The emerging manufacturing industry is surging, Industry 4.0 is sweeping the world, and Made in China 2025 is about to be promulgated. Ten years later, where is Made in China? In the program "Finance and Economy Ahead" broadcasted by Phoenix Chinese Channel on May 8, experts, scholars and manufacturing practitioners from science and technology sector, manufacturing sector have voiced their views and jointly explored the road of "China's Intelligent Manufacturing".

　　In 2010, China's manufacturing surpassed the United States for the first time to become the world's No. 1 manufacturing country with an output value of US$1995 billion. Low resource and labor costs once supported the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry and even China's economy. However, with the slowdown in external economic demand, accompanied by the rise in human resource costs and other factors, China's competitive advantage in the low-end manufacturing sector is receding. At the same time, China in the high-end manufacturing industry is also facing more fierce competition: the United States has developed a "re-industrialization" of the manufacturing industry revival strategy; Germany threw out the "Industry 4.0"; Japan began to implement the "re-emergence strategy Japan began to implement the "re-emergence strategy"; South Korea also put forward the "new power strategy" and so on. Made in China is facing unprecedented complex challenges.

　　U.S. President Barack Obama had mentioned in his 2015 State of the Union address that 21st century (U.S.) businesses need to sell U.S. products overseas, and that the U.S. can't afford to isolate itself from (export) opportunities. And U.S. manufacturing is actively considering moving jobs back from China. Dr. Zong Guisheng, Chairman and CEO of SANDI Printing Technology Co., Ltd. and Chairman of Beijing Longyuan Automatic Forming System Co., Ltd. pointed out on the program, "Advanced technology, energy, and tax policies have enabled the U.S. manufacturing industry to achieve a return of more than ten percent in recent years. Industrial value-added has stabilized at around 12%, and even reached 12.3% in 2014. and this elevated 0.3 point is caused by the return of manufacturing."

Dr. Zong Guisheng on the show

　　Some statistics, in 2004, China's manufacturing costs than the United States is lower than 14%; and today, the gap narrowed to 5%. It is predicted that, if the trend develops, to 2018, China than the United States in the manufacturing cost advantage will no longer exist.

　　Therefore, China urgently needs to upgrade its manufacturing industry through innovation. The inclusion of "mass entrepreneurship, mass innovation" and "creators" in the government work report for this year's two sessions also shows the importance the Chinese government attaches to entrepreneurship and innovation. In the past, the development of new technologies could only be accomplished by a large number of large companies with core technologies and patents; today, with the development and popularization of 3D printing technology, open-source hardware that reduces costs, and cloud factories that connect all endpoints, many entrepreneurial teams and individuals are reshaping the manufacturing industry.

　　Dr. Zong Guisheng believes that, different from the traditional manufacturing industry, if combined with the advantages of 3D printing "personalized customization", the establishment of a big data-supported designer platform, you can create a distributed manufacturing sites around the world, to achieve "cloud" services, "Raindrop" type manufacturing model. This decentralized network replaces traditional logistics and other intermediate links, eliminating the transaction costs at each stage of the traditional supply chain. "This is from design to user, or D2C (Designer to Customer). In the past, designers designed products, the specific performance in the market actually do not know how. Now that we have this proto-manufacturing, distributed manufacturing, it's completely possible to upload all the designs online, and ultimately the one with the most downloads is the best product."

Showcasing 3D printing in the program

　　The German Industry 4.0 program depicts the future vision of the manufacturing industry, proposing that the fourth industrial revolution will break through the data barriers of all production processes through the application of information-physical systems. At the same time, China, the world's largest manufacturing country, the vast majority of factories are still in the labor-intensive scale assembly line stage, that is, the era of Industry 2.0, and Germany, the United States and other developed countries still have a large gap.

　　In the upcoming promulgation of China's version of Industry 4.0 - "Made in China 2025" plan, it is clear that China wants to realize the goal of leapfrogging from Industry 2.0, 3.0 to Industry 4.0, and will be through the construction of manufacturing innovation centers, intelligent manufacturing, industrial strong foundation, green development, high-end equipment innovation five major projects to be fully implemented. While accelerating the adjustment of industrial structure, adapting to the trend of changing demand structure, and perfecting the modern industrial system, it is necessary to actively promote the technological transformation of traditional industries, accelerate the development of strategic emerging industries, enhance the level of China's "smart manufacturing", and comprehensively improve the level of industrial technology and international competitiveness. (Text/Jiayu)

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