China offers huge opportunities for producers across the world in intelligent manufacturing

CHONGQING - With a booming intelligent manufacturing sector and an ever-growing market for smart products, China is offering immense possibilities for producers worldwide.

The 2019 Smart China Expo, which was held last week in Southwest China's Chongqing municipality, attracted representatives including heads of international organizations, academics and business leaders from nearly 60 countries and regions, and more than 800 domestic and foreign enterprises.

During the expo, multiple British enterprises signed a series of cooperation deals with governmental departments and firms in Chongqing. The agreements, valued at about 100 million yuan ($14 million), covered a wide range of fields including cloud services, big data, smart finance, science and technology education and urban planning.

As the country of honor at the expo, Britain sent the largest-ever business delegation to Chongqing, with representatives from more than 40 organizations and enterprises.

British Minister for Investment Graham Stuart said the expo is a great platform for British businesses and organizations to establish new partnerships and exchange ideas.

At the expo, a series of memorandums of understanding were inked between Chongqing and Singapore to boost bilateral cooperation in the digital economy. The agreements covered a range of sectors including an augmented reality education system for preschools, intelligent manufacturing market development and artificial intelligence research.

Among the memorandums, Singapore Telecommunications Ltd will cooperate with China's top three telecom operators - China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom - to improve data connectivity between Chongqing and Singapore.

Tan Kiat How, CEO of the Infocommunications Media Development Authority of Singapore, said with rich experience in building and operating a smart city, Singapore is ready for more cooperation with China in the intelligent sector.

At the Italian pavilion of the expo, chips produced by STMicroelectronics attracted many curious visitors. Dawn Lam, digital and marketing manager of Power Discrete and Sub Analog, Asia-Pacific, said these newly developed chips will be used in scenarios including intelligent factories and autonomous driving.

STMicroelectronics will further explore the market in western China, as well as areas along the Belt and Road, according to Lam.

Japan's Kawasaki Heavy Industries demonstrated its industrial robots that can skillfully fit auto parts onto vehicles. Zhou Na, the deputy supervisor of the sales department of Kawasaki (Chongqing) Robotics Engineering Co Ltd, said the robots will be put into mass production next month.

"We will be able to produce 2,000 robots every year, and many of these products will be sold to nearby provinces including Sichuan and Guizhou," Zhou said.

In the past, western China has long been lingering at the lower end of the production chain. In recent years, the region has been promoting industrial upgrading and has been taking the intelligent industry as a focus of economic development.

At the end of 2017, Chongqing identified 12 key areas for the development of its intelligent industry, including big data, artificial intelligence, integrated circuits and intelligent hardware.

Guizhou has been promoting the digital industry and set a target of 100 billion yuan of total output value of the electronic information manufacturing industry by 2020. Sichuan province has put forward the "Internet Plus Made in Sichuan "implementation plan.

China has built more than 200 digital and intelligent factories, and had become the biggest intelligent manufacturing market in the world, said a report released at the World Intelligent Manufacturing Summit held in October in Jiangsu province.