Chinese premier Li Keqiang’s Flagship Plan, Made in China 2025, has finally been released. This is a program of action and road map of China’s manufacturing industry in the next decade, and the goal is, by 2025, to catch up with the manufacturing capacity level of the industrialization period of Germany and Japan, and make China among the ranks of the world’s great powers of manufacturing.
“To make a brief summary for the theme of Made in China 2025, I would say it is to make China’s manufacturing industry great not just in size but also in power,” Mao Weiming, the vice minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said to reporters.
As the world’s largest manufacturing base, China has the world’s leading production of more than 220 industrial products. But in Mao Weiming’s opinion, China’s manufacturing industry is great only in size but not in power and capacity. First, the core technology is controlled by foreign powers; Second, the brand quality is comparatively low; Third, the industrial structure is unreasonable with serious homogenization competition; Fourth, the transformation channels of scientific and technological achievements are obstructed.
Under such disadvantage, it is difficult to maintain the extensive environmental resource consumption. In 2013, China’s imported IC chip $231.3 billion. The external dependence of important mineral resources such as crude iron is over 50%. The reduced the area of arable land due to construction occupation is 350,000 hectares.
Meanwhile, the demographic dividend that supported the rapid economic growth of the previous three decades has gradually disappeared. Since 2012, China’s working-age population has been declining for three years, and the quantity of labor force has reached the inflection point.
From a global perspective, a new round of technological revolution is coming, and the United States has developed a national strategic plan for advanced manufacturing, Germany has introduced “Industry 4.0”, and France has introduced New Industrial France. Emerging markets are not far behind. Last year India launched its “Made in India” Strategy, making manufacturing a priority.
Manufacturing industry has begun to flow back to the developed countries. Apple Inc. has already set up factories in the United States, and Panasonic has moved its productions lines of vertical washing machine and microwave oven from China to Japan.
China’s current situation is hard to change if China does not reach the commanding height of industry at the forming of the new industrial landscape.
“On the great journey to the Chinese Dream, the only foundation of a wealthy nation is real economy and the only foundation of a powerful country is manufacturing industry,” Miao Wei pointed out.
Since 2013, more than 150 academicians of the academy of engineering have spent more than one year on strategic argumentation and more than one year to write plans, and have eventually formed a 10-year plan of action for the manufacturing industry.
“Made in China 2025 must first aims to improve the level of industry and competitiveness, to play a real role in the high end of the industrial chain and value chain, and to enable the shift of our manufacturing industry especially the equipment manufacturing industry from great size to great power.” Mao Weiming said.
As a framework document, Made in China 2025 will focus on 10 areas, including new generation of information technology, aerospace, high-end ships and ocean engineering, etc. Technological innovation becomes the core of equipment manufacturing development. The plan has specified a series of measures like the establishment of a national manufacturing innovation center, etc.
“Made in China 2025 targets at intelligent manufacturing”, Miao Wei pointed out. This includes the development of a number of intelligent products, such as intelligent robot, the intelligentization or informationization of whole production process, informatization of management implementation, and establishment of industrial Internet or Internet of things at the enterprise level.
In order to promote the development of the real economy, China has implemented several reforms in the past two years, such as promoting the reform of resource tax and rationalizing the mechanism of price formation, promoting the transfer of scientific research institutes to release the potential of researchers, carrying forward reform of investment and financing to unleash the vitality of social capital. “Reform is the biggest dividend.” In the view of Luo Wen, the president of China’s Institute of Electronic Information Industry Development.
“Manufacturing industry in China shows large gap in levels and suffers from seriously unbalanced development.” Speaking of the challenges that face Made in China 2025, Zhu Sen, the special counselor of China Machinery Industry Federation told the reporter that quite a few companies are in the phase 2.0 (electrification), and some are in the phase 3.0 (automation). It is necessary to make up the loophole of 2.0, popularize 3.0 and set examples of 4.0, as quickly as possible. And such process should be accelerated with the institutional advantages of our country to integrate forces to achieve great purposes.
According to the plan, “Made in China 2025″ is the first step of the Three-step Strategy. The goal is to catch up with the manufacturing capacity level of the industrialization period of Germany and Japan in terms of comprehensive index, and make China among the second rank of world’s great powers of manufacturing industry by 2025; and among the leading countries in the second rank powers by 2035; and by 2045, which is nearly a century from the founding of the People’s Republic of China, ascending to the first rank of world’s great powers of manufacturing industry, becoming one of the most influential leading powers in the global manufacturing industry.
Post time: Sep-04-2018