Ignite the innovation engine and activate the development momentum——"High-quality Development Research Tour" focuses on developing new quality productivity and creating new AI

Robotic arms are gradually replacing workers on the assembly line, and factories are transforming and upgrading towards intelligence; tackling "hard technology", the independent and controllable industrial chain has created "localized" robots; with the help of the future network, doctors can perform surgery on patients 5,000 kilometers away, and the future industry is creating the future of the industry...

Recently, reporters have divided into several groups to participate in a "high-quality development research tour", and have conducted in-depth interviews in Guangdong, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Liaoning and other places. In the vivid scenes of industrial transformation and upgrading, and in the innovative achievements of continuous breakthroughs in "deep-rooted fields", they have felt the vigorous vitality of various places in vigorously promoting the construction of a modern industrial system and accelerating the development of new quality productive forces.

Walking into the workshop of Shenyang Blower Group, the production information of each production line is scrolled on the big screen in real time. "Through digital transformation, old enterprises like us have also been given a new look." Dai Jishuang, chairman of Shenyang Blower Group, said that traditional workshops are constantly transforming towards intelligentization, and production data such as people, machines, and materials are controlled online, which greatly improves work efficiency and product quality.

Embracing digitalization, a large number of traditional factories are upgrading their quality.

The processing efficiency of core components such as impellers has increased by 28%, and more than 1.9 million drawings have been saved each year...Shengang Group has achieved considerable cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

Workers at Kanghui New Materials Technology Co., Ltd. in Xianrendao Economic Development Zone, Yingkou, Liaoning Province, check products in the production workshop. Photo by reporter Zhang Lei

Promote the "cloud migration" of business, data, and equipment, and speed up the online access of "time-honored" brands... Data from the Liaoning Provincial Department of Industry and Information Technology show that the pace of digitalization of traditional industries in Liaoning Province is accelerating. Currently, the province has cultivated nearly 90 provincial-level industrial Internet platforms, built 222 digital workshops and 115 intelligent factories.

A model of a double tourbillon movement photographed at the exhibition center of Peacock Watch Co., Ltd. in Dandong, Liaoning. Photo by reporter Fan Yuqing

Hao Peng, secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee, said that Liaoning will continue to do a good job in the "three major articles" of structural adjustment, accelerate the construction of "Digital Liaoning, a smart manufacturing province", develop new quality productive forces according to local conditions, and strive to build a modern industrial system with Liaoning's unique advantages, so as to better shoulder the "national responsibilities" and serve the "major issues of the country" with "Liaoning's role".

The accelerated transformation and upgrading of Liaoning's traditional industries is a vivid reflection of how various regions are accelerating the development of new quality productive forces in accordance with local conditions.

In Shanghai, unmanned workshops in traditional industries are becoming more and more common.

This is the production workshop of Aptiv's smart factory in Jiading, Shanghai. Photo by reporter Gong Bing

Walking into the factory of Aptiv, a leading auto parts company in Jiading, you will see various industrial robots working in an orderly manner in the bright factory, and few workers are seen. Parts assembly, injection molding, three-dimensional warehousing, factory logistics, and a series of precision processing processes are all completed accurately by robotic arms.

In addition to meeting domestic needs, these products "manufactured" by robots will also be sold across the oceans to the European and American markets.

This is the interior of the "dark factory" taken at the Baoshan base of Shanghai Baosteel Co., Ltd. Photo by reporter Gong Bing

At Baoshan Base of Baosteel Group, the company has worked with Huawei to explore the application of AI big models in the steel industry and promote the intelligent upgrade of the steel production process.

Automobile sheet is Baosteel's "gold medal product", with a market share of over 50%. "The automobile sheet production line has realized AI main operation, which can process more than 800 data and parameters, predict the changes in process parameters in the next 30 minutes, and send instructions to related control systems to complete millisecond-level real-time control." Liu Decheng, deputy director of Baosteel's cold rolling mill, said that AI main operation has improved production capacity and product performance.

As digital technology is embedded in the R&D, production, and circulation of enterprises, my country's traditional industries are undergoing all-round, full-chain, and systematic transformation. The combination of traditional industries and new technologies not only breaks through the limitations of traditional manufacturing processes, but also expands the scope of industrial operations and operating models, and promotes the transformation of traditional industries to high-end, intelligent, and green.

To tackle "hard technology", the Yangtze River Delta region is building a scientific and technological innovation community.

The reporter saw at Shanghai Step Robotics Co., Ltd. that an arc welding robot delivered to a car company used a controller from Shanghai, a servo motor from Zhejiang, a reducer from Jiangsu, and a shell from Anhui, and all the parts suppliers at all levels were from Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui.

The three core components of robots - controllers, servo motors, and reducers - have long been dominated by foreign brands, but this situation is now being reversed.

As the "chain leader" of the "Yangtze River Delta-made" robot industry chain, Xinshida leads 12 upstream and downstream companies in collaborative research and development to create an independent and controllable industrial chain ecology. Since the second half of 2022, more than 4,700 robots of this type have been shipped.

In the Shanghai exhibition hall of JEKA Robotics Co., Ltd., a robot performs coffee brewing. Photo by reporter Gong Bing

Shanghai is the first region in the country to include robot density in statistics. It is estimated that the robot density in key industries will reach 500 units per 10,000 people by 2025.

Shanghai Mayor Gong Zheng said that Shanghai's strategic emerging industries will account for 43.9% of the total industrial output value above designated size in 2023. Shanghai will adhere to the guidance of scientific and technological innovation, apply more scientific and technological innovation results to specific industries and industrial chains in a timely manner, actively promote new industrialization, and cultivate a number of world-class high-end industrial clusters.

The layout of emerging industries is not only the only way for industrial iteration and upgrading and overtaking, but also the key support for improving industrial competitiveness. Finding the right development direction and breakthrough points, supplementing, strengthening and extending the supply chain are "blooming" in many places across the country, improving the "gold content" with the "new content".

Employees operate CNC machine tools in the workshop of Yuandian Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in Foshan City, Guangdong Province. Photo by reporter Li Renzi

Focusing on the innovation of high-end CNC systems, design and manufacturing of high-efficiency laser machine tools, and independent research and development of related industrial software... In Foshan, Guangdong, Guangdong Origin Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. has increased its independent research and development efforts around core technologies and is entering the "new track" of high-end CNC machine tools.

This is a photo of a CNC machine tool laser engraving operation at the workshop of Yuandian Intelligent Technology Co., Ltd. in Foshan City, Guangdong Province. Photo by reporter Li Renzi

High-end CNC machine tools are one of the key areas for my country to accelerate the breakthrough of "bottleneck" technologies. "95% of the core components of our laser CNC machine tools are domestically produced, and the remaining 5% can also be replaced by domestic products. It can be said that we have completely broken the foreign monopoly." Liu Zhifeng, deputy general manager of the company, could not hide his pride when introducing rows of laser CNC machine tools produced by Origin Intelligent.

Wang Weizhong, governor of Guangdong Province, said that Guangdong will adhere to the real economy as the basis and manufacturing as the main body, accelerate the promotion of new industrialization, promote industrial innovation with scientific and technological innovation, develop new quality productivity according to local conditions, consolidate and upgrade the existing eight trillion-level industrial clusters, concentrate on building a batch of new trillion-level and 500 billion-level industrial clusters, strive to build a higher level of manufacturing powerhouse, and accelerate the creation of an industrial science and technology innovation center with global influence.

At Guangdong Topstar Technology Co., Ltd., staff calibrate the absolute positioning accuracy of an industrial robot. Photo by reporter Xu Jiayi

According to the data from the National Bureau of Statistics, investment in high-tech industries increased by 11.4% year-on-year in the first quarter, 1.1 percentage points higher than the whole of last year. Among them, investment in high-tech manufacturing and high-tech services increased by 10.8% and 12.7% respectively. At present, the pace of high-tech breakthroughs and industrialization in my country's industrial sector has further accelerated, the proportion of strategic emerging industries in the industry has steadily increased, the overall competitiveness of the industry has been increasingly enhanced, and the foundation of new industrialization has become more solid.

Using the future network with a maximum latency jitter of less than 50 microseconds, doctors can remotely control surgical robots to perform surgery on patients 5,000 kilometers away; high-speed "air cars" can shorten the journey from several hours to dozens of minutes; with the support of large models, humanoid robots have the ability to learn independently...

During the research, the reporter personally felt that a series of amazing "future technologies" were not only visible and tangible, but also gave rise to future industries. Various regions are actively seizing new tracks and creating an industrial future with future industries.

Visitors experience VR games in the Metaverse Exhibition Hall of Kunshan Metaverse Industrial Park in Kunshan City, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Photo by reporter Li Ga

Wearing an AR helmet, the people, scenes, and objects at the scene can present various information annotation status. Sharing this information can enable people and objects to work collaboratively... In the Metaverse Industrial Park in Kunshan, Suzhou, such scenes are not movies, but new industrial applications.

Visitors experience VR games in the Metaverse Exhibition Hall of Kunshan Metaverse Industrial Park in Kunshan City, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. Photo by reporter Yang Lei

With the advanced layout of the metaverse industry, Kunshan has gathered 68 key enterprises and created 17 application scenarios covering smart cities, cultural and sports tourism, smart education, industrial manufacturing and other fields, allowing the metaverse to enter life faster.

Advanced layout is more conducive to taking the overall situation into consideration, and priority development is more likely to gain the upper hand.

The project was launched in 2016, the world's first deterministic wide area network innovation experiment results were released in 2020, and experimental services were provided to the society in 2021... Today, the future network test facility - this information transmission "highway" has covered 40 major cities in my country.

In Nanjing Future Internet Science and Technology City, CENI, a major national scientific and technological infrastructure, is undergoing comprehensive acceptance and will soon provide development and sharing services to the society.

A robotic arm is operating in the welding workshop of the Ideal Auto Intelligent Manufacturing Base in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province. Photo by reporter Liu Wenhui

Xin Changxing, Secretary of the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee, said that the future development of industries is characterized by high risks and great uncertainty. Jiangsu will adopt an inclusive and prudent attitude, respect the laws of industrial development, respect the dominant position of enterprises, and respect grassroots creativity, leaving enough room for market development and corporate competition, and creating a good environment for the development of new quality productivity.

Today's future industries will be tomorrow's strategic emerging industries and the pillar industries that will determine the success of competition.

From the research and development of unmanned ships to the development of humanoid robots and exoskeleton robots; from exploring semiconductor carbon-based material temperature control devices to the development of the "Haiyi" underwater glider... Liaoning has laid out a number of future tracks based on local realities.

Relying on a matrix of major innovation platforms such as Suzhou Laboratory, Purple Mountain Laboratory, and Taihu Laboratory, Jiangsu will adapt to local conditions and independently plan basic research on future industries. It will implement more than 15 forward-looking technology research and development projects each year to enhance its innovation source capabilities.

Workers are busy at the smart factory of Shanghai Step Robotics Co., Ltd. in Jiading. Photo by reporter Gong Bing

Shanghai is accelerating the construction of a cluster of major scientific and technological infrastructure, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, and establishing new research and development institutions.

Only by continuously improving original innovation capabilities can we continuously open up new tracks and create new engines for economic development. All regions are forging ahead with high spirits, giving full play to their advantages, taking advantage of the situation, developing new quality productivity in accordance with local conditions, and promoting high-quality development.