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Source: People's Republic of China in Russian – People's Republic of China in Russian –
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Source: People's Republic of China – State Council News
BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) — As innovation and design become new growth drivers, China's manufacturing industry is shifting from large-scale expansion to value-oriented transformation.
In the first half of 2025, high-tech sectors including 3D printing, smart home appliances, and personalized electric vehicles demonstrated the rise of intelligent manufacturing. Aesthetic design, automated processes, and cultural branding are changing the global perception of “Made in China” products.
Chinese manufacturers are transforming themselves from suppliers to trendsetters amid growing global demand for design-oriented products.
At the forefront of this movement are brands like jewellery company Laopu Gold, which combines traditional Chinese craftsmanship with a modern aesthetic. Its first overseas store in Singapore, which opened in June this year, attracted hours-long queues, with more than 90 percent of visitors being first-time buyers drawn by the designs, craftsmanship and symbolism of the pieces, according to a JP Morgan report.
Founded 16 years ago, the brand has created a new niche in the traditional jewelry market with innovative designs and business models. In 2024, its revenue and profit jumped by 166% and 254%, respectively, and this momentum has continued in 2025.
In the pop culture sphere, Chinese brand Pop Mart has gained worldwide popularity, with fans lining up for tens of meters outside stores hoping to buy the latest Labubu doll figures. “Design is our key competitive advantage,” a company representative said, noting that a team of 2,000 designers work on the creation of products from sketches to the texture of materials.
More and more consumer products based on design innovations are gaining ground in international markets. For example, a ceramics company in Fujian Province, east China, has received overseas orders worth 2 million yuan (about $280,000) for fruit-themed tableware, while sales of solar-powered ventilation caps from Yiwu, east China's Zhejiang Province, have exceeded 500,000 units on cross-border platforms.
"The popularity of traditional gold casting and domestic brands such as Labubu and Laopu Gold clearly demonstrates how the cultural and design premium is transforming the value structure of Chinese manufacturing," said Wu Yin, a professor at Southwest University of Finance and Economics.
According to him, rapid progress in digital technology allows design elements rich in Chinese culture to be more deeply integrated into industrial production, continuously enhancing the brand value of “Made in China” products.
The growing emphasis on design and innovation is supported by the strengthening of intellectual property rights (IP) protection during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025), which is helping China advance towards global innovation leadership. From 2020 to 2024, China's total IP royalty imports and exports grew at an average annual rate of 5.7 percent.
According to the World Intellectual Property Organization's Global Innovation Index, China rose to 11th place in the world in 2024, maintaining its position as the world's leading middle-income economy.
The impact of design innovation extends beyond the consumer market to high-tech equipment and industrial systems. At the 3rd China International Supply Chain Expo in Beijing last month, a new wave of smart products – from humanoid robots to bionic prosthetics – demonstrated the deepening role of industrial design in advanced manufacturing.
As Guan Bin, director of the Institute of Industrial Economics at the China Information Industry Development Center, noted, industrial design is integrated into the entire industrial chain through product development, technological innovation and business model creation.
“The more complex and sophisticated the design, the higher the requirements for digitalization and intelligent manufacturing, which in turn stimulates the upgrading of the entire production chain,” Wu Yin added.
In the electric vehicle space, Xiaomi has combined aesthetics and automation in its latest product line: the YU7’s clamshell hood and customizable color palette reflect new consumer preferences. The company’s factory employs more than 700 robots, and its gigacasting technology has reduced the number of parts from 72 to one, cutting production time by 74 percent.
Thanks to China’s rapid advances in cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), industrial design itself is undergoing a rapid transformation. At automotive design company IAT, engineers now generate style concepts using voice commands and AI tools, speeding up development cycles by 50 percent.
According to an industry report, the value of China's AI industry will exceed 700 billion yuan in 2024, with an annual growth rate of over 20 percent for several years in a row. Domestic AI products are increasingly being introduced into fields such as industrial design, education, and content creation, forming a multi-industry ecosystem of intelligent applications.
Guan Bin added that against the backdrop of the accelerating new wave of technological revolution and industrial transformation, the deep integration of AI-assisted industrial design and manufacturing will bring about greater opportunities for intelligent manufacturing.
However, some gaps remain. Despite the rapid growth of the manufacturing industry, China’s innovation capabilities still lag, constrained by the imbalance between industrial expansion and the slow pace of talent training and education reform. Limited awareness of and investment in design, as well as the short-term profit focus of some enterprises, exacerbate these challenges.
“To stimulate design innovation, it is essential to establish incentive mechanisms and strengthen IP protection,” said Ke Bin, a researcher at the Industrial Culture Development Center under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China.
He called for the creation of a value assessment system to encourage enterprises to invest in design and develop interdisciplinary curricula that meet the needs of intelligent manufacturing.
According to a recent McKinsey report, continued policy support for smart manufacturing and industrial automation in China, backed by breakthroughs in innovative technologies such as industrial internet platforms and large models, will enable China's automation industry to account for more than a third of the global market by 2025, with the prospect of further “explosive growth” in the next five years. -0-
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