SOURCE / ECONOMY
China sets targets to speed up informationization-industrialization integration during 2021-25
Published: Nov 30, 2021 01:13 PM


A worker checks sewing machines in a textile company in Lanxi, East China's Zhejiang Province on November 29, 2021. China has been making remarkable progress in expanding the application scenarios of the 5G+industrial internet sector, which has become an important driving force to empower the digitalization, networking and intelligent transformation and upgrading of domestic industries. Photo: cnsphoto

A worker checks sewing machines in a textile company in Lanxi, East China's Zhejiang Province on November 29, 2021. China has been making remarkable progress in expanding the application scenarios of the 5G+industrial internet sector, which has become an important driving force to empower the digitalization, networking and intelligent transformation and upgrading of domestic industries. Photo: cnsphoto



China is aiming to advance the development of intelligent factories and digital workshops for key machinery and electronic equipment, as the country beefs up efforts to integrate informationization and industrialization in the 14th Five-Year Plan 2021-25 period, China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in a development plan document it released on Tuesday. 

The document, which focuses on "deeply integrating" the two aforementioned industries, lists the specific objectives that China wants to achieve in terms of informationization-industrialization integration by the end of 2025. For example, China aims to achieve an 80 percent usage rate of digital tools across corporate management and operation by the end of 2025. 

Additionally, the country is targeting 85 percent of research and development (R&D) design tools becoming digitalized, while 68 percent of crucial production procedures should be digitally controlled, 45 percent of industrial internet platforms should have fully integrated digital work practices. 

In order to achieve those targets, China is ready to take measures ranging from facilitating new products and business models to pushing the digital transformation of the economy, the document outlined. 

China is planning to promote new intelligent products such as smart robots, industry-level smart hardware, unmanned aerial vehicles and smart wearable equipment. It also plans to develop new application scenarios for intelligent products. 

China is also planning to push industrial transformation in key areas. For example, it will push digital monitoring and management in fields including steel and energy. Officials will aim for major breakthrough in economy-wide use of technical equipment, as well as establish digital workshops and intelligent factories for key equipment in key industries like machinery, auto manufacture, aerospace and electronics. 

China's move to integrate informationization and industrialization comes at a time when the country is working to shift its economy from a historical reliance on labor-intensive manufacturing toward higher quality development,which includes embracing environmentally friendly manufacturing as well as advanced technology. 

China has already achieved great success in enhancing traditional industries via informationization-industrialization integration during the 13th Five-Year Plan 2016-20 period, the document showed. During the period, the country's use of digital work practices for industrial firms stood at 68.1 percent, up 13.2 percentage points over a five-year period. China also opened 700,000 5G base stations during the period and succeeded in building the world's largest information communication network. 

Global Times