China's industrial internet achieves full coverage of all key categories

Deployed across 49 sectors of economic sectors, China's industrial internet has now achieved full coverage of all major industrial categories, said a national political adviser on Friday.

After more than eight years of development, the nation's industrial internet has evolved into a comprehensive service platform that supports enterprises throughout the entire life cycle of design, production, and management, with its core industry value reaching 1.53 trillion yuan ($186.1 billion), said Xu Xiaolan, a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former vice-minister of industry and information technology, at a passage interview during the ongoing two sessions. 

"The industrial internet has provided small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with a platform to find markets, secure orders, access services, source supplies, and optimize management," Xu said. "This has significantly accelerated the digital transformation of SMEs."

By integrating data from all key production elements — including equipment, workshops, factories, and supply chains — the industrial internet facilitates the aggregation of industrial big data. Then through the application of artificial intelligence, these vast data sets undergo deep analysis, giving rise to new manufacturing and service models. The process is reshaping production processes and management paradigms, helping enterprises enhance quality and efficiency while reducing costs and resource consumption, Xu added.

"The ultimate goal is to foster the high-quality, efficient, sustainable, and secure development of the manufacturing sector," she said.

Looking ahead, the integration of artificial general intelligence with the industrial internet is expected to generate even greater synergies, Xu said, noting that as general AI models become widely applied in industrial enterprises, a hybrid framework combining general AI models with industry-specific models is expected to emerge, and the convergence is set to further accelerate the digitalization, networking, and intelligence of manufacturing.

"By leveraging the industrial internet, the manufacturing sector is poised to gain unprecedented momentum in the digitalization process, laying a solid foundation for the development of new industrialization," Xu said.

lijiaying@chinadaily.com.cn