China speeds up development of smart manufacturing in 2025

China

China speeds up development of smart manufacturing in 2025

2026-02-01 17:45 Last Updated At：02-02 12:47

China accelerated the smart transformation of its manufacturing sector in 2025, with robust growth in sales revenue from robot manufacturing and smart consumer devices, according to invoice data released by the State Taxation Administration.

The data showed that the sales revenue of the intelligent equipment manufacturing industry surged 28.1 percent from the previous year. Notably, the smart consumer device and robot manufacturing recorded impressive year-on-year sales growth of 32.4 percent and 24 percent, respectively, as the "AI Plus" initiative gained faster traction.

Unveiled by a government work report in 2024, the "AI Plus" initiative aims to promote the extensive, in-depth integration of AI across all industries throughout China's economy and society.

One sector benefiting from this push is medical healthcare, where exoskeleton robots are developed to support rehabilitation services.

At a robotics research and development company in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan Province, engineers have been conducting iterative testing on an exoskeleton robot.

Driven by brainwave signals, the mechanical exoskeleton can assist paralyzed patients in rehabilitation. The product has now been deployed in more than 500 medical institutions nationwide, generating big returns.

"Our company's revenue grew by 96 percent year on year in 2025. We are now developing a personal-assistant exoskeleton robot, which will shift from small-batch testing to large-scale production later this year," said Jiang Xiangchun, deputy general manager of the Home-use Division of Buffalo Robot Technology (Chengdu) Co., Ltd.

Companies like Buffalo Robot help boost Chengdu's innovation capacity. In 2025, the number of national high-tech enterprises in the city surged by a staggering 141.3 percent to 14,700, with operating revenue from high-tech industries exceeding 1.5 trillion yuan (around 215.8 billion U.S. dollars).

"In 2025, sales revenue from Chengdu's industrial robot manufacturing sector grew by 7.88 percent year on year. The city's tax and fee reductions totaled 44.5 billion yuan (around 6.4 billion U.S. dollars) across sci-tech innovation and manufacturing sectors, significantly boosting confidence and capacity of the city's enterprises for research and development investment," said Li Ling, an official from the Chengdu Municipal Tax Service of the State Taxation Administration.

The invoice data also showed that steady progress was made last year in moving China's manufacturing sector toward higher-end production. Sales revenue in advanced manufacturing industries including computer and communications equipment manufacturing as well as instruments manufacturing surged by 11.5 percent and 10.3 percent year on year, respectively.

Nobel laureate in economics sees positive movement in Trump's China visit

Nobel laureate in economics Michael Spence said he views U.S. President Donald Trump's high-profile visit to China last week as beneficial, stressing that a mix of cooperation and competition is the most pragmatic path forward amid ongoing global geopolitical uncertainties.

The 2001 Nobel prize winner shed his light on China-U.S. relations on the sidelines of this year's Tsinghua PBCSF Global Finance Forum held in Chengdu City of southwest China's Sichuan Province with the theme "Global Financial Governance in a Changing World."

Although Spence, an American, has been critical of the U.S. president and the economic uncertainty surrounding his policy decisions, he emphasized that efforts to carry out high-level diplomacy should always be welcome.

"People are starting to say that the Trump administration does things that are either unconventional or on slightly less polite terms. It seems to understand that with China, a big powerful country and economy, you have to deal with that pragmatically. China can't be pushed around," he said.

Trump concluded a three-day state visit to China on Friday. This is the first U.S. presidential visit to China in almost nine years, after President Xi previously hosted Trump in Beijing in November 2017.

During the visit, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping held talks on Thursday, agreeing on a new vision for building constructive China-U.S. relations with strategic stability.

The two leaders also engaged in candid, in-depth, constructive and strategic communication on major issues concerning world peace and development, exploring a proper way for the two major countries to coexist and reach a series of consensuses.

For Spence, the historic meeting is positive for the world's largest economies to find out how to get along with each other.

"So less confrontation, more kind of a realistic combination of respect, competition, some element of cooperation and so on. So in that sense, I think the mature view of the meeting is that it was a good thing," he said.