Changchun in northeast China, a traditional heavy industry city long known as China's "Motor City," is witnessing its traditional manufacturing sector ride the fast train of digital intelligence to achieve industrial chain upgrading.

Tech innovation drives enterprise transformation

At Audi's first exclusive production base for pure electric vehicles in China, it's a scene of "machines but no workers" as car bodies and chassis are precisely assembled by machines, with an intelligent new energy vehicle ready to roll off the production line.

CRRC Changchun Railway Vehicles Co., Ltd. represents China's rail transit industry. Every leap forward in China's high-speed rail development is closely tied to it.

At the end of 2023, China launched the "quiet carriage" pilot program for high-speed trains. The acoustic experimental test center at CRRC Changchun's engineering laboratory provides a semi-free acoustic field environment for finished vehicles, simulating operational noise conditions to address vibration and noise reduction in rail transit equipment.

China FAW Group Co., Ltd. (FAW) is hailed as the "cradle of China's automotive industry." In 2024, FAW has made breakthroughs in nearly 400 core technologies in key fields, with multiple innovations breaking foreign barriers. Zhao Meng, safety team leader at FAW Jiefang's intelligent assembly workshop, said a finished vehicle rolls off the line every 54 seconds on average.

At FAW Jiefang's J7 intelligent factory, technologies like unmanned tire assembly and fully automated intelligent inspection are used extensively, creating the most flexible and intelligent finished vehicle production line in the global commercial vehicle industry.

Early this year, the factory was selected as one of the first batch of exemplary intelligent factories by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, becoming the only commercial vehicle manufacturer on the list.

Industrial clusters activate manufacturing

In 2020, Jilin province in northeast China proposed establishing the Changchun International Automobile City in Changchun, the provincial capital. Tianhai (Changchun) Electronics Co., a professional automotive wiring harness manufacturer, mainly supplies high- and low-voltage wiring harnesses for FAW's Hongqi and Besturn brands, with an annual production capacity of 400,000 sets of automotive wiring harnesses.

"Located adjacent to FAW's main plant, we enjoy superior geographical advantages to serve the entire northeast automotive industry," said Hong Gang, the company's assistant to the general manager.

Building Changchun's modern metropolitan area requires coordinated industrial development. "In recent years, the Daling Economic Development Zone has transformed into a zone for advanced manufacturing, new energy industries and modern services, becoming one of FAW's most convenient and efficient auto parts supply bases. So far, 69 auto parts enterprises and 36 vehicle logistics companies have settled here," Hu Chunming, deputy director of the Changchun Daling Economic Development Zone management committee, said.

Song Shaozhong, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of Changchun City, said the Changchun automobile cluster was selected as a national advanced manufacturing cluster in 2022, undertaking multiple national key pilot projects. In 2024, the output value of the cluster reached 461.1 billion RMB.

Zhang Zhixin, director of the Jilin Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said Changchun is integrating into coordinated development of metropolitan areas, promoting accelerated transformation of sci-tech achievements into productive forces through differentiated industrial division and innovation chain connections.