On December 20-21, the Central Urban Work Conference was held in Beijing. The conference proposed optimizing and upgrading the eastern city clusters, cultivating and developing a number of city clusters and regional central cities in the central and western regions, and promoting the coordinated development of border central cities and port cities.

The conference also proposed improving construction standards, strengthening urban underground and above-ground infrastructure construction, building sponge cities, accelerating the renovation of shantytowns and dilapidated housing, and advancing the comprehensive improvement of old residential communities in an orderly manner, striving to basically complete the renovation of existing urban shantytowns, urban villages, and dilapidated housing by 2020.

It can thus be foreseen that large-scale underground and above-ground infrastructure construction will inevitably generate substantial demand for engineering machinery and equipment, and equipment such as earthmoving machinery, piling machinery, and concrete machinery will usher in a new round of opportunities to demonstrate their capabilities.