China News Service, Shanghai, Nov. 11 (Xinhua) -- Interview with Siemens' Executive Vice President: Why do we continue to increase our weight in China?
China News Service reporter Wang Enbo
This is a decision made by the German industrial giant Siemens to the Chinese market in recent years.
In June 2022, Siemens' world's first native digital factory was officially put into operation in Nanjing. In October of the same year, the China headquarters of electrical products established in Suzhou was officially upgraded to the China and East Asia headquarters. In June 6, Siemens invested another 10.2023 billion yuan to expand the Chengdu digital factory.
Why continue to increase China's weight? Xiao Song, Executive Vice President of Siemens and Chairman, President and CEO of Siemens China, gave the answer in an exclusive interview with a reporter from China News Service: both because of harvest and expectation.
Xiao Song, Executive Vice President of Siemens, Chairman, President and CEO of Siemens China. (Photo courtesy of Siemens)
China's ever-expanding opening up is an important source of this sense of gain. "Opening-up has brought Chinese opportunities to the world," said Xiao Song, adding that as a company that has been developing in China for more than 150 years and the first foreign-funded company to establish a holding company in China after the reform and opening up, Siemens has a particularly deep sense of the significance of openness and cooperation.
In China, Siemens has gained the fertile ground for the application of cutting-edge technologies, expanded its diverse talent team, and won the continuous trust of customers and partners. According to Xiao Song, the company's cutting-edge technologies such as digital twins, industrial AI, and industrial 5G have been successfully applied to hundreds of Chinese companies in dozens of industries. As of now, Siemens has more than 3,<> employees in China, which is a vital R&D base and source of talent.
Since the beginning of this year, China has successively introduced a series of measures to provide a broader space for foreign-funded enterprises to display their strengths, from 6 measures to optimize the foreign investment environment in six major areas, to the announcement of the complete abolition of foreign investment access restrictions in the manufacturing industry.
Xiao Song believes that expanding the scope of foreign investment access and optimizing the rules for foreign investment access are important signals that China continues to deepen its opening-up, and "we look forward to the implementation of these measures in different industries and regions."
The theme of Siemens' participation in the 6th CIIE is "Create Every Day with Technology", and three exhibition areas are set up: Industry Transformation Practice, Cutting-edge Technology, and Ecological Value Co-creation. (Photo courtesy of Siemens)
In addition to the continuous optimization of the business environment, a mature and efficient supply chain system is another certainty that the Chinese market provides for international investors. This is especially important for manufacturing companies such as Siemens.
"Although the global supply chain is being reshaped, China, as the world's second largest economy, the largest manufacturing country, and the main trading partner of more than 140 countries and regions, is still a key link in the global supply chain." Xiao Song said that China is the only country in the world that has all the industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification. China's supply chain system has great resilience and potential due to its complete industrial system, complete infrastructure, abundant human resources and huge market space.
This potential continues to be unleashed. Recently, China has made a series of deployments for new industrialization, which has attracted Xiao Song's attention.
In his view, new industrialization will become the key to accelerating China's construction of a manufacturing power. Its focus is mainly on improving innovation capabilities, optimizing industrial structure, promoting the integration of data and reality, and promoting the green development of industry, while digitalization and low-carbon technologies are the key to promoting the above directions, which is highly consistent with Siemens' strategy.
Following this development path, at this year's CIIE, Siemens, which has been attending the expo for the sixth consecutive year, has set up three exhibition areas: industry transformation practice, cutting-edge technology, and ecological value co-creation. Heavyweight exhibits such as Simatic Robot Pick AI, a disorderly sorting robot driven by artificial intelligence technology, and SiGREEN, a full-chain green and low-carbon innovation service covering the entire life cycle of battery manufacturing, user use, and recycling, will be unveiled.
At the 6th CIIE, Siemens will showcase Simatic Robot Pick AI, a disorderly sorting robot powered by artificial intelligence technology. (Photo courtesy of Siemens)
This choice also carries the expectation that German industrial giants will continue to cultivate China.
Xiao Song hopes that with the help of the CIIE platform, Siemens' innovative technologies and successful practices in the field of digitalization and low-carbon will be further shared with the Chinese market. With a localized complete value chain and global resources, we will build a mutually beneficial and win-win ecosystem with all partners, strive to become a practitioner and promoter of industrial cooperation between China and Germany, Europe and even the world, make new contributions to China's industrial transformation and upgrading, and provide new momentum for global economic recovery. (ENDS)