Emerging high technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), have played a significant role in assisting China's electronics exporters explore overseas market.
Statistics from the General Administration of Customs show that in the first quarter, the export of the "new trio", namely electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and photovoltaic products, totaled 264.69 billion yuan (about 36,575 billion U.S. dollars), up 66.9 percent, and its proportion of China's exports increased by 1.7 percent to 4.7 percent.
As the electronics industry expands, Chinese companies are using AI technology to optimize production processes and improve product quality and competitiveness in the global market.
In south China city Shenzhen, an artificial intelligence company, SmartMore, has designed and developed a quality inspection machine that uses artificial intelligence technology to detect defects in all aspects of consumer electronics.
Liu Shu, a technology director of the company, said the machine can handle consumer electronics with complex shape and small size, which used to make manual quality inspection difficult, and the efficiency of one machine is equivalent to that of 20 workers.
"This equipment can reach a maximum of more than 5,000 UPH (unit per hour), which means that this equipment can complete the appearance defect detection for 5,000 products in one hour, reaching a high level in the industry and probably in the first rank," said Liu.
SmartMore has also developed an AI-powered machine to inspect the quality of PVC coating on battery products, solving the quality control problem in this category. Zeng Ke, a project manager of the company, said the smart machine has been adopted by many battery manufacturing workshops.
"It can work around the clock with high stability and almost no errors," said Zeng.
In November last year, the company also released the world's first industrial multimodal large-scale model to serve manufacturing companies. Liu said their AI model has provided services to over 200 leading companies around the world.
"We have collected and sorted the knowledge of five major disciplines, including optics, machinery, electronics, computing and software, and eight major industries, such as electronics, textile, electricity and equipment in the market. Through research and development, production and service, we have accumulated unique data covering more than 200 different industrial scenes and more than 3 million real industrial images," said Liu.
The emerging technology company founded less than five years ago is one of more than 4,400 AI companies in China, according to official statistics.
China's growing AI industry has enabled the country's enterprises to adopt relevant technologies. The size of China's AI core industry will reach 578.4 billion yuan (about 79.92 billion U.S. dollars) in 2023, with a growth rate of 13.9 percent, according to a report by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the China Center for Information Industry Development. The enterprise adoption rate of generative AI in China has reached 15 percent, with a market size of about 14.4 trillion yuan.
Zhang Shenghao, a customs official with Shenzhen Customs, said high technology has supported export growth in the region's economic zone.
"In the first quarter, the total import and export volume of enterprises through the ports of the Qianhai Shenzhen-Hong Kong Modern Service Industry Cooperation Zone reached 503.24 billion yuan, a record high for the same period in history, up 13.2 percent year on year. Exports reached 425.24 billion yuan (about 58.76 billion U.S. dollars), up 15.9 percent year on year. This has given new momentum to the high-quality development and high-standard opening-up of the economy of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area," said Zhang.
AI technology helps Chinese electronics exporters explore overseas market
The listed companies in China continued to recover last year with a slight increase in operating revenue and a significant growth in the number of dividend-paying companies, dividend amounts, and dividend ratios shown in the 2023 annual reports, the China Association of Public Companies (CAPCO) announced on Wednesday. By Tuesday, 5,327 listed companies on the Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing stock exchanges had published their 2023 annual reports, excluding those with delayed or missing disclosures. Total operating revenue for all firms reached 72.69 trillion yuan (10 trillion U.S. dollars), up 0.86 percent year on year. Profits were achieved by 4,183 companies, with 658 seeing more than a doubling growth. In 2023, listed companies vigorously industrial upgrading, with fixed-asset investment growing 9.58 percent. Investment in manufacturing rose 3.32 percent. Demand for leisure travels and business trips boosted transportation, with revenue and net profits in that sector up 4.78 percent and 57.13 percent respectively versus the previous year. The listed companies in financial sector achieved a total revenue of 9.15 trillion yuan and a net profit of 2.49 trillion yuan. Support for strategic emerging sectors, manufacturing and small businesses all increased substantially. "The overall performance of listed companies, as shown in the 2023 annual reports, is better than market expectations, especially compared with the semi-annual reports and the tri-quarterly reports, which also reflects the trend of China's economic recovery. Consumption, equipment manufacturing and many other sectors have shown booming production and sales and a rebound in prosperity. A series of policies to stabilize growth and promote consumption are indispensable in this. The investment of the financial industry in key areas is increasing, and the investment of enterprises is increasing significantly, which will lay a solid foundation for future economic growth," said Zhang Gang, China Southwest Securities Co., Ltd.
By far, a total of 3,859 listed companies have announced or carried out the cash bonus plan for 2023, which is 92 percent of all profitable companies, the CAPCO data shows. Up to 274 companies have paid cash dividends each exceeding 1 billion yuan, and 30 companies have paid cash dividends each exceeding 10 billion yuan.
In terms of dividend frequency, 254 companies have disclosed quarterly and semi-annual dividend plans for 2023, with a significant increase compared to the previous year, indicating the continuous strengthening of the stability, sustainability, and predictability of cash dividends.
According to the data from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, among the main board companies in Shanghai, a total of 1,028 companies have paid dividends for three consecutive years, and nearly 1,100 companies have a dividend ratio of over 30 percent. 121 companies have a dividend yield exceeding 5 percent.
Almost 100 companies have disclosed mid-term dividend plans for 2023, and many companies have announced that they will implement mid-term dividends in 2024, indicating a growing trend of multiple dividend distributions in a year.
Over 300 companies in the STAR Market at the bourse paid dividends exceeding 30 percent. The Beijing Stock Exchange data show that during the 2023 annual report period, a total of 218 companies launched cash dividend plans, accounting for 87.9 percent of all companies, 96.02 percent of profitable companies plan to pay cash dividends totaling 5.8 billion yuan, of which more than 70% of the company's cash dividend ratio of more than 30 percent. "Since the the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) introduced new policies to encourage listed companies to pay dividends, we have seen that the number of dividend-paying companies, dividend amounts, and dividend ratios in the 2023 annual reports have all increased significantly, and many listed companies have actively implemented normalized dividend mechanisms in the 2023 annual reports, improving the level of returns to investors. The dividend situation of listed companies is not only used as the assessment index of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council (SASAC) for enterprises, but also linked up with holding reductions after the lifting of the ban on restricted shares in the new regulations. This will attract long-term funds to continue to expand the scale of investment and help consolidate the concept of value investment," said Tian Lihui, Acting Dean of the Institute of Finance and Development (IFD) of Nankai University.
China's listed companies continue to recover with higher cash bonus: data
