General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized: "We must take the real economy as our foundation, make advanced manufacturing bigger and stronger, actively advance new industrialization, transform and upgrade traditional industries, cultivate and strengthen emerging industries, lay out and build future industries in advance, and accelerate the construction of a modern industrial system supported by advanced manufacturing."

A recent meeting of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee pointed out that we should "step up support for the real economy" and "develop new quality productive forces in light of local conditions."

Since the beginning of this year, all regions and departments have taken the real economy as the foundation for building a modern industrial system, promoted the high-end, intelligent and green development of manufacturing, and steadily improved the quality and efficiency of the real economy.

In Lingang, Shanghai, the first prototype of China's self-developed 300-megawatt-class F-class heavy-duty gas turbine rolled off the assembly line; in Changchun, Jilin, China's first hydrogen-powered urban train completed its speed test run, marking a new breakthrough in the application of hydrogen energy in rail transit; in Laibin, Guangxi, sugarcane bagasse is turned into biodegradable tableware with broad market prospects...

In the first quarter, the value added of industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide grew 6.1 percent year on year, the highest in eight quarters; among the 41 major industrial categories, 37 saw year-on-year growth in value added, with the share of growing industries expanding by 24.3 percentage points over the fourth quarter of last year, providing strong support for the economic recovery.

Industrial production is recovering, development quality is steadily improving, and business expectations are rising steadily

Manufacturing is the foundation of the real economy. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must always attach great importance to developing and strengthening the real economy, and in developing the real economy we must do a good job in manufacturing."

Since the beginning of this year, in the face of rising complexity, severity and uncertainty in the external environment and the difficulties and challenges of insufficient effective domestic demand and relatively weak social expectations, all regions and departments have proactively adapted to and led the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, grasped and carried out the key task of achieving new industrialization, and pushed industrial production to recover, with development quality steadily improving and a good start achieved.

In the first quarter, profits of industrial enterprises above designated size nationwide grew 4.3 percent year on year, rising for three consecutive quarters; in April, China's manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index stood at 50.4 percent, remaining in the expansion range for two consecutive months.

— High-tech manufacturing is developing faster.

Walking into the GalaxySpace Nantong satellite smart factory, intelligent material delivery carts shuttle back and forth, and the intelligent production line for low-orbit satellites adopts technologies such as intelligent assembly robots, digital manufacturing systems and 3D model projection.

"In the past two years, commercial satellite orders have been considerable." Cheng Ming, the factory manager, explained that satellite components are usually large in size and heavy in weight, and the assembly system developed by the company has increased assembly efficiency by more than 80 percent, meeting the capacity to develop 100 to 150 small and medium-sized satellites per year.

New quality productive forces are developing faster, leading industrial transformation and upgrading. In the first quarter, the value added of high-tech manufacturing above designated size grew 7.5 percent year on year, 2.6 percentage points faster than in the fourth quarter of last year; on the basis of rapid growth in previous years, the output of new energy vehicles grew 29.2 percent year on year, while the output of charging piles, 3D printing equipment and electronic components grew 41.7 percent, 40.6 percent and 39.5 percent respectively.

— The equipment manufacturing industry is advancing steadily.

At the steam turbine plant of Harbin Electric Corporation, the production workshop rumbles with machine noise, and overhead cranes move slowly along their tracks. "In the first quarter, the output of main products grew by more than 90 percent year on year, and operating revenue grew by more than 35 percent year on year." Deputy Chief Economist Zhang Long said that the plant's production capacity is now fully booked, and it will make every effort to ensure the on-schedule delivery of equipment for projects such as new-type energy storage.

The second domestically built large cruise ship has begun general assembly and installation, and its construction has entered an accelerated phase; the world's largest-diameter high-speed railway slurry shield machine, the "Linghang," rolled off the production line, equipped with intelligent systems such as intelligent tunneling and advanced geological forecasting... In the first quarter, the value added of equipment manufacturing grew 7.6 percent year on year, driving a 2.3 percentage point increase in the growth of all industry above designated size.

— Production in the consumer goods manufacturing industry improved markedly.

Air purifiers, rice cookers, microwave ovens, water purifiers... Eight categories entered Shanghai's list of green and smart home appliance consumption subsidies for the first time. For 16 major categories of first-grade energy-efficiency home appliance products, consumers enjoy a one-time instant discount subsidy of 10 percent of the transaction price.

Promoting the replacement of automobiles with "energy-efficient" ones, home appliances with "smart" ones, and home decoration and kitchen and bathroom products with "renewed" ones. The State Council issued the Action Plan for Promoting Large-Scale Equipment Renewal and the Trade-In of Consumer Goods, and all regions and departments have actively acted to implement the policies. In the first quarter, the value added of consumer goods manufacturing grew 4.2 percent year on year, reversing the low-level operating trend since April 2022.

Favorable factors are increasing, policy dividends are being released, and the expectations of industrial enterprises are steadily strengthening. Tang Weiwei, director of the Department of Industrial Statistics of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that a questionnaire survey of more than 100,000 industrial enterprises above designated size showed that the comprehensive business condition expectation index for the first quarter rose 4.4 points month on month and 0.3 points year on year, and the proportion of enterprises expecting optimistic business conditions in the second quarter rose 5.9 percentage points month on month.

Led by scientific and technological innovation, industrial innovation has achieved new results in the high-end, intelligent and green development of manufacturing

Scientific and technological innovation can spawn new industries, new models and new drivers, and is the core element in developing new quality productive forces. At present, the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is flourishing, competition and rivalry among major countries are intensifying, anti-globalization sentiment is rising, and global industrial and supply chains are undergoing deep adjustment.

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "We must make greater efforts in leading industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation" and "promote the high-end, intelligent and green development of manufacturing."

Since the beginning of this year, all regions and departments have actively cultivated and developed new quality productive forces, continued to promote the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure, and continuously enhanced the "gold content," "innovation content" and "green content" of manufacturing.

Upgrading toward the high end, development advantages are further consolidated.

At the Hanbao Hot Rolling Plant of Handan Iron and Steel Company under HBIS Group, production is in full swing. After rolling, the red-hot steel billets undergo heat treatment in quenching and tempering furnaces and become pieces of high-end wear-resistant steel. "This product has a strength of 1,500 megapascals, five times that of ordinary construction steel, and can cut the production cost of high-end hydraulic balers by more than half. Since its launch in January, orders have grown by more than 40 percent per month on average." Liu Hongyan, head of the wear-resistant steel technical marketing team at the Handan Steel Technology Center, said.

Discarded clothing and plastic bottles are recycled and turned into "silk" — polyester filament drawn from eight waste plastic bottles can be woven into a POLO shirt; new 420-megapascal-grade ultra-high-strength steel thick plates enable Asia's ** deepwater jacket "Haiji-2" to stand tall in the deep sea... Consolidating the leading position of traditional advantageous industries and continuing to create new competitive advantages, manufacturing is accelerating its march toward the mid-to-high end of the value chain.

Advancing toward intelligence, production efficiency is steadily improving.

Walking into the prefabricated building 4.0 factory of China Construction Hailong at its Zhuhai base, in the intelligent central control room, the large screen keeps flashing, displaying data such as production volume, delivery volume and inventory in real time. "From the design end to the production end, staff can check the production progress and capacity of different components and promptly fill gaps." Zhao Baojun, general manager of China Construction Hailong Technology Co., Ltd., explained that the modular structure enables 24-hour uninterrupted production, which is estimated to save more than 60 percent of construction time.

At present, China has cultivated 421 *** intelligent manufacturing demonstration factories and more than 10,000 provincial-level digital workshops and smart factories, and technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital twins have been applied in more than 90 percent of the demonstration factories.

Transforming toward green development, product energy efficiency has improved significantly.

In Suzhou, Jiangsu, Jiangsu Xin'an Electric Co., Ltd. is organizing a technical team to select equipment for its production lines. "With the help of intelligent analysis of big power supply data, we found that fans and air compressors consume a lot of energy, so we decided to replace the equipment." Qin Ling, manager of the company's intelligentization promotion department, said. At the beginning of this year, the local power supply company equipped the enterprise with a carbon emission monitoring system, installing nearly 180 power consumption collection terminals at key carbon emission links such as plant areas, production lines and key equipment, and conducting real-time quantitative evaluation of production energy consumption by plotting energy consumption curves.

At present, China has cultivated a total of 5,095 green factories, 371 green industrial parks and 605 green supply chain management enterprises at the national level, and has cultivated more than 500 specialized service institutions for green manufacturing.

Stabilizing growth, transforming the development model, increasing drivers and defusing risks, continuously consolidating the momentum of industrial economic recovery

The industrial economy got off to a good start in the first quarter, with the prosperity level and business expectations improving. But it should also be noted that factors constraining the recovery of the industrial economy, such as insufficient effective demand and relatively high profit pressure on enterprises, still exist.

Only by conforming to the general trend of global industrial development and transformation, making overall plans and adopting comprehensive policies, fully mobilizing the forces of all sides, focusing on shoring up weak links, strengthening weaknesses and leveraging advantages, and enhancing our position and influence in the global industrial division of labor, can we effectively cope with various difficulties and challenges and achieve the leap from a manufacturing giant to a manufacturing power.

"Next, we will strengthen the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial innovation, cultivate and develop new quality productive forces, solidly advance stabilizing growth, transforming the development model, increasing drivers and defusing risks, and consolidate and strengthen the momentum of industrial economic recovery." Shan Zhongde, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said.

Consolidating the foundation and enhancing the resilience and security of industrial and supply chains.

Fully domestic supply of carbon-14 isotopes! Recently, irradiated carbon-14 targets were successfully extracted from the heavy water reactor unit of the Qinshan Nuclear Power Plant. This is China's first use of a commercial nuclear power reactor for mass production of carbon-14 isotopes, which can be widely used in agriculture, chemistry, medicine, biology and other fields.

China's self-developed integrated subsea wellhead system has successfully completed sea trial application, which can speed up the surface well construction stage of subsea drilling by more than 40 percent; China's first deep-sea multi-functional scientific research and cultural relic archaeology vessel was undocked, marking important progress in the independent controllability of deep-sea scientific research equipment and ship design in ice zones... An independent, controllable, safe and reliable industrial and supply chain has been effectively built, firmly keeping the initiative of development in our own hands.

Shan Zhongde said that next, China will systematically lay out key core technology breakthroughs in key fields, accelerate the implementation of major projects, give play to the advantages of the new system of mobilizing national resources, advance technological breakthroughs, iterative application and ecosystem cultivation in an integrated manner, and promote breakthroughs in major strategic technologies and products.

Systematic layout to comprehensively enhance industrial scientific and technological innovation capacity.

Pilot testing is the necessary path from R&D to production of a product, and the "last mile" of the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements.

In the workshop of the Panjin Fine Chemical Pilot Testing Base in Liaoning, a "miniature" chemical plant appears before the eyes. "In the chemical pilot testing stage, infrastructure investment is high, and there are also restrictions in environmental protection, safety and other aspects. But the market changes rapidly, and for start-ups, we cannot afford to wait." The head of a chemical enterprise in Panjin said. The Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the local government jointly established the pilot testing base, which, through market-oriented operation, provides enterprises with all-round support ranging from factory buildings and warehouses to talent and technology, opening up the channel for the transformation of scientific research achievements.

All regions and departments have improved and perfected support systems, cultivated and strengthened the industrial ecosystem, and better empowered the development of manufacturing: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission issued the Implementation Opinions on the Innovative Development of Manufacturing Pilot Testing, requiring good use of the insurance compensation policies for first sets and first batches; Hunan proposed to increase the use of new models such as "open competition for the best candidates" and commissioned targeted research, and to integrate high-quality scientific research resources to jointly tackle the "bottleneck" problems of major technical equipment; Zhengzhou, Henan proposed to focus on scientific and technological infrastructure such as ultra-short and ultra-intense laser experimental facilities and the intelligent sensor (MEMS) pilot testing platform big science facility.

Accelerating transformation and promoting the deep integration of digital technology with the real economy.

Aluminum liquid at 700 degrees Celsius is injected into the mold within 100 milliseconds... In just two minutes, the die-cast rear floor assembly of a vehicle, formed by welding 72 parts, is produced. Arriving at the die-casting workshop of the Xiaomi automobile factory in Beijing, the 9,100-ton integrated large die-casting equipment is producing in an intense and orderly manner.

To ensure the precision of die-cast parts, the integrated rear floor has another "line of defense" — X-ray inspection. "Our self-developed X-Eye intelligent quality inspection system can take 28 X-ray images of the inside and outside of die-cast parts, and efficiently detect defects through artificial intelligence, with an accuracy rate of over 99.9 percent." Hu Kai, head of the die-casting workshop of the Xiaomi automobile factory, said.

Giving full play to the amplifying, superimposing and multiplying effects of digital technology, the high-quality development of the real economy has more "data power." "Next, we will strengthen application traction, improve supply support, improve infrastructure, appropriately advance the layout of information infrastructure such as 5G, computing power and the mobile Internet of Things, and vigorously promote the digital, networked and intelligent development of manufacturing." Shan Zhongde said.

The real economy is the foundation of a country's economy, the fundamental source of wealth creation and an important pillar of national strength. On the new journey, by thoroughly implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Economics, fully, accurately and comprehensively implementing the new development philosophy, vigorously advancing new industrialization, and building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone, the real economy will advance steadily on the track of high-quality development.