China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) convened a significant national forum on July 20th, bringing together key leaders from industrial and information technology authorities. The meeting focused on analyzing major issues within the sector, consolidating consensus, bolstering confidence, and driving proactive efforts to ensure the comprehensive fulfillment of the year's established targets.
The meeting highlighted that, under the strong leadership, the industrial and information technology system has made significant strides this year. Efforts have intensified around fostering a correct view of political performance, driving high-quality development, and ensuring the robust and progressive advancement of the industrial economy. Key initiatives include the deep implementation of high-quality development actions for critical industrial chains, accelerated breakthroughs in core technologies for pivotal sectors, faster progress in intelligent, green, and integrated manufacturing development, continuous improvement in the tiered cultivation system for high-quality enterprises, steady advancement of high-quality development within the information and communications industry, and ongoing enhancements to sector governance. In the first half of the year, the value-added of large-scale industries nationwide grew by 5.4% year-on-year, with manufacturing value-added increasing by 5.6%. Notably, value-added in large-scale equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing surged by 9.3% and 13.3% respectively, outpacing the overall industrial growth rate by 3.9 and 7.9 percentage points.
Focus on Second-Half Priorities
The meeting underscored that the work in the second half of the year is crucial for achieving annual goals and securing a strong start for the 15th Five-Year Plan period. The entire system must further clarify its thinking, identify effective pathways, maintain confidence, and engage in earnest, practical work to ensure the high-quality completion of annual targets. This includes maintaining a reasonable proportion for the manufacturing sector, optimizing resource and factor guarantees, improving investment mechanisms to sustain this proportion, supporting major industrial provinces and cities in playing a leading role, and guiding regions to build modern industrial systems with distinctive features and advantages based on local conditions, thereby further strengthening, optimizing, and expanding the manufacturing industry. Enhancing the value-creation capability of manufacturing is also a priority, involving deeper integration of technological and industrial innovation, extending and expanding industrial chains, continuously optimizing industrial structure, elevating the level of independent control over industrial chains and core industrial competitiveness, and propelling manufacturing towards the mid-to-high end of the global value chain.
Manufacturing as the Core Arena for AI
The meeting pointed out that the real economy, particularly manufacturing, serves as the primary arena for artificial intelligence applications. There is a need to enhance the sense of responsibility and urgency, ground efforts in functional positioning, emphasize application traction, deeply implement the "AI + Manufacturing" initiative, accelerate the development of the AI industry and its enabling applications, and expedite the "intelligent upgrade" across various industries. Actions include organizing and implementing a cultivation program for AI application service providers, fully implementing the "Model-Data Resonance" action, launching a batch of lightweight, low-cost, and easily deployable industry-specific solutions to lower the adoption barrier for small and medium-sized enterprises. Strengthening the supply of core technologies such as computing power, models, and data is also essential, along with accelerating breakthroughs in intelligent equipment, developing a new generation of intelligent manufacturing, supporting iterative innovation in various intelligent consumer terminals, and promoting the widespread adoption of next-generation intelligent devices like humanoid robots and brain-computer interfaces. Furthermore, efforts should focus on strengthening national-level AI open-source communities, aggregating and sharing high-quality open-source resources like models and data, intensifying the development and promotion of key standards, and solidifying security barriers for the AI industry's development.
Enhancing Security and Governance
The meeting stressed the importance of reinforcing bottom-line and extreme-scenario thinking, strengthening the construction of a network and data security system for new industrialization, enhancing the protection capabilities of key industrial chains, enterprises, systems, and data, consolidating the security foundation of basic telecommunications networks, and elevating the level of network and data security safeguards. Improving the modernization of sector governance is also critical, involving the effective implementation of the "15th Five-Year Plan" deployment in industry and information technology, strengthening legislative research and reserves for emerging fields such as the digital economy, AI, and the low-altitude economy, accelerating the establishment of standard systems for key industrial chains, striving to rectify "involution-style" competition, promoting the improvement of the fundamental data institutional system, and continuously fostering a world-class business environment characterized by market orientation, rule of law, and internationalization.
Addressing Flood Season Challenges
The meeting emphasized that the current period coincides with the main flood season, presenting a complex and severe situation. Adhering to the principle of putting people and life first, efforts must not slacken in all aspects of flood prevention, emergency response, and disaster relief. This includes refining work plans, strengthening overall coordination and dispatching, making every effort to ensure communication support for disaster relief, enhancing the coordinated guarantee of emergency industrial supplies and medical materials, ensuring safety in production within the sector, and effectively safeguarding the lives and property of the people.
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