An employee works at Xuzhou XCMG Port Machinery plant in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province. [Photo/China Daily]
Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group Co Ltd announced it now boasts full proprietary intellectual property rights for all key components of its all-terrain cranes, injecting fresh impetus into China's high-quality development.
The remark was made on Sunday in Beijing by Shan Zenghai, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chief engineer at XCMG, on the sidelines of the ongoing two sessions.
According to Shan, XCMG's all-terrain cranes have undergone technological upgrades and attained a global leading level. The domestic content ratio of the machines has increased from 71 percent to 100 percent, with all key components now made in China.
"Such cranes are considered to be the most technologically challenging products in the construction machinery industry, with the greatest research and development difficulties to be overcome. It took more than 200 technical experts and 100 senior technicians to work for a year to overcome all the obstacles and achieve the capability of self-innovative product design and manufacturing," Shan said, adding that self-design and self-manufacturing are key to technical innovation.
According to XCMG, over the past five years, the company has made multiple breakthroughs in the field of high-end manufacturing, including increasing the lifting capacity of the world's largest all-terrain cranes from 1,200 metric tons to 2,600 tons, expanding the maximum installation height of wind turbines from 100 meters to 160 meters, and producing a series of China's largest equipment in terms of size, including 700-ton hydraulic excavators and 35-ton loaders.
Over the past five years, China has stepped up development efforts in the high-end manufacturing sector. The value-added output of high-tech manufacturing and of equipment manufacturing increased by an annual average of 10.6 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively, during the period, said the Government Work Report delivered during the two sessions.
The report said that key priorities in this year's work include to pool quality resources and make concerted efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies and key fields, with a focus on key industrial chains in the manufacturing sector.
"As China continues with its green push, it is inevitable that companies in the manufacturing sector will transition to high-quality development with energy-efficient production and self-innovative technologies. Meanwhile, the rebuilding and increased resilience of global supply chains, as well as growing demand for customized and high-end products, offer good opportunities for manufacturing companies to seek new growth points," said Zhou Mi, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation.
"The Belt and Road Initiative also brings numerous opportunities of global cooperation in the high-end manufacturing sector with Chinese products and services winning increasing favor in overseas markets," Zhou said.