China will encourage domestic enterprises to integrate more deeply into global industrial and supply chains through “high-level opening-up” of its manufacturing sector, a senior government official said on Monday.
The push comes after profits at China’s industrial firms slumped 22.9% in the first two months of 2023 from the year before, with the factory sector struggling to recover from COVID-related disruptions, and as western nations seek to make themselves less dependent on Chinese suppliers.
The world’s second-largest economy aims to build open and co-operative industrial and supply chains and deepen co-operation to achieve win-win development, Jin Zhuanglong, the industry and information technology minister, said at the China Development Forum in Beijing.
“China will build a number of new generic technological innovation platforms to target a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation,” Jin told the forum.
The country will also focus on key areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), biological manufacturing and smart vehicles, and cultivate new industrial and supply chains, Jin said.