Fund to boost industrial restructuring

Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, said earlier that more efforts are needed to cultivate national industrial innovation centers as an efficient way to create domestic core technologies.

In late October, the ministry also unveiled a guideline that aims to build 20 innovative shared manufacturing platforms by 2022, which will have a strong concentration of resources, and a wide industrial influence.

Shared manufacturing is about using the sharing-economy model to revitalize the manufacturing process. The key is to make the best use of scattered and idle production, design, research and development resources, and match them with those that are in demand.

Wang Xingshan, executive president of Inspur Group, China's largest server maker, said big companies, for instance, have expensive production equipment that small enterprises can't afford. When the high-price equipment is not in use, big companies can open it to small companies and charge them some fees. That is a case in point for shared manufacturing production resources.

"The move can optimize the allocation and use of resources with higher efficiency, reduce repetitive investment and meet the resource-hungry regions' desire. It can also generate new revenues for manufacturing giants," Wang said.

According to him, the company is leveraging its years of accumulation in cutting-edge cloud technologies to build a shared manufacturing platform, helping companies optimize corporate and production management. Its cloud solutions cover 10 aspects, including e-sales, e-procurement, collaborative planning, product design, intelligent workshop and intelligent decision-making.

The government's slew of measures to advance industrial restructuring came as mixed signals emanating from the latest purchasing manager's index indicated that China's manufacturing sector may start a major recovery but challenges still exist.

The Caixin China General Manufacturing PMI rose for the fourth straight month to 51.7 in October, the highest level since February 2017, versus 51.4 in the previous month, said a report jointly released by media group Caixin and information provider IHS Markit earlier this month.

A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion while one below the number shows contraction.

But the official PMI for October, released by the National Bureau of Statistics, dropped to 49.3, versus 49.8 in September, marking the sixth straight month of contraction.