Role of manufacturing in recovery hailed

Manufacturing is playing an increasingly important role in bolstering economic recovery in Asia, creating a wide range of jobs and ensuring the stability and prosperity of society, said speakers at the 14th Annual Meeting of the New Champions, also known as the Summer Davos Forum, in Tianjin on Wednesday.

Li Dongsheng, founder and chairman of consumer electronics maker TCL Technology Group Corp, said Asia's manufacturing sector covers several categories with complete industrial systems, and has gained an upper hand in terms of production capacity, efficiency and cost control.

China's manufacturers should transition from exporting products to exporting industrial capacities, establish supply and industrial chains abroad and accelerate their layouts in overseas markets, so as to cope with changes in the global economic landscape and rising trade protectionism, Li said.

"Global operation is becoming the main approach for enterprises to connect with the world, and their go-global approach will inject new impetus into the global economic recovery," Li said, adding more and more Chinese manufacturers should adopt the approach as their strategic development direction in the future.

According to him, TCL is ramping up efforts to strengthen its capacity globally, with a focus on three core business segments — intelligent terminals, semiconductor displays and new energy photovoltaics. Li said he is confident the company will achieve double-digit growth in revenue this year.

China has maintained its position as the world's largest manufacturing hub for 13 straight years, accounting for nearly 30 percent of global manufacturing output in 2022, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

The country has attached great importance to manufacturing and emphasized the need to accelerate modernization of the industrial system, with the real economy as its key pillar.

Manufacturing is playing an irreplaceable part in promoting economic development, enhancing the utilization of resources and providing a large number of jobs, said Liu Young-way, chairman and CEO of Foxconn Technology Group, the world's largest contract manufacturer in electronics.

Manufacturing helps safeguard social stability and improves people's well-being, Liu said, adding "China has become the world's largest manufacturing base, and Asia has the potential to build a regional manufacturing system."

Foxconn, formally known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co, is a key supplier of Apple Inc. It has major production bases in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and Zhengzhou, Henan province. Liu denied that Apple Inc planned to move its supply chains out of the Chinese mainland.

Looking ahead, Liu said Foxconn will focus on three emerging industries — electric vehicles, digital health and robotics. They are underpinned by three core technologies — artificial intelligence, semiconductors and next-generation communications.

Furthermore, although the level of automation at Foxconn's factories is high, the number of workers has also increased slightly, driven by the expansion of production volume, Liu said.

Zhang Kunyu, CEO of Tianjin Troila Technology Development Co Ltd, a supplier of virtualization and cloud infrastructure software, said the fundamental advantages of manufacturing in China and Asia lie in efficiency. China owns sound digital infrastructure, and digital technologies have found a wide range of applications in the manufacturing sector in the past few years, Zhang said.