Focused on heavy lifting for the world

Eager to produce more high-end and high value-added products, DHHI took seven years to design, manufacture and install the flexible six-cable parallel link system, which is one of the three major technological breakthroughs of China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope, or FAST, located in Southwest China's Guizhou province, Cong said.

The 30-ton feed cabin is suspended by six cables from six concrete towers on the surrounding hills, realizing long-span instantaneous and accurate positioning of the cabin, revolutionizing the previous rigid support model between feed source and reflector in radio telescopes, Cong said.

Backed by 11 specialized research institutes in various business segments, DHHI's sales revenue totaled 7.21 billion yuan last year, up 9.7 percent year-on-year, according to its financial report for 2019.

Experts said that the restorative investment and construction projects in both home and global markets executed after the epidemic will create growth momentum and also facilitate the structural adjustment and industrial upgrading of China's machinery manufacturing sector from a long-term perspective.

Sun Fuquan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Science and Technology for Development in Beijing, said many of China's partners, in the early stages of the BRI, are mostly emerging economies and developing economies in the midst of industrialization. They are characterized by fast economic growth and enormous potential for future development.

"It is critical for domestic players to enhance brand recognition and a localization process to further compete with those established rivals from South Korea, Japan, Germany and the United States, in both home and international markets," he said.

Even though the country's machinery makers faced challenges such as delayed production, poor logistics conditions and overseas order cancellations in the first two months of this year, the industry's growth will be boosted by the government's policy measures to resume production and seek new growth points, said Chen Bin, executive vice-president of the Beijing-based China Machinery Industry Federation.

Chen predicted that the production of China's machinery manufacturers will likely recover fully in the second quarter of this year. Many of the CMIF's member companies have already begun to produce equipment and vehicles like negative pressure ambulances, disinfection robots and exhaust fans as part of the country's drive to fight the novel coronavirus.