In 2024, the added value of China’s manufacturing industry will reach 33.6 trillion yuan (about 4.16 trillion U.S. dollars), accounting for about 30% of the world’s total, exceeding the three major manufacturing powers of the United States, Germany, and Japan combined.
Since surpassing the United States in 2010, China has ranked first in the world’s manufacturing added value for 15 consecutive years.
Supporting this volume is a unique industrial system in the world.
China has all 41 major industrial categories, 207 medium categories, and 666 small categories under the United Nations Industrial Classification. China is the only country in the world with complete industrial categories.
The 2026 annual report of the U.S.-China Business Council pointed out that this system provides lower costs and shorter delivery cycles for companies in China, and more than 80% of U.S. companies in China have achieved profitability as a result.
Leading the manufacturing industry is not a new story. The real structural changes occur on the export side.
According to data from the General Administration of Customs, in the first five months of 2026, China’s exports of high-tech and high value-added mechanical and electrical products were 7.58 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 18.4%, accounting for 63.6% of the total export value.
During the same period, China’s total foreign trade export growth rate was 11.8%, and mechanical and electrical products grew at a rate nearly 7 percentage points higher than the overall rate, becoming the core engine driving exports.
Looking at subdivisions:
In terms of ship manufacturing, in the first five months of 2026, ship exports increased by 22.5% year-on-year.
Since 2023, China’s shipbuilding industry’s international market share has stabilized at more than 60% for three consecutive years.
In Zhoushan, the city’s shipping industry output value reached 17.99 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026, a year-on-year increase of 35.1%, and high value-added ship types such as 11,500-ton LNG dual-fuel ships have been delivered in batches.
In the field of laser equipment, the “2026 China Laser Industry Development Report” shows that China’s laser equipment market sales revenue in 2025 will be 95.8 billion yuan, and is expected to exceed 102.5 billion yuan in 2026.
Taking Luoyang Bingyan Laser as an example, its export volume in 2025 will exceed 40 million yuan, accounting for more than half of total sales, and its products are exported to many countries and regions such as Europe, the United States, and Southeast Asia.
The mining equipment industry has generally reached full production.
Orders from Yantai Xingye Machinery and other companies have been scheduled until the end of 2026.
Yutong Heavy Industry’s mining equipment segment revenue in 2025 will be 1.143 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 13.4%. Its pure electric mining trucks are already operating in more than 300 mining areas.
New energy equipment is a new growth pole for exports. In the first five months of 2026, Anhui Province’s “three new items” (electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products) exported a total of 61.74 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 108.7%.
The International Energy Agency predicts that global electric vehicle sales are expected to exceed 23 million units in 2026, with China supplying about 60% of them.
The explosion in a single field may be accidental, but the simultaneous “explosion” of multiple fields points to lower structural factors.
In the context of the restructuring of the global supply chain, the competitiveness of China’s manufacturing industry has been upgraded from a single low-cost advantage to full industry chain collaboration and systematic supporting capabilities.
In Longyan, western Fujian, Wuping County relies on the “10-minute industrial supporting circle” to gather 126 new display companies, nearly 70% of which are from the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, realizing the transformation from a “supporting hinterland” to a “chain benchmark”.
In the Yangtze River Delta, JD Industrial has efficiently reached the national market with fastener products from the specialized and new “little giant” Aozhan Industrial through a digital and intelligent supply chain, realizing the transformation of “manufacturing hard power” into “market competitiveness”.
This systematic advantage has shown strong resilience in trade frictions.
As some analysts have pointed out, when external disturbances occur, industrial clusters such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta can quickly hedge risks through cross-industry collaboration and avoid “single-click penetration.”
In terms of absolute scale, China’s manufacturing industry has established an unshakable position.
According to the McKinsey report and UNIDO data, the added value of the U.S. manufacturing industry in 2024 will be approximately US$2.49 trillion (a global share of approximately 17%), that of Germany will be approximately US$845 billion (a share of approximately 7%-8%), and Japan will only account for approximately 4% of the world.
The sum of the three is still not as good as China.
However, in the game of high-end manufacturing, gaps still exist.
Taking the shipbuilding industry as an example, in May 2026, the global market share of new orders received by Chinese shipbuilding companies was 47%, while that of South Korea was 44%. The gap has narrowed to 3 percentage points.
The more critical structural difference is that the average CGT (corrected gross tonnage) of a single ship of Korean shipbuilding companies is 59,000, while that of China is only 22,000.
This means that South Korea still dominates high value-added ship types such as LNG ships and ultra-large container ships, while China’s orders are still dominated by standard ship types.
From the foundation of all industrial categories to the quality of high-end manufacturing, the quantitative changes in China’s manufacturing industry are transforming into qualitative changes.
The growth in export value is only superficial. The deeper competitiveness is that “technology, services and standards go global together.”
However, in the last mile of moving from a “manufacturing power” to a “manufacturing power”, how to achieve breakthroughs in top high value-added products is still a threshold that China’s manufacturing industry needs to cross.
