The ongoing 2026 World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei, east China's Anhui Province, featuring over 10,000 exhibits spanning entire industrial chains, core technologies, and digital transformation, highlighted China's comprehensive manufacturing upgrade, rising global competitiveness, and leadership in worldwide industrial advancement.
The four-day convention, which opened on Sunday, has drawn distinguished guests and industry professionals from more than 50 countries and regions. Over 900 companies are showcasing their products and technologies, transforming the exhibition halls into immersive demonstrations of complete production chains rather than isolated product displays.
In the smart mining equipment section, the full workflow from tunneling and extraction to shaft hoisting is laid out step by step. In the intelligent connected new-energy vehicle section, automotive-grade chips, power batteries, wire-controlled chassis and complete vehicles appear side by side.
This complete range of categories and highly efficient supporting systems forms the solid foundation on which Chinese manufacturing competes globally.
Officials underscored the vast scale and depth of China's manufacturing landscape.
"China has 526,000 industrial enterprises above the designated size and more than 6 million manufacturing companies. Sixty Chinese manufacturers are on the Fortune Global 500 list, and a large number of specialized, sophisticated and innovative 'little giants' and single-champion enterprises have become invisible champions in their niche segments," said Liu Mingda, vice president of the China Center for Information Industry Development.
Building on this robust industrial ecosystem, breakthroughs in hard-core technologies are another key source of confidence in China's advanced manufacturing going global.
This year's convention features a lineup of cutting-edge innovations, including a 180-qubit superconducting quantum processor, research outcomes from the BEST compact fusion energy experimental facility, the world's first 8-centimeter wide-body photon-counting CT scanner, and ChangXin Memory Technologies' fifth-generation DRAM technology platform.
From basic materials to core components, from major scientific pre-research achievements to mass-produced commercial products, sustained technological breakthroughs are opening up new growth horizons and giving China's smart manufacturing a stronger voice in high-end global sectors.
Analysts note that new growth drivers in China's advanced manufacturing are steadily moving to the forefront of global competition.
"In terms of development quality, new growth engines in advanced manufacturing, such as new energy vehicles, power batteries, intelligent robots and biomedicine, have gradually entered the front ranks of global competition in recent years," said Li Yan, deputy director of the Industrial Economy Department at the Development Research Center of the State Council.
The accelerated integration of artificial intelligence is injecting fresh impetus into this industrial transformation.
Data from the first half of this year show that the penetration rate of AI applications in key manufacturing scenarios reached 34.2 percent, while 10.6 percent of manufacturing enterprises above the designated size have adopted large models to empower production. More than 56,000 basic-level smart factories have been built nationwide.
World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei showcases China's industrial chains, frontier tech
