Intelligent manufacturing is becoming a new commanding height in global manufacturing competition. A latest report from KPMG shows that in 2024, China's manufacturing value added reached RMB 40.5. trillion, ranking first in the world for 15 consecutive years and accounting for nearly 30% of the global total. With year-on-year growth of 5.8%, this not only verifies the resilience of China's economy, but also marks a key turning point for China's manufacturing industry from scale expansion to quality improvement.

"In the next decade, intelligent manufacturing will not only be a path for technological upgrading, but also a strategic fulcrum for China's manufacturing industry to achieve green and low-carbon transformation and reshape global competitiveness. In addition, industrial large models have become the core engine of intelligent transformation. The application market size of China's industrial large models is expected to continue expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 23%," KPMG's second Intelligent Manufacturing Technology 50 report pointed out.

Xu Kanling, head partner of KPMG China's industrial manufacturing and automotive sector, pointed out that manufacturing is evolving toward a "new industry" featuring efficiency, intelligence, and sustainable development. Looking ahead, intelligent manufacturing will continue to drive industrial manufacturing to a higher level. With continuous technological breakthroughs, industrial manufacturing will usher in a golden age of greater intelligence, personalization, and greenness.

The report points out that China's manufacturing value added has grown steadily and remains first in the world. Compared with other countries, the United States relies on Silicon Valley innovation and high-value-added industries such as aerospace and biomedicine, but still faces pressure from the outsourcing of manufacturing processes. Germany excels in precision manufacturing, but faces lagging digital transformation and negative growth of 3%. India and Russia rely respectively on demographic dividends and energy-driven development, but are limited by the depth of their manufacturing ecosystems. By contrast, China's manufacturing advantages are reflected not only in full industrial chain coverage, but also in its leading position in high-end equipment manufacturing and new energy. From upstream materials and midstream equipment to downstream applications, China's manufacturing industry has a highly coordinated full industrial chain, making the cycle from product design to mass production far shorter than the global average. In high-end fields, the domestically produced C919 large aircraft has entered commercial operation, the localization rate of chip manufacturing equipment has nearly tripled within three years, new energy battery capacity accounts for more than 70% of the global total, and cost advantages continue to expand. These achievements not only demonstrate the technical strength of China's manufacturing industry, but also reflect its outstanding performance in innovation and efficiency.

It is worth noting that high-tech manufacturing has become the core driver of growth. In 2024, the value added of high-tech manufacturing above designated size increased by 8.9% year on year, 3.1. percentage points faster than that of all industrial enterprises above designated size. This growth was mainly due to the rapid increase in products such as new energy vehicles, integrated circuits, and industrial robots, with output of new energy vehicles increasing by 38.7%, integrated circuits by 22.2%, and industrial robots by 14.2%. China's manufacturing industry is evolving from product output to system capability output. Taking new energy vehicles as an example, their boom has not only driven the battery, motor, and electronic control industrial chains, but also forced supporting systems such as charging networks, energy management, and intelligent scheduling to mature faster.

In addition, the intelligent consumer device manufacturing industry has shown strong growth. In 2024, the industry's value added increased by 10.9% year on year, among which the value added of smart vehicle-mounted equipment and unmanned aircraft manufacturing increased by 25.1% and 53.5%, respectively. The rapid growth of these two fields reflects the significant results achieved by national industry support policies and consumption promotion policies. Both belong to "mobile intelligent terminals" and are implementation carriers for vehicle-road-cloud coordination systems, intelligent driving, and the low-altitude economy. The 53.5% growth rate of unmanned aircraft indicates that B-end scenarios such as logistics, inspection, and emergency response have entered the stage of large-scale application, rather than being limited to civil and commercial consumption. The leading role of intelligent consumer device manufacturing can also be seen in research and development. In 2024, R&D spending on new product development in China's intelligent consumer device manufacturing industry above designated size increased by nearly 18% year on year, while the number of invention patent applications increased by 30% year on year.

In addition, driven by both technology and demand, the robot market has experienced explosive growth. China is the world's second-largest robot market and the largest industrial robot market. According to Statista data, China's robot market revenue was USD 9.2. billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to USD 14.3. billion by 2029, with a compound annual growth rate of 7.7%. In the field of industrial robots, China ranks first globally. In terms of sales, China sold 302,000 industrial robots in 2024, maintaining its position as the world's largest industrial robot market for 12 consecutive years. In terms of installations, against the backdrop of declines of varying degrees in other major markets, China still performed impressively in 2024, with installations reaching 295,000 units, accounting for 54% of global deployments and setting a new record high.

The development of China's industrial robots depends on policy support, robot innovation centers established in various regions, coordinated development across the upstream and downstream industrial chain, and, more importantly, abundant application scenarios. At present, industrial robots have been applied in 71 major categories and 236 medium categories of China's national economy, and robot density in manufacturing has risen to third in the world. China's manufacturing system is vast, with substantial demand for automation and intelligence across many industries, creating a huge industrial robot market. Currently, applications of intelligent manufacturing equipment and system solutions are particularly prominent in fields such as photovoltaics, power batteries, and new energy vehicles.

KPMG pointed out that, in summary, the U.S. robot market represents "elite-style innovation" focused on high-value-added fields, while China's robot market represents "mass penetration." In the next decade, the decisive factor in global robot competition will not be whose algorithms are more advanced, but who can embed robots into real manufacturing scenarios more efficiently, at lower cost, and on a broader scale.

Source: Shangguan