New types of factories such as "lighthouse factories", unmanned chemical plants and smart factories have emerged in large numbers - China has quickly embraced the wave of intelligence

In recent years, China has accelerated the deep integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing, and promoted the construction of a number of digital workshops and smart factories.

Today, in many factories across China, there are a large number of industrial robots and fully automated production lines. These production scenes full of a sense of science and technology and a sense of the future have become the focus of many foreign media.

Smart manufacturing changes China's factories

Recently, the intelligent production scene of many factories in China has attracted the attention of the Brazilian "Forum" magazine website: In the factory of Ambofu Central Electric (Shanghai) Co., LTD., robots, CNC machine tools and automatic guided vehicles (AGV) are busy working, CNC machine tools are controlled by computer programs, and can accurately process various materials such as metal, wood and plastics; At SAIC MAXUS Smart Factory in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, customers can choose from thousands of configurations, customize the model they want in minutes, and track production progress in real time after placing an order. As one of China's largest steel producers, Baowu Steel Group plans to deploy more than 10,000 "Baoluo" robots by 2026, with these new robots powered by an intelligent cloud platform.

"These are all examples of how smart manufacturing is changing the factory." Brazil's "Forum" magazine website reported that in recent years, "lighthouse factories", unmanned chemical plants and smart factories have emerged in large numbers in China. Data show that by the end of 2023, China has cultivated 421 state-level demonstration factories and more than 10,000 provincial-level digital workshops and smart factories. The head of relevant departments in Shanghai said recently that the smart factories that have been built in the city have increased production efficiency by 50% on average, reduced operating costs by 30% on average, and led to a cumulative decline in energy consumption per unit of added value by 13.8%. "The productivity gains in these factories give us an idea of how new quality productivity is driving high-quality growth in the world's second-largest economy," the newspaper commented.

At present, the pace of digital transformation of China's manufacturing industry continues to accelerate, the level continues to improve, and the new factories enabled by intelligent manufacturing technology are on the rise, which has attracted the attention of many foreign media.

The French "Les Echos" website reported that the robotization process of Chinese industry is advancing rapidly. From 2011 to 2020, deliveries of industrial robots in China will grow by an average of 27 percent per year, much faster than the global (12 percent) and Japan (6 percent) growth rates. According to the International Federation of Robotics, in 2022, China installed more than 290,000 industrial robots, six times that of Japan, seven times that of the United States, 12 times that of Germany, and 40 times that of France. In 2023, China alone will install more than half of the world's new industrial robots. At present, there are more than 1.5 million robots in operation in Chinese factories, twice as many as in Europe.

At the end of 2023, the World Economic Forum announced the latest batch of "lighthouse factories" list, in the 21 new manufacturing "lighthouse factories", 11 are located in China, including photovoltaic, automotive, new energy and other high-tech enterprises. "Lighthouse Factory" is known as "the world's factory", through digital, networking and intelligent means, the use of advanced artificial intelligence large model technology, to achieve comprehensive automation and precision of the production process, is considered by the industry to represent the leading level of intelligent manufacturing and digitalization in the global manufacturing field. At present, of the 153 "lighthouse factories" in the world, China has 62, which is the country with the most "lighthouse factories" in the world.

According to an article published on the website of the Russian "Labor Daily", China is one of the world leaders in the development and use of artificial intelligence. The country has built fully automated seaports and large warehouses that can operate with the help of technologies such as artificial intelligence, with little human involvement. This helps reduce transportation costs and make Chinese goods more competitive. In addition, there are smart factories and agricultural complexes. The use of automated farming techniques is common in China. Drones are widely used to check the growth of crops and to fertilize them.

The artificial intelligence industry is developing rapidly

Foreign media believe that the significant jump in the development level of China's intelligent manufacturing is closely related to China's attention to the development of artificial intelligence.

According to an article published on the website of the Russian "Labor Daily", China regards artificial intelligence as a priority development direction and has a large amount of research and development investment in the advanced technology sector. In 2022, China's total investment in research, experimental development will exceed 3 trillion yuan, an increase of 10.1 percent over the previous year. In the same year, China's R&D expenditure intensity (the ratio of R&D expenditure to GDP) was 2.54%. In addition, China has another global advantage that could help it make breakthroughs in artificial intelligence - its world-leading position in supercomputers. A significant number of the world's 500 most powerful and fastest computers run in China.

The New York Times noted that in recent years, the number of talents cultivated by China has jumped. According to the paper, the findings show that by some measures, China has surpassed the United States to become the "largest producer" of AI talent, and China has trained almost half of the world's AI researchers. Subbarao Kambamepati, an AI researcher and professor at Arizona State University in the US, was quoted as saying: "Chinese scholars are basically leading in the field of AI."

Singapore's Lianhe Zaobao website said that China is determined to promote the transformation of "manufacturing" to "intelligent manufacturing", accelerate the digital and intelligent development of key manufacturing areas, and obtain policy support for the hard technology industry, showing the Chinese government's firm determination to focus on the development of the real economy and promote new industrialization efforts. To this end, China has stepped up efforts to rebuild the industrial base, launched major technological and equipment projects, and promoted the high-end, intelligent and green development of the manufacturing industry.

In fact, today, the sense of technology brought by intelligent technology is not only appearing in factories across China.

Recently, when Singapore's "Straits Times" reporter visited the high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone in Beijing, he was surprised to see that for local residents, driverless taxis are no longer a rare thing, and booking driverless rides with mobile phones here is "as simple as downloading an app."

The US Consumer News & Business Channel reported that with Baidu, Pony Wisdom and other approved to provide driverless travel services in Beijing's high-level autonomous driving demonstration zone, "driver-related costs have been completely eliminated." In addition, in the demonstration area, not only the actual operation of fresh food and express delivery has been realized, but also the social services such as unmanned retail, police patrol, bus connection, education line, park roaming, sanitation and cleaning have begun to integrate into people's lives.

According to an article published on the website of Argentina's Clarin newspaper, artificial intelligence is occupying an increasingly important position in China's economy.

We will continue to unleash the driving force for innovation

"More smart factory initiatives are being implemented across China. Beijing said it aims to add 100 smart factories and digital workshops by 2026. Shanghai plans to build 70 new city-level smart factories this year, and strive to achieve demonstration and benchmarking ratio of more than 70 percent." According to the website of the Forum magazine in Brazil, smart factories are bringing together new production factors and injecting new impetus into China's intelligent manufacturing. By quickly embracing the smart wave, Chinese manufacturing has begun to empower global supply chains.

Many foreign media noted that the 2024 Chinese government Work Report proposed for the first time to carry out "artificial intelligence +" action, proposing to "deepen the research and development and application of big data and artificial intelligence, carry out" artificial intelligence + "action, and build an internationally competitive digital industrial cluster." Foreign media believe that this means that the status of artificial intelligence technology in China's development is increasing, China will accelerate the formation of new quality productivity, encourage all walks of life to pay more attention to the multi-scenario application of artificial intelligence.

Bloomberg's website reported that the scale of China's artificial intelligence is "amazing" and that China is at the forefront of artificial intelligence in some ways. China's "artificial intelligence +" action is to promote the deep integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy by deepening the research and application of artificial intelligence technology.

Singapore's "Lianhe Zaobao" website reported that artificial intelligence technologies such as large models will fundamentally reshape the competitiveness of various fields, and China's "artificial intelligence +" action is a signal of continuous release of innovation momentum in the face of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, such as the construction of a number of intelligent computing power centers.

"China has made artificial intelligence a key development area." The New York Times pointed out that in recent years, China's artificial intelligence industry has performed brilliantly in fields such as computer vision and autonomous driving. According to the official website of the World Economic Forum, the surge of generative artificial intelligence sweeping the world has promoted many Chinese enterprises to increase investment in research and development of related technologies, and Chinese enterprises are accelerating the integration of technologies such as the Internet of Things, blockchain, cloud computing and big data into specific businesses.