Recently, the news that Foxconn, the largest contract manufacturing company in China, “suspended recruitment” has been hyped up.

Last year’s Spring Festival to the Lantern Festival, just a few days, the company’s Longhua factory in Shenzhen recruited tens of thousands of people, but this year “the window of the recruitment point is closed.”

According to industry analysts, this may be because Foxconn’s “million robot plan” has begun to be implemented, and they want to “make adequate preparations for the redistribution of artificial and intelligent production lines.”

In fact, this has also become a sign of the impact of the wave of re-industrialization marked by the “robot revolution”, “3D printing” and “intelligent manufacturing” on China’s real economy. China, which has not long been in the “first” position of manufacturing output value, is facing a new round of severe challenges of industrialization.

Terry Gou, chairman of Foxconn Technology Group, has called for “freeing employees from monotonous and repetitive tasks by handing them over to robots.” The words “third industrial revolution”, “sixth scientific and technological revolution”, “new industrial revolution” and other terms are coming. Everyone seems to be asking: Is China ready?

Tang Min, counselor of The State Council and economist, has been running around calling for: If China’s economy cannot keep up with the new technology trend represented by 3D printing, China may repeat the mistake of being defeated by the steam-powered powers in 1840!

Others disagree. Xie Wen, a veteran Internet commentator, says the much-touted concept of a “third industrial revolution” is largely “hooey”. A quick online search, he said, will turn up dozens of newly published books on the subject, “of which there are good and bad, with most selling dog-skin poultices.”

Any vision of the future contains an element of “bubble.” But it is hard to curb predictions of big trends.

American scholar Jeremy Rifkin believes that the combination of Internet and new energy will give birth to the “third industrial revolution.” If China acts, it is very likely to become the “leader” of the new economy and lead Asia into the next “great economic era”. I have to say that this is a very attractive subject.

The China Modernization Research Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences has completed a report titled “Opportunities and Countermeasures for the Sixth Scientific and Technological Revolution.” They call the coming technological revolution the “new biological revolution” or the “creation and regeneration revolution.”

For example, artificial wombs can help people reproduce outside the body; Human beings will rely on network man, bionic man and regenerative man technology to achieve a certain degree of “human immortality”.

Project leader He Chuanqi believes that the various “forecasts” are due to different methods, and the most important thing is that “China should seize this important opportunity.”

In the vision of the new technological revolution, Foxconn led by Gou Taiming needs a “revolution”. As he puts it: “If China wants to become a manufacturing kingdom, its success or failure lies in turning the demographic dividend into a brain dividend.”

Indeed, at a time when the “hangover” of the financial crisis is still spreading and global economic uncertainty continues to grow, who wants to let the “new industrial revolution” be brushed aside?