Unleashing new quality productive forces

Q3 AI and digitalization are rapidly transforming industries across the globe. How are your China operations incorporating these technologies to boost efficiency, improve customer experiences, or unlock new revenue streams in light of the country's push for "new quality productive forces"?

AN: Over the years, China has firmly established itself as one of the global leaders in cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence. At Henkel, AI has been an integral part of our digital strategy. We leverage it across process automation, adhesive development laboratory, globally connected production sites, and autonomous manufacturing robots — enhancing both innovation and operational efficiency with "China Speed".

XU: China is at the front of AI and digitalization — they are key enablers of the country's efforts to develop new quality productive forces. With a strong local presence, Bosch leverages China's talent base, supply chain and innovation ecosystem to deliver meaningful and market-ready innovations. In intelligent mobility, Bosch's ADAS product family, supporting urban assisted driving up to L2, is now integrating end-to-end and vision language models to enable a smoother and more human-like driving experience. In the home appliance business, Bosch's new accentline built-in steam oven features an AI camera with a built-in 5 megapixel, high-temperature-resistant camera that identifies ingredients and, via home connect AI cloud, recommends optimal cooking solutions. AI is also transforming engineering processes at Bosch. In product design and optimization, AI allows engineers to generate and evaluate up to 20,000 design variants in just 30 minutes — tasks that once took months for simulations or physical tests. Local partnership plays a critical role here. Last year, we extended our collaboration with Tsinghua University on AI research. Building on the foundation of the Tsinghua-Bosch Joint Research Center, this partnership aims to advance the application of AI in the industrial sector.

KOH: The rise of new quality productive forces, driven by AI and digitalization, has shifted logistics from focusing on scale and speed to prioritizing quality and efficiency. Innovation is in FedEx's DNA. Leveraging the power of technology, FedEx is working to make supply chains smarter for everyone.

With a longstanding history of investing in and adopting emerging technologies in China, FedEx continues to apply the latest digital tools to improve service quality for our Chinese customers. This year alone, we launched the Collaborative Shipping Tool and Picture Proof of Delivery in China to enhance customer experience through digital transformation. FedEx also uses data and AI to improve our operational efficiency and enable an agile and resilient supply chain for our Chinese customers. For example, we've deployed automated guided forklifts and AI-driven sorting robots in China. These digital technologies provide enhanced logistics services to our Chinese customers.

CUI: At Aveva, we see innovation not only as a strategic priority, but also as part of our DNA. We are proud to work together with our ecosystem partners to seize the historic opportunity brought by China's accelerated push for new quality productive forces.

China demonstrates exceptional vitality in innovation, with rich industrial application scenarios, a complete supply chain ecosystem, and a highly open and supportive technology environment.

That's why Aveva is continuously increasing our investment in the Chinese market — especially in R&D — as we deepen our roots in this dynamic landscape and co-create a smarter, more sustainable industrial future together. In the era of digital economy, data have become a fundamental element for building new quality productive forces. Industries such as energy, chemicals, power, and discrete manufacturing face shared challenges: lack of transparency, extended value chains, environmental pressures, and high safety demands.

Industrial Intelligence has been one of our key strategic focus areas in recent years, reflecting our vision for AI-powered industry. At Aveva, we believe AI should augment human intelligence — not replace it. However, the industrial sector's extremely low tolerance for error demands highly accurate outcomes, achievable only through training AI with vast volumes of real-world data. That's why we are working closely with Chinese customers to embed AI into real industrial workflows.