Digital technologies should play a bigger role in promoting industrial upgrading and agile manufacturing, industry insiders said. According to Premier Li Keqiang's 2022 Government Work Report, China will continue to advance digitalization of industries, and accelerate the development of the industrial internet this year. Yang Yuanqing, Chairman and CEO of Lenovo Group, said the digital economy and real economy promote the development of each other. Only when the digital economy is rooted in the foundation of the real economy can it create greater value and truly flourish. “Leading industrial enterprises should pioneer the application of digital technologies in industrial scenarios, and then promote successful applications to other enterprises or industries,” Yang said. Xiao Gang, former Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), said finance should better leverage digital technologies to serve the industrial and supply chains.
Li Yizhong, former Minister of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), said internet and industrial companies should work together more closely. The former should learn more about the real economy, especially manufacturing, and the latter should become familiar with information technologies as soon as possible. Li said more efficient use of digital technologies in manufacturing can make production flexible. Alibaba Xunxi (Hangzhou) Digital Technology Co, a unit of Alibaba Group that focuses on smart manufacturing, for instance, is using the company’s cloud computing infrastructure and the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies to enable agile manufacturing and on-demand production.
An Xiaopeng, Chief Strategy Officer of Alibaba Xunxi (Hangzhou) Digital Technology Co, said clothing orders have become increasingly smaller, dropping from tens of thousands of pieces of clothing in the past to 3,000 pieces per order, and some online orders are now as small as 100 pieces. Xunxi helps digitalize the entire clothing industrial chain from procurement, manufacturing and retail to enable on-demand and small-batch production. Xunxi also connects retailers on Alibaba’s Tmall e-commerce platform directly with clothing plants to help quickly respond to consumers’ changing demands, deliver orders quickly and maintain low inventories. “Xunxi combines the advantages of consumer internet and industrial internet. It showcases China’s technological prowess in consumer-oriented internet and the nation’s unique position as a manufacturing powerhouse,” An added, as reported by the China Daily.
Analysts also said China should step up efforts to solidify the basis for long-term, high-quality development by nurturing new growth engines, such as technological innovation, while refraining from careless stimulus. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) announced that more than CNY1 trillion in profits will be handed over to the Ministry of Finance to stabilize the economy. Room also remains for the PBOC to reduce the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) to boost credit expansion.
