First, China’s workforce structure needs to be replaced. Since the reform and opening up, China’s manufacturing industry has developed rapidly, and has long been the main force to absorb labor. A large number of agricultural labor became industrial workers, and with low labor costs, China’s “world factory” title is renowned around the world.

However, with the change of demographic structure, China’s low labor cost advantage began to weaken. This has directly led to the gradual transfer of some labor-intensive industries overseas in recent years. The era of relying solely on human labor production has gone forever, and in the process of mechanization and automation replacing traditional manufacturing, the industrial demand for the Internet has emerged.

Second, the competitiveness of Chinese manufacturing needs to be maintained. Chinese manufacturing has passed the historical stage of “price difference cheap”, in the new historical period of high labor costs, want to reduce costs and increase efficiency means that the manufacturing industry must embrace intelligence and Internet.

Today’s Chinese industry is in the ebb tide of dependence on the demographic dividend. Another perspective is that today’s Chinese industry is on the eve of Internet and intelligent large-scale production. This means new opportunities for the future, but also means that the current infrastructure needs to be enhanced.

02

Chinese industry is suited to the Internet

Construction improvement

China has the strongest Internet infrastructure in the world. As the cornerstone of the industrial Internet, China, the “infrastructure monster”, has never been convinced by anyone in the construction of communication networks.

Since the issuance of 5G licenses on June 6, 2019, China’s 5G has been officially commercialized for the fourth anniversary.

On April 27, 2023, at the sixth Digital China Construction Summit, the State Internet Information Office released the “Digital China Development Report (2022)”, showing that by the end of 2022, China’s G users reached 561 million, accounting for more than 60% of the world.

On June 7, according to the CCTV financial report, China has achieved fast and low-cost network coverage in the pre-5G construction stage. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of April, the total number of 5G base stations in the country reached 2.733 million, ranking first in the world in network scale.

On June 27, Wang Zhiqin, vice president of the China ICT Institute, announced at the 5G Development and Innovation Forum that as of May this year, the coverage of 5G base stations in administrative regions above the county level in China has reached 100%, achieving “5G in counties”.

Second, China has the world’s most complete manufacturing industry chain. Whether it is high-end manufacturing industry or traditional manufacturing industry, it involves quite a lot of upstream and downstream industry chains. In China, whether it is as large as the C919 aircraft, or as small as the cigarette lighter on every small accessory, you can always find the relevant industrial manufacturing cluster, which is the most valuable wealth of China’s manufacturing industry. It also makes Chinese manufacturing gradually have the dual advantages of high production efficiency and low production cost.

This also gives China’s industrial upgrading of the Internet an advantage of scale. On June 15, the 2023 Industrial Internet Conference was held in Suzhou, Jiangsu province. Zhang Yunming, a member of the Party group and vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced in his opening speech that the scale of China’s industrial Internet has exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan.

The industrial Internet is one of the most important industrial development strategies in China, and related strategic planning is frequent:

In 2017, the CPC Central Committee and The State Council proposed the in-depth implementation of the industrial Internet innovation and development strategy; In November 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “5G+ Industrial Internet” 512 Project Promotion Plan “;

The “14th Five-Year Plan” further made clear the deployment of the industrial Internet, and the government work report repeatedly called for the development of the industrial Internet;

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology together with relevant departments issued the Industrial Internet Innovation and Development Action Plan (2021-2023) to clarify the development goals and key tasks of the industrial Internet.

Along the way from 2017, China’s industrial Internet has entered the second “Five-Year plan”, and has completed the initial construction from 0 to 1, and now it has entered the outbreak period of concentrated application of results, and many enterprises that have entered the early stage have tasted dividends.