Digital Tech Revolutionizes Manufacturing
Digital technology, emerging as a universal force, is fundamentally transforming industrial ecosystems and demonstrating a tremendous potential for elevating new productive forces. It has become crucial to break through the various obstacles that hinder data circulation, which currently face industrial and geographic limitations. The integration of data flows is needed to facilitate smoother operations across sectors.
The manufacturing industry is witnessing a profound melding with digital technology, reshaping its fundamental operations. This integration has ushered in remarkable advancements and increased efficiencies, paving the way for a new industrial landscape.
Since 2018, Dongfang Risen has consistently ranked among the world's top ten photovoltaic module manufacturers, distributing its products to over fifty countries. Yet, the production process remains intricate and labor-intensive. For instance, in their factory in Chuzhou, Anhui, thousands of machines work around the clock, processing hundreds of tons of materials each day through thirteen production stages, resulting in the creation of 2.2 million photovoltaic cells.
Due to the fragile nature of solar panels, a stable transportation environment becomes imperative. Previously, workers donned protective gear and manually transported materials, which not only posed safety risks but also significantly increased costs. How could all this equipment be interconnected to facilitate intelligent transportation? To address this challenge, Dongfang Risen collaborated with Tencent Cloud and Reunite Intelligence to devise a digital transformation plan, migrating factory equipment to a unified cloud platform.
Advertisement
This digital approach enabled modular application development, simplifying operation and maintenance while dramatically reducing downtime risks. Through algorithm-driven scheduling, hundreds of Autonomous Guided Vehicles (AGVs) have replaced manual material handling, slashing logistical costs by 50% and enhancing operational efficiency by 30%. As a result, Dongfang Risen has achieved the capability to operate continuously, 24/7, without interruptions. Furthermore, the prospects for their solar smart applications and digital twin factories hold even more promising future implications.
However, the transformation witnessed by Dongfang Risen is not isolated. At the 2024 Tencent Global Digital Ecosystem Conference held on September 5, it was underscored that digital technology serves as the driving engine for nurturing and developing new productive forces. This conference showcased pathways and prospects for Chinese enterprises in leveraging digital technology.
It is estimated that a 10% increase in data flow can boost GDP by approximately 0.2%. In manufacturing, optimizing production processes driven by data can lead to a reduction in downtime by 30-50%, enhancing productivity by 20-25%. These statistics highlight not just the quantitative but qualitative transformation that digital technology can infuse into traditional practices.
Wang Yiming, vice president of the China International Economic Exchange Center, remarked during the conference that the escalating penetration of the digital economy is addressing the "Solow Paradox" and emerging as a core impetus for developing new productive forces. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China’s digital economy has surged from 16.2 trillion yuan in 2014 to a staggering 53.9 trillion yuan by 2023. Its share of GDP has likewise escalated from 25.1% to 42.8%, with the digital economy contributing an impressive 66.45% to GDP growth.
The pressing question is how to empower more Chinese enterprises to harness digital technology for amplifying new productive forces. This forum sought to address that very question.
01. How Digital Technology Empowers Enterprise Transformation
China stands as a titan in data production. In 2023, the total data output volume reached a staggering 32.85 ZB, with storage capabilities hitting 1.73 ZB and computational power soaring to 230 EFLOPS, making it the second largest globally. Such colossal data resources are becoming a potent support for developing new productive forces.

Can data assets help enterprises optimize production? According to Cai Yi, vice president of Tencent Cloud, the answer is a definite yes. In the past, many enterprises neglected data, but now they are beginning to realize its utility. For instance, CATL, in its quest to enhance battery efficiency, has deployed cloud systems to continuously store quality inspection data from its production sites in Fuzhou and Germany. These data are aggregated into a seamless cloud-based solution, allowing for swift algorithm distribution after processing.
Cai Yi illustrates this with the example of SANY Heavy Industry, where machinery can be cloud-enabled for agents to locate equipment and streamline leasing processes. Data collected allows insights into customer purchases and anticipated part replacements.
In the realm of smart vehicles, NIO has partnered with Tencent to leverage extensive hybrid cloud infrastructure, enhancing its smart driving and operational capabilities. NIO can rapidly scale its computational resources to a million, while reducing application upgrade times from hours to mere seconds and optimizing overall computation costs by 40%. This transformation has significantly boosted operational efficiency and resource flexibility.
In the retail sector, the ceramics industry in Jingdezhen has traditionally been characterized by small, fragmented family workshops, leading to high costs and limited opportunities. Jingdezhen Ceramic Expo City is exploring digital operations through a "cloud mall" that assists ceramic businesses in expanding their online reach.
The influence of digital technology isn't confined to manufacturing. The AI doctor language model intelligent pre-diagnosis system at Shenzhen People's Hospital has begun to allow for "consultations on demand." This system employs OCR technology to intelligently analyze images of examination reports uploaded by patients, highlighting any abnormal indicators. Currently, the system boasts an impressive 87% accuracy level in summarizing medical records.
Through digital technology, healthcare professionals can access pre-diagnosis reports in real-time, seamlessly integrating them into electronic medical records (EMR) and enhancing collaborative communication between doctors and patients by freeing the latter from tedious groundwork.
Utilizing new internet technologies to transform traditional industries comprehensively and along the entire value chain will enhance productivity, leveraging the multiplicative, additive, and amplifying effects of digital technology on economic development.
On one hand, China’s digital technology innovation is swiftly converting into new productive forces, with the digital industrialization scale reaching 10.09 trillion yuan in 2023—accounting for 18.7% of GDP. On the other hand, the scale of industrial digitalization reached 43.84 trillion yuan, representing 34.77% of GDP.
The ongoing digital transformation is fostering advanced production models such as industrial internet, intelligent manufacturing, digital twins, and shared manufacturing, while also advancing service industry digitization through smart cities, intelligent transportation, online education, telemedicine, remote work, and digital governance—providing more conveniences for everyday life.
02. Driving the Development of New Productive Forces with Data
Wang Yiming believes that digital technology, as a new general-purpose technology, is reshaping industrial ecosystems and already demonstrating a powerful impetus for the development of new productive forces.
He further emphasizes that data, as a new type of production factor in the digital economy era, has high liquidity, low duplication costs, and increasing returns, making it a critical component of new productive forces. Accelerating the cultivation of a data factor market and establishing systems for property rights recognition, market transactions, rights distribution, and benefits protection will significantly enhance resource allocation efficiency and overall productivity.
The director of the Innovation Development Research Department at the China International Economic Exchange Center argued that data as a new productive factor serves as the foundation for digitalization, networking, and intelligence, rapidly integrating into all aspects of production, distribution, circulation, consumption, and social service management, profoundly altering societal operations.
Li Feng notes that fostering new productive forces necessitates the integration of new technologies, new factors, and traditional production elements—significantly improving total productivity and creating a sophisticated quality characterizing advanced productive forces, marked by high technology, high efficiency, and high quality.
This innovative combination of factors can yield new forms of growth, broadening the creative effects of new technologies, models, and industries while mitigating the destructive impact of traditional production paradigms. This will augment the new momentum for economic development.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, China leads the globe in patent applications and authorizations in next-generation information networks, core electronics, emerging software, and several other digital domains. The country is also becoming a significant contributor to the global open-source ecosystem, and groundbreaking technologies such as quantum computing and brain-computer interfaces are advancing rapidly.
Mei Guanqun, director of the Innovation Development Research Department at the China International Economic Exchange Center, highlights that the core of new productive forces lies in technological innovation with digital innovation being an important domain of this. Data itself serves as a new productive factor, facilitating traditional industry upgrades and spawning fresh production models including industrial and service sectors.
The use of artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing, and other next-generation information technologies are rapidly embedding automation in traditional industries, giving rise to intelligent factories. It is vital to simultaneously nurture emerging industries while reinventing traditional sectors, filling supply gaps, extending advantages, and improving the entire industrial chain.
In summary, the value of data factors is increasingly reflected in reducing production costs, enhancing efficiency, and improving living standards. Encouraging the marketization of data elements will fully leverage China’s enormous data scale and rich application scenarios, unlocking the potential of data factors and enhancing the intrinsic drive behind new productive forces.
To accelerate the deep integration of the digital economy with the real economy driven by data elements, it is vital to dismantle the industrial and geographic limitations, facilitating the smooth flow of data across all stages of production, distribution, circulation, and consumption. Additionally, establishing a national data management framework conducive to data security, effective utilization, and regulatory compliance will support building a robust market system for data assets and transactions. By maximizing the vast potential of data value and utility, we can rapidly form new productive forces.
Comment