Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 18th. Title: A good start, a new climb - a relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology explained in detail the first quarter of the industrial economy

Xinhua News Agency reporters Tang Shining and Zhang Xinxin

What is the current operation of the industrial economy? What are the progress in the digital transformation of manufacturing industry? The State Information Office held a regular press conference on economic data on the 18th, and relevant officials from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology responded to their concerns.

The industrial economy achieved a good start overall

In the first quarter of this year, my country's industrial added value above designated size increased by 6.5% year-on-year, accelerating by 0.8 percentage points from the fourth quarter of last year. Xie Shaofeng, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the industrial economy has achieved a good start overall and has effectively played the role of "ballast stone" in stabilizing the macro economy. Overall, the following characteristics are mainly shown: First, the main indicators are stable and progressing. The proportion of added value of high-tech manufacturing in industries above designated size increased by 0.5 percentage points year-on-year, and the industrial structure continued to be optimized. Industrial product exports remain resilient, with exports increasing by 6.9% year-on-year, of which the exports of mechanical and electrical products increased by 8.7%. Enterprise transformation and development are accelerating, and investment in technological transformation in industries such as food, chemicals, and non-ferrous metals has achieved double-digit growth.

The second is to improve quality in key industries while maintaining stability. The equipment manufacturing industry played an important supporting role, with added value increasing by 10.9% year-on-year in the first quarter, driving overall industrial production growth by 3.5 percentage points. With the support of policies such as "two levels" and "two new", the added value of the electronics, automobiles and electrical machinery and equipment industries has achieved an increase of more than 10%. The benefits of the raw material manufacturing industry have improved significantly, with profits in the first two months increasing by 15.3% year-on-year.

The third is that major provinces and cities are stable and improving. The pulling role in key areas is prominent, and the role of lifting the beam is fully exerted. All industrial added value above the scale in 31 provinces achieved positive growth, with the growth rate of many industrial provinces such as Zhejiang and Fujian exceeding 8%; the growth rate of industrial cities such as Yantai and Dalian achieved double-digit growth.

Accelerating integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing

Recently, the artificial intelligence model represented by DeepSeek has become popular and has attracted great attention from the whole society. Xie Shaofeng said that in recent years, the integration of artificial intelligence and manufacturing has accelerated, showing the characteristics of continuous consolidation of industrial foundation, accelerated iteration of product equipment, solid promotion of application empowerment, and continuous optimization of the industrial ecology.

Xie Shaofeng said that my country has formed a complete industrial system covering the basic layer, framework layer, model layer and application layer. The scale of computing power ranks among the best in the world, high-quality industry data sets such as steel and coal have been built, and a number of competitive general models and industry models have been cultivated.

What progress has been made in the digital transformation of manufacturing? Xie Shaofeng said that my country has accelerated the popularization and application of new generation information technology in all aspects and the "points, lines and surfaces" coordinatedly promoting digital transformation.

Cultivate benchmark enterprises at the "point" and build more than 30,000 basic-level smart factories, and more than 600,000 scientific and innovative small and medium-sized enterprises; promote the "chain" transformation of key industries on the "line" and promote the digital transformation of key industries such as power equipment, light industry, petrochemicals, steel, nonferrous metals, and building materials; improve the digital level of parks and clusters on the "surface" and create high-level digital industry clusters.

Continue to promote the construction of digital infrastructure and lay a solid foundation for the transformation of manufacturing. It is reported that there are more than 18,500 national construction projects of "5G+Industrial Internet", and a total of 700 high-level 5G factories have been selected. 5G applications have been integrated into 80 of the 97 major national economic categories. In the first two months of this year, cloud computing big data service revenue increased by 8.8% year-on-year to more than 237.5 billion yuan, reflecting the pace of the industry moving towards "digital" to "intelligence".

The information and communication industry has developed smoothly and orderly

Xie Cun, Director of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, introduced that my country has built a total of 4.395 million 5G base stations, achieving "5G connections to the countryside", and the proportion of 5G connections to the administrative villages has reached 90%. On the basis of the "county and county connection" of Gigabit Optical Network, the pilot program of 10Gigabit Optical Network was launched, and piloted and deployed in 168 communities, factories and parks in 86 cities across the country.

If the network is well built, it must be used well. Continue to expand popularization of network applications such as 5G. Currently, 5G mobile phone users have reached 1.068 billion, and gigabit broadband users have reached 218 million.

Industrial innovation continues to deepen. The 5G standard essential patent statement accounts for more than 42% of the world, and the technology industry is leading the world. Regarding the development of 6G, Xie Cun said that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology guided the establishment of the IMT-2030 (6G) promotion group to gather efforts to promote 6G innovation, released more than 50 research results such as "6G Overall Vision and Potential Key Technologies", and organized testing and verification of key 6G technologies such as synesthesia integration and wireless AI to accelerate the maturity of technology.

At the same time, the opening up of the telecommunications field continues to expand. In the first quarter, a pilot approval of value-added telecommunications business operations was issued to 13 foreign-invested enterprises, encouraging foreign-invested enterprises to invest in China and deepen their roots in China. As of the end of March, my country had more than 2,400 foreign-invested telecommunications companies, an increase of 26.5% over the same period last year.