Wearing smart glasses with translation function instantly eliminates language barriers; Stop between the exhibition halls and watch the humanoid robots dance agilely; Shuttling through various forums and exhibitions, discussing the trend of artificial intelligence (AI) iteration and exploring the future of industrial transformation... Observing intelligent manufacturing, observing technology, and discussing AI have become the new "three piece set" for international visitors to China in recent times. The vivid scenes depict the subtle texture of technological leap and also conceal the deep logic of China's industrial pattern iteration and upgrading. From the former "world factory" to the current core hub of global innovation cooperation, relying on the confidence of a super large market and a complete modern industrial foundation, China is deeply promoting high-level opening up to the outside world to interpret win-win cooperation, driving industrial transformation with hardcore innovation, anchoring direction and injecting momentum for the reshaping of the global industrial chain and the steady progress of the world economy. A business card: "Innovation" has become a new keyword for understanding China. For Boleren, the trip to China in March this year is particularly tight. The Chairman, President, and CEO of Siemens stated at the 2026 Annual Meeting of the China Development Forum on March 22 that "China is both a key market and an innovation base for Siemens." He reiterated this judgment at the Siemens RXD conference on March 23. More symbolically, this Siemens global flagship technology conference landed in China for the first time this year. In the eyes of the industry, the location of this global industrial giant sends a clear and strong signal that China has become an important source of global innovation and a testing ground for cutting-edge applications. Not only Siemens, but also multinational corporations such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, Volkswagen Group Chairman of the Board of Management Oliver Blume, and Bosch Group Chairman Hartmann have recently expressed similar views. The "National Innovation Index Report 2025" released by the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy on March 29 at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting shows that China's comprehensive ranking of the National Innovation Index has risen to the 9th place in the world, and is steadily moving towards the goal of becoming a leading innovative country and a technological powerhouse. Compared to 2012, China's comprehensive ranking has increased by 11 places, making it the country with the fastest progress in over a decade. ”Liu Dongmei, Secretary of the Party Committee of the China Academy of Science and Technology Development Strategy, said that China's current innovation capability is close to that of developed countries with a per capita GDP of around 50000 US dollars, and is still in a steady upward trend. The Nature Index released by the world's top academic journal Nature in late March also confirms this point: according to the "share" of national contributions, China remains the world's leader and its leading advantage continues to expand. This index is one of the core indicators for measuring academic contributions in related fields worldwide, widely cited and recognized by the international academic community. "Innovation" has become a new business card to understand China, and China has always been open to promote its local innovation achievements to the world, building a bridge for global innovation cooperation. At the just concluded 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting, the Zhongguancun International Technology Trading Conference, as the core sector, continued to polish its golden signboard of "global buying, global selling". In the newly opened Zhongguancun International Technology Trading Center, participants from various countries collide with sparks of ideas, promoting efficient flow and precise docking of global innovation resources. True innovation is never about breaking through in isolation, but about the convergence of diverse ideas and the joint efforts of different civilizations for a common future. ”Paul Dario, Honorary Professor and Chief Scientist of ARTES4.0 at the Santa Anna Institute of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, stated that China and Italy have their own advantages in the innovation chain and should build more open and shared cooperation platforms to allow more young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to participate in cross-cultural and interdisciplinary innovation waves. Two major directions: "intelligence" and "green" leading the global industrial upgrading. Currently, the global industry is in a critical window period of deep restructuring, transformation and upgrading. The parallel and integrated development of intelligence and greening has become an irreversible trend of the times, and AI is the core engine and key lever driving industrial upgrading. Boleren emphasized in his keynote speech at the Siemens RXD conference: 'We have entered the era of industrial AI revolution.'. China will be a fertile ground for accelerating the large-scale implementation of industrial AI. ”He also revealed that the 26 new products released at the Siemens RXD conference were all developed by Chinese teams, created for the Chinese market and born for the scale leap. Alibaba Group Chairman Joseph Tsai said in a conversation with Boleren, "I firmly believe that the best testing ground for industrial AI and 'AI+manufacturing' is in China - China's industrial output accounts for 30% of the world's total, making it the world's largest manufacturing economy. This also means that China has a massive amount of industrial data. This is an excellent soil for our cooperation, iterative optimization, and model polishing. ”The "2025 Global Engineering Frontiers" released at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting pointed out that AI assisted engineering paradigms are moving towards intergenerational transition, which is one of the distinct trends reflected in the global engineering frontiers in 2025. Among the 189 selected engineering frontiers, 74 are closely related to AI. According to data from Open Router, a major global AI model aggregation platform, since February this year, the weekly call volume of Chinese AI big language models in terms of word elements has significantly increased, surpassing that of AI models in the United States. This is a hard core recognition of China's AI big model technology strength and application value in the global market, and also confirms China's innovation speed and market competitiveness in the AI field. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in China's smart factories, the transformation of artificial intelligence has led to an average increase of 29% in production efficiency and a decrease of 47% in product defect rates. At present, China has established 33 national level manufacturing innovation centers, which have formed a number of important scientific and technological achievements in fields such as intelligent connected vehicles and embodied intelligent robots, providing solid support for industrial innovation. Green and low-carbon transformation is another core dimension of global industrial upgrading. Under the guidance of the "dual carbon" target, China continues to contribute its solutions and inject practical strength into the high-quality development of global green industries. From the deployment of accelerating the comprehensive green transformation in this year's government work report to the rigid target of reducing carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 17% set in the "15th Five Year Plan" outline; From fully implementing dual control of carbon emissions and intensity, to deepening the transformation of green industries, China is making every effort to promote green and low-carbon transformation as a new engine for high-quality development. The World Green Design Forum held during the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum Annual Meeting attracted over 120000 participants both online and offline. The forum has launched the world's first green product identification system based on international standards, the "Green Leaf Label MA", which assigns an exclusive green digital identity to each product, fully complies with EU green trade standards, accurately solves industry pain points such as inconsistent green product certification and international trade green barriers, and helps enterprises from various countries efficiently layout the global green market. Recently, Chinese companies made a stunning appearance at the International HVAC and Smart Home Exhibition held in Milan, Italy. Among them, the PortaSplit series air conditioners under Midea, which were selected as the "Best Inventions of 2025" by Time magazine, have gained high recognition in overseas markets due to their core advantages such as strong adaptability and quiet installation. This product, led by Midea's European R&D center located in Stuttgart, Germany, is a vivid example of Chinese companies focusing on the global market and promoting localized green innovation. Three major advantages: unleashing new opportunities for high-level opening-up. Currently, the global situation is full of uncertainty, geopolitical conflicts are intensifying, trade protectionism is on the rise, world economic growth is weak, and global industrial and supply chains are facing multiple impacts. Countries are seeking stable development momentum and reliable partners for cooperation. The global industry has generally paid attention to the deployment of China's "15th Five Year Plan" outline to expand high-level opening-up, once again sending a clear signal to the world to firmly promote opening-up and cooperation. What new opportunities will an increasingly open China bring to global economic recovery and industrial transformation in the next five years? ——The advantage of a super large market expands the development space for global enterprises. China has a population of over 1.4 billion, the largest and fastest-growing middle-income group in the world, and the potential for domestic demand continues to be unleashed. At the 2026 Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference, Robert Koopman, former Chief Economist of the World Trade Organization, predicted that China will transform from a global factory to a global "demand center" in the next 5 to 10 years. Former New Zealand Prime Minister Shipley defined the young Chinese population as "international consumers", believing that they lead the global consumption trend, promote market competition and innovation, and drive the iteration and upgrading of the global consumer industry. ——Strong innovation momentum injects lasting momentum into the transformation of the world economy. The transformation of the world economy requires the development of new driving forces, and China's continuously improving innovation capabilities are an important force in solving global development problems. Gong Chao, a researcher at the National Innovation and Development Research Institute of Tongji University, believes that China has grown from a world factory to a core node of the global "innovation+industrial chain" and continues to upgrade its industrial functions. China has shifted from integrating into the global supply chain to actively building resilient, secure, and diverse regional and global industrial chains, forming a "chain master" advantage in areas such as green energy and advanced manufacturing. It is expected that this advantage will extend to fields such as AI, quantum computing, and embodied intelligence in the future. ——A stable and open development environment provides rare certainty for global cooperation. In recent years, from optimizing unilateral visa free policies and facilitating personnel exchanges, to continuously improving the business environment and implementing national treatment for foreign-funded enterprises; From adhering to free trade and maintaining the multilateral trading system, to actively aligning with international high standard economic and trade rules and steadily expanding institutional openness, China has taken concrete measures to break down trade barriers, open up cooperation channels, and share development dividends and expand cooperation space with other countries. The logic of foreign investment in China has undergone a fundamental shift. ”Gong Chao stated that multinational corporations are no longer solely focused on low-cost labor, but rather on China's super large market, stable institutional environment, complete industrial chain supporting facilities, and cutting-edge innovation ecology. Against the backdrop of China's rapid rise in innovation strength and the complex and ever-changing international geopolitical landscape, multinational corporations generally position China as a "long-term strategic market+innovation source". Several interviewed experts stated that for domestic enterprises, it is important to seize the benefits of institutional openness and actively layout the global market; For foreign-funded enterprises, it is necessary to deeply integrate into the unified Chinese market, keep up with the pace of China's industrial transformation and upgrading, target the huge market demand, rely on local talent resources, and build a stable revenue foundation for the enterprise. Now is the golden opportunity to build a global brand of 'Made in China'. Chinese enterprises should actively participate in the formulation of global industry standards, export core technologies and mature solutions, while building a diversified supply chain system to enhance global core competitiveness. ”Gong Chao suggested. (New Society)