In May, the first-quarter foreign trade report cards of cities across the country were released one after another, and Wuxi became a “dark horse.”
From January to March this year, Wuxi’s foreign trade import and export exceeded the 200 billion yuan mark for the first time, reaching 230.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.9%, and the quarterly growth rate hit the highest in the past five years.
Among them, exports were 165.29 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32.3%, ranking among the top ten export cities in the country for the first time.
In the debugging workshop of a head-embodied intelligent robot company in Binhu District, Wuxi City, technicians are conducting final factory inspections, and overseas orders have been scheduled until July.
In the Jiangyin Comprehensive Free Trade Zone, the heavy trucks of Envision Energy Co., Ltd. drove to the port carrying wind turbine cabins and hubs. In the first quarter, the total export volume of wind turbines and hubs reached US$25.48 million, a year-on-year increase of 2.73 times.
Looking at Wuxi’s foreign trade report card for the first quarter, the export of integrated circuits with AI computing power as the core increased by 49.3% year-on-year, and the export of computer parts soared 3.9 times. The two together drove the city’s export growth by 24.6 percentage points.
As the global AI industry enters the stage of large-scale implementation, the chip market demand has exploded.
As one of the birthplaces of China’s integrated circuit industry, Wuxi is the only prefecture-level city in the country that has the entire integrated circuit industry chain. More than 600 upstream and downstream companies gather together, with an industry scale of over 250 billion yuan.
On May 6, the first phase of the Wuxi Computing Equipment Industrial Park project officially started, striving to build a “hundred billion-level computing power aircraft carrier” with an estimated annual output value of 30 billion yuan.
Wuxi Xuelang Computing Power Center interconnects and interacts with the computing power centers in Hangzhou and Shanghai to build a “Yangtze River Delta Super Computing Power Cluster”.
Wuxi has become one of the cities in China with the most complete computing power equipment, the strongest integration capabilities, and the leading modular development.
The demand for electricity and energy storage brought by the AI wave has also opened up new space for “tin products going overseas”. In the first quarter, the export of photovoltaic products, lithium batteries, wires and cables all increased, and the export of mechanical and electrical products increased by more than 40%.
Competing in the global market, Wuxi’s robots perform equally well.
At the 139th Canton Fair, Wuxi’s Magic Atom humanoid robot attracted many buyers.
Qiuzhi Technology realizes the export of embodied intelligent robots, and its flagship products are independently developed in many aspects.
In the first quarter, Wuxi exported 663 industrial robots with an export value of 80.978 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 162.2%. The export of various intelligent equipment doubled.
Wuxi has a profound accumulation in the field of embodied intelligence. The UBTECH humanoid robot, the “Tiangong” full-size humanoid robot, and the world’s first explosion-proof humanoid robot are all related to Wuxi companies.
A major provincial project, the global headquarters base of Kuaisang Robot was put into operation, and the provincial-level Embodied Intelligent Robot Innovation Center was launched. It plans to launch low-priced intelligent robots for industrial scenarios.
Wuxi is building a complete industrial chain to promote the industrialization of humanoid robots.
In the first quarter, Wuxi’s imports and exports to major trading partners generally increased, and imports and exports to countries co-constructing the “Belt and Road” accounted for “half” of the city’s total imports and exports.
Jiangyin Port has achieved “point-to-point” direct connection to Europe, Wuxi International Mail Exchange Bureau has been put into operation, and Xishan District has expanded and upgraded its “cross-border e-commerce + industrial belt + overseas warehouse” model.
Wuxi will actively explore the RCEP and “Belt and Road” countries’ markets, explore the establishment of a Central Asia Jiangsu (Wuxi) center, optimize the port business environment, and inject new momentum into the high-quality development of foreign trade.
