New project to bolster high-quality industrial progress

China has unveiled a new program to boost the high-quality development of its sprawling manufacturing sector, as the country aims to climb up the global value chain.

According to the project, introduced by three ministries, including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, on Wednesday, China aims to significantly bolster the quality of manufacturing as part of a broader push to accelerate its new industrialization drive.

As China's economy shifts from high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development, the MIIT said implementing the project, which will improve manufacturing quality, is urgently required for the country to fill gaps in industrial chains, cultivate new competitive advantages, and move toward the high end of the value chain.

The project aims to increase the proportion of middle- to high-end manufacturing products, improve the awareness of product quality among enterprises and advance the digital quality management level of companies by 2025.

The project also proposes to use engineering skills and standardized methods to evaluate the quality management capability level of enterprises, fully considering the actual situation of enterprises in different industries, technical conditions and quality foundations.

The move comes following China's ranking as the world's largest manufacturing country for a 13th consecutive year in 2022, when its manufacturing output accounted for nearly 30 percent of the world's total, according to the MIIT.

More than 570 Chinese industrial companies have made it to the global top 2,500 companies in terms of research and development investment, boosting their ability to support supply chains, the ministry said.

China, however, faces bottlenecks in crucial technologies, such as semiconductors and fundamental software, and more efforts are needed to move toward greener, smarter and higher-end manufacturing, experts said.

Huang Qunhui, head of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences' Institute of Economics, said manufacturing is a field with the most innovation activity, and more efforts are needed to hone China's industrial prowess in foundational materials, manufacturing processes, software and other areas.

Hans-Paul Burkner, global chair emeritus of Boston Consulting Group, said China's efforts in advancing industrial quality will help the country move up the value chain, rendering its economy "more innovative, talent-intensive, consumption-driven and green".

Such a transformation will help the nation maintain its important position in global supply chains amid geopolitical headwinds and talk of relocating production back to developed countries, Burkner said.

Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, the world's largest personal computer maker, said accelerating the deep integration of the digital and the real economies, and driving the transformation and upgrade of the manufacturing sector through technological innovation are the only ways to promote high-quality development of Chinese manufacturing.