(Yicai) Nov. 9 -- The exhibitors at the technical equipment area of the ongoing China International Import Expo are following the new trends of digitalization, intelligence, and green in the Chinese manufacturing industry.

The technical equipment exhibition area of this year’s CIIE is 70,000 square meters, hosting 377 companies from 40 countries and regions, including 77 of the world’s top 500 firms and industry-leading enterprises. The area includes sections for special fields, such as digital industrial automation, integrated circuits, energy, low-carbon and environmental protection technology, and artificial intelligence.

Swiss electrical engineering giant ABB Electric has been focusing on the energy, industry, data center, construction, and transformation fields, Zhao Yongzhan, president of ABB Electric China, told Yicai. The firm has participated in all six editions of the CIIE.

China is ABB’s second-largest market and one of the largest for all companies, Zhao said.

The CIIE is not only about imports and exports but also about upstream and downstream customers, Zhao added, noting that companies participating in the expo are setting new courses in response to changes in the market and Chinese consumers’ needs.

The supply in the manufacturing industry is much greater than the demand, Ian Shih, president of the Chinese arm of US industrial automation firm Rockwell Automation, told Yicai. In this context, industrial automation will accelerate overcapacity and homogeneous competition to a certain extent, he added, noting that the demand for scientific and technological innovations from continuous crossovers will create new opportunities.

Rockwell Automation participated in the past three editions of the CIIE.

Digitalization, intelligence, and becoming green are the distinctive characteristics of China’s new industrialization process and important trends for transforming and upgrading the manufacturing industry, Jin Zhuanglong, minister of industry and information technology, recently said.

Next, China will formulate digital transformation action plans for key industries and areas, with intelligent manufacturing as the main direction, and promote AI to empower new industrialization in an all-round and in-depth manner, Jin noted.

With digital infrastructure as the key foundation, China will continue to build new information infrastructure for fifth-generation and gigabit optical networks in advance, Jin pointed out, adding that the country will also build 5G factories and digital transformation enterprise benchmarks, as well as promote the classified and hierarchical development and utilization of industrial big data.

Editor: Futura Costaglione