On October 9, Guangdong convened a provincial conference on advanced manufacturing, unveiling a solid set of interim achievements: the province has built 8 national-level advanced manufacturing clusters and 30 national-level specialized and sophisticated SME industrial clusters, forming 10 trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters; sectors such as next-generation electronic information, smart home appliances, automobiles, and software and information services lead the nation. Beyond these impressive results, what deserves deeper exploration is how Guangdong's advanced manufacturing has grown deep roots and flourished. The answer may lie in persistence and drive.
The roots are anchored in the persistence of "staying committed to manufacturing as the foundation" 鈥?throughout its development journey, Guangdong has consistently placed manufacturing in a prominent position, vigorously promoting the building of a manufacturing powerhouse, and in recent years the province's manufacturing value-added has remained above 30% of GDP. It is precisely this persistence in prioritizing industry that has enabled Guangdong to establish a comprehensive industrial system, encompassing all 31 manufacturing categories, with industrial scale accounting for roughly one-eighth of the national total.
However, the secret to Guangdong's deep-rooted and flourishing advanced manufacturing is by no means mere preservation. Faced with a deeply accumulated manufacturing foundation, Guangdong has not stopped at safeguarding existing assets but has continuously built momentum for breakthroughs, allowing old trees to sprout new branches. To date, the province has facilitated the digital transformation of over 55,000 industrial enterprises above designated size, and the "chain-based transformation" model for manufacturing digitalization it has explored has been promoted nationwide; it has been approved as 5 national pilot cities for new-type manufacturing technological transformation and 6 national-level pilot cities for digital transformation; it has built 9 national-level cross-industry and cross-domain industrial internet platforms, ranking first in the country; it boasts 22 national excellent-level smart factories; and four cities 鈥?Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, and Foshan 鈥?have been selected as national demonstration cities for service-oriented manufacturing. This series of actions and outcomes outlines a clear development trajectory: Guangdong's manufacturing transformation and upgrading is not simply replacing machines with robots, but reshaping the industrial ecosystem through intelligentization, greening, and integration, driving manufacturing to constantly break through production boundaries and expand into high-value-added segments such as R&D and design, brand operation, and full life-cycle services. This continuously iterating and upgrading industrial ecosystem is precisely the fertile ground for the vigorous growth of advanced manufacturing.
The fruits are borne from the drive to "enhance independent innovation capability" 鈥?in Gree's Jinwan smart factory, over 2,000 self-developed industrial robots collaborate precisely, with one air conditioner rolling off the line every 15 seconds on average; GAC Group has created the nation's first intelligent new energy vehicle with 100% domestically designed chips; the HarmonyOS operating system has become the country's first independently controllable domestic operating system and the world's third-largest mobile operating system; products such as domestically produced ECMO, 8K cameras, and 5G ultra-high-definition video broadcast vehicles incubated by the province's innovation platforms have effectively broken foreign monopolies and filled domestic gaps. These vivid examples are a microcosm of Guangdong's thriving advanced manufacturing.
Guangdong's advanced manufacturing, with its flourishing development momentum, is rooted in a solid manufacturing foundation and rises on strong comprehensive innovation capabilities. Guangdong's regional innovation capability has ranked first nationwide for nine consecutive years, and its number of valid invention patents, high-value invention patents owned, PCT international patent applications, and China Patent Awards all rank first in the country; in 2025, the "Shenzhen-Hong Kong-Guangzhou" innovation cluster jumped to first place among the world's top 100 innovation clusters for the first time, and maintained the top spot in 2026. The advancement of advanced manufacturing is essentially a continuous innovation breakthrough 鈥?only by mastering core technologies can one firmly grasp the initiative in industrial development. Guangdong, relying on its strong innovation strength, is nurturing one breakthrough scientific research achievement after another and promoting these achievements to move out of laboratories, onto production lines, and into broad application scenarios.
Looking ahead, the upgrading and improvement of advanced manufacturing remains a protracted battle. Guangdong should continue to maintain the sense of urgency and mission of "seizing the day and racing against time," promote the deep integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation, so that the roots of advanced manufacturing become more solid, its branches more robust, and its fruits more abundant; at the same time, it must improve the policy support system, continuously optimize the business environment, substantively provide industrial service guarantees, and fully stimulate the vitality of enterprises as market entities. Only through persistent efforts can Guangdong truly forge the "steel framework" of advanced manufacturing and hold up the "resilient backbone" of a modern industrial system.