City enhances value-added manufacturing industry

In accordance with Qingdao's three-year action plan, the port city in East China's Shandong province is ramping up efforts to make value-added manufacturing account for 29 percent of its total GDP by 2025.

Manufacturing is the foundation and cornerstone of Qingdao's development, and the industry plays a decisive role in the city's economic growth, local officials said. In recent years, the city has been promoting the transformation and upgrading of its manufacturing industry while striving to enhance its service level.

The goal is to build an innovation system for the manufacturing industry by adding more than 10 provincial-level and above business innovation platforms every year. Moreover, the city will help guide businesses to implement more than 1,500 technological innovation projects to support the application of innovative products, introduce more than 25 sets of first-ever technical equipment or high-end software annually, and have 100 or so city-level and above innovative products.

By 2025, there will be 10 or more city-level manufacturing innovation centers and about 150 research and development centers at the city level, each working with a specific enterprise on a specific technological innovation project.

Meanwhile, Qingdao has also made brand cultivation a priority. According to its action plan, the city will strengthen standards of construction in key areas such as 5G, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, intelligent manufacturing and green manufacturing and implement digital quality management to enhance its capabilities in those sectors.

By 2025, Qingdao is expected to develop around 100 new high-end brands in the manufacturing industry. In addition to encouraging innovation, the city has dedicated itself to building a high-end industrial structure to support manufacturing to achieve a further step in the value chain. Qingdao aims to modernize its industrial chain by focusing on strengthening seven priority industries, including intelligent appliances and high-end chemicals, through supply chain optimization. Additionally, it will build 10 emerging industries, such as biomedicine and precision instruments, to attract investment and foster industry leaders and support enterprises.

Qingdao plans to promote service-oriented manufacturing by building regional shared manufacturing platforms and factories and by cultivating smart manufacturing system integration solution providers to increase their competitiveness. By 2025, the city aims to have more than 100 service-oriented manufacturing demonstration bases at or above the city level and more than 10 national-level industrial design centers.

In another initiative, campaigns have been launched to introduce industrial design to local businesses in a bid to escalate in-depth integration of advanced manufacturing and modern service industries, thereby promoting development of productive service industries. By 2025, Qingdao will increase the share of added value of its productive service industry to about 62 percent of the total.

In its effort to build a model for advanced manufacturing, the city also pays attention to the development speed and scale of the industry itself, while remaining focused on the quality and efficiency of industrial development. Qingdao has prioritized improving the quality and efficiency of its manufacturing industry as well as targeting key areas for enhancing its development quality, and its action plan highlights a smart and green development direction for the industry.

Qingdao is making comprehensive efforts from infrastructure to integrated applications, with plans to build a new information and communication infrastructure system. By 2025, the city aims to build and operate over 35,000 5G base stations, cultivate 50 specific industry and field platforms, establish 10 digital parks at or above the city level, and set up 30 centers to promote the digital transformation of industries.

In accordance with the action plan, other efforts will be made in sectors promoting green technologies and eco-friendly development, encouraging collaboration among large, medium and small-sized businesses and optimizing capital and talent resources.

Robots work at a refrigerator factory in Qingdao West Coast New Area, which is powered by Haier's industrial internet platform, COSMOPlat. CHINA DAILY