevitable that China will elevate itself from the low end to medium and high end of industrial chains, and go global to embrace the international market. In today’s market, everyone is dependent on one another.Chinese enterprises should cooperate with foreign companies to innovate.

On December 23, 2015, the State Council of China approved the China-Germany (Shenyang) High-end Equipment Manufacturing Industrial Park Construction Plan. The park is the first strategic platform in terms of high-end equipment manufacturing cooperation, signifying the correlation between the two key programs, “Made in China 2025” and “German Industry 4.0.”

This industrial park is located in Tiexi District of Shenyang, an old industrial city and capital of Liaoning Province. There are 482 enterprises above a designated size, over 100 transnational companies, and 50 companies listed in the world’s Top 500. Some of Germany’s best-known companies such as BMW and BASF have chosen to set up in the park. BMW has established an exclusive research and development center here with its most advanced vehicle factory and engine plant.

As part of the national strategy, the industrial park is expected to become a world-level equipment manufacturing cluster through deep cooperation with the German high-end manufacturing sector, renovating traditional industries with information technology, and picking up pace in this new type of industrialization.

Up till now, 35 programs are operating in the industrial park, while 74 are under construction. Among them, 10 programs are engaged in intelligent manufacturing, 14 in advanced machinery manufacturing, 30 in auto manufacturing, and 14 industrial services.

Intelligent manufacturing is the strength of the industrial park. Through intelligent simulation and sensing technologies, enterprises can incorporate individual operations with their orders, and are able to provide high value-added services to clients.

Golan Kwok, chief specialist of manufacturing of SAP, said that Chinese and German enterprises should make full use of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to accelerate the transformation from manufacturing into intelligent manufacturing. Zhang Tianjun, president of the European Company of Shenyang Machine Tool Co., Ltd., observed that turning traditional manufacturing technologies into intelligent operations through the Internet is at a crucial phase.

As Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli noted in his keynote speech at the 2017 Boao Forum for Asia, China will unswervingly persevere in its opening-up. China’s gate is always open to the outside world, he reaffirmed, and the Chinese government will further optimize the investment environment for foreign businesses, lower the threshold for the service, manufacturing and mining industries, and encourage foreign investment enterprises to go for an initial public offering and issue bonds on China’s domestic market. All domestic and foreign companies should be treated equally in terms of qualification licenses, standard settings, and government procurement, as well as enjoying preferential policies of “Made in China 2025.”