China made steady progress in the manufacturing industry last year, achieving innovations and breakthroughs, enhancing digital empowerment and supporting the country's high-quality development.
Intelligent robots work on a vehicle production line in Changchun, Jilin province, on April 24, 2024. [Photo/Xinhua]
China's manufacturing industry maintained the top global position in terms of overall scale for a 15th consecutive year in 2024, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology during a news conference in Beijing.
A humanoid robot works on the production line of a factory in Ningbo, Zhejiang province. [ZHENG XUEXIONG/FOR CHINA DAILY]
In 2024, China's total value-added industrial output reached 40.5 trillion yuan ($5.65 trillion).
A robot (left) inspects operations at a net-zero emissions data center in Haidong, Qinghai province. [LI JUN/CHINA NEWS SERVICE]
The industrial and information technology sector contributed over 40 percent of China's economic growth in 2024, effectively being a "stabilizer" and "anchor".
Flight attendants and passengers are pictured during a themed activity aboard a C919 passenger jet operating a flight from Guangzhou to Chengdu, on Jan 14, 2025. [Photo/Xinhua]
China has striven for breakthroughs in key and core technologies, enhancing the innovation capabilities of its manufacturing sector. For example, China has made breakthroughs in major equipment in 2024, with sixteen C919 delivered accumulatively.
Visitors gather at a booth promoting "5G + industrial internet" during the 2021 China 5G+ Industrial Internet Conference in Wuhan, Hubei province. [GAO YONG/CHANGJIANG DAILY]
The number of "5G+ Industrial Internet" construction projects nationwide exceeded 17,000, achieving full coverage of 41 industrial categories in 2024.
The number of 5G base stations in China hit 4.25 million in 2024, with the number of gigabit broadband users surpassing 200 million and more than 4,000 5G factories have been established nationwide.
The number of 5G mobile phone users has surpassed 1 billion, with a population penetration rate exceeding 71 percent and the average monthly mobile data usage per user at 19 GB.
A worker operates a chip production line of a high-tech company in Jiujiang, Jiangxi province, in August. ZHU HAIPENG/FOR CHINA DAILY
China has cultivated more than 140,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that use specialized and sophisticated technologies to produce original and unique products, 14,600 "little giant" enterprises, which refer to SMEs that normally specialize in niche sectors, command high market share and boast strong innovative capacity.
Over 570 of China's industrial enterprises have made it into the global top 2,500 companies in R&D investment, accounting for nearly one-fourth of the global total.
A visitor poses for a photo with a humanoid robot at the Light of Internet Expo in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province, on Nov 20, 2024. [Photo by Wang Jing/chinadaily.com.cn]
In 2024, China established five new national-level manufacturing innovation centers in emerging fields such as new energy storage, micro-nano manufacturing, molecular drugs, humanoid robots and embodied intelligent robots.
