China to be 'big player' in smart manufacturing: Hanover Fair chief

HANOVER - In a new set of evolution towards manufacturing in connected factories, China will be a big player, said chief of Hanover Fair, the world's biggest industrial trade show, in a recent interview with Xinhua.

The ongoing Hanover Fair has attracted more than 5,200 exhibitors from 75 nations and regions. With a delegation of nearly 700 enterprises, China is once again the second biggest exhibiting country, only after Germany.

"We see an increasing curve of Chinese exhibitors," said Jochen Koeckler, managing Board Member at Deutsche Messe, organizer of the annual Hanover Fair. "I feel that the Chinese market is highly interested in understanding and investing in modern technology."

For the fourth consecutive time, Hanover Fair 2016 focused on the integration of traditional industrial production and information and communication technology, or "Industry 4.0" as it is called in Germany. Over 100 real examples of such integration were presented during the fair.

Koeckler said the future of industry is characterized by connection among machines and robots. "What will be very interesting is who will be the producer of the robots, of the systems for the connected factories."

"I feel that many Chinese manufacturers are very interested in making the equipment and implementing it in their factories," he said, adding that in order to increase the competitiveness, "Chinese factories will do more and more automation and be more and more sophisticated."

Koeckler expected China to become a "big player" in developing smart manufacturing with a huge domestic market at its advantage. Meanwhile, cooperation among countries including China are also expected to be seen in the future.

"Digitalization do not have any border," he said. "I expect that we will have more and more global solutions."