Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the "Reference Guidelines for Scene based and Graph based Promotion of Digital Transformation in Key Industries (2025 Edition)", focusing on 14 key industries and drawing a "scene navigation map" for enterprise digital transformation, helping China's manufacturing industry gradually shift from scattered exploration to systematic promotion of digital transformation. Manufacturing is the foundation of a country and the basis of a strong nation. The 2025 Central Economic Work Conference put forward new requirements around "adhering to innovation driven development and accelerating the cultivation and growth of new driving forces". This has pointed out the direction for the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry. Promoting the intelligent, green and integrated development of manufacturing industry and building a modern industrial system with advanced manufacturing as the backbone will further consolidate the material and technological foundation of Chinese path to modernization. Currently, digital technology is accelerating innovation and increasingly integrating into the entire process of economic and social development, profoundly reshaping the production methods, organizational forms, and business models of the manufacturing industry. At the same time, upgrading industrial structure, improving manufacturing efficiency, and optimizing supply quality can help expand domestic demand in the manufacturing industry and form new economic growth points. This is also an important lever for building a new development pattern with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international dual circulation mutually promoting each other. By utilizing digital technology to comprehensively and fully transform traditional industries, we can leverage its amplifying, stacking, and multiplying effects on economic development, injecting strong new momentum into the sustainable and healthy development of the manufacturing industry. The essence of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry is to use data as a key driving factor, and apply digital technology to digitize, upgrade, and network collaborate the entire process of research and development design, production and manufacturing, business management, and market services, achieving the reshaping of the manufacturing system and the evolution of the industrial ecosystem. Its core goal is to build new quality productivity and enhance the quality, efficiency, and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. After years of effort, China's manufacturing industry has achieved historic success in transformation and upgrading. Industrial Internet has grown from scratch and flourished, and has been widely used in 45 major categories of national economy; There are more than 340 influential industrial Internet platforms and nearly 100 million sets of connecting equipment; The numerical control rate of key processes in key industries and the popularization rate of digital research and development design tools have significantly increased, and the construction of smart factories and digital workshops has achieved remarkable results, further enhancing the resilience of the industry. However, China still faces many challenges in achieving its goal of becoming a manufacturing powerhouse due to the requirements for high-quality development and the forefront of global manufacturing industry development. Deepening digital transformation and promoting high-quality development of the manufacturing industry must be promoted as a systematic project, with continuous efforts and breakthroughs in several key areas. The foundation of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry lies in solid technological and industrial independence. Whether it is industrial software that breaks through design simulation, industrial control, production management and other links, or the development of high-performance CNC machine tools, industrial chips, sensors, robots and other key hardware, it is necessary to adhere to the control of key core technologies. To this end, it is necessary to fully leverage the advantages of the new national system, strengthen the leadership of national strategic scientific and technological forces, deepen collaborative innovation among industry, academia, research and application, and organize joint efforts to tackle common digital technologies, cutting-edge fields and bottleneck links in the manufacturing industry. Forward looking layout and deep integration of digital technology with manufacturing industry, and accelerating its industrial deployment and iterative application. We will focus on building an independent and controllable industrial software system, promoting the software encapsulation and reuse of basic processes, control methods, algorithm models, and other knowledge and experience. As a key driving factor for digital transformation, the full release of data potential relies on the dual support of improving infrastructure and regulating governance systems. It is necessary to strengthen the overall construction of data infrastructure, such as 5G+industrial Internet, data space, computing center, etc., and promote their inclusive coverage to industrial parks, industrial clusters and SMEs. Explore the construction of a governance system that runs through the entire lifecycle of data development and utilization, cultivate enterprise data management awareness and capabilities, and ensure that data is managed well, used effectively, and flows smoothly. Accelerate the improvement of institutional norms such as data classification and grading, rights confirmation and authorization, security review, and risk assessment, and promote the compliant and efficient sharing and value mining of data elements in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain, as well as between industry, academia, research, and application, while ensuring data security, trade secrets, and personal privacy. Through the dual drive of "strengthening the foundation" and "strengthening governance", we aim to truly solidify the "data foundation" of digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, activate the multiplier effect of data elements, and empower the manufacturing industry to improve quality and efficiency. The application scenario is a testing ground for realizing technological value and a catalyst for industrial upgrading. China's manufacturing industry has a unique advantage of having a complete range of categories and diverse scenarios. Based on this, typical digital application scenarios can be sorted and promoted by industry and field around core demands such as improving quality, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, being green, and ensuring safety. Taking scenarios as the core approach, breaking down complex digital transformation tasks into specific business units, embedding four key supporting elements: data elements, knowledge models, tool software, and talent skills, forming a standardized framework in the form of charts. Breaking down the barriers between industrial language and digital language, enabling enterprises to "follow the map", accurately identify their own stage, match applicable scenarios, and allocate necessary resources. By following the path of "scenario driven, pilot demonstration, and replication promotion", we aim to stimulate endogenous motivation within the enterprise. Enterprises are the main force of digital transformation, and the integration of innovation and collaborative transformation among large, medium, and small enterprises will unleash powerful energy. On the one hand, it is necessary to guide and support leading enterprises to create industry benchmarks and replicable transformation plans based on their own practices, and use their influence to drive industry chain and supply chain related enterprises to achieve a "chain" transformation. Encourage platform based enterprises to leverage their technological and ecological advantages, provide "small, agile, and accurate" solutions, and reduce the cost of digital transformation for small and medium-sized enterprises. On the other hand, special support policies are implemented for small and medium-sized enterprises, providing public services such as consultation and diagnosis, specialized training, and financial support to respond to the practical difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises such as "not daring to transfer, not knowing how to transfer, and transferring incorrectly". In addition, talent is the primary resource driving the development of the manufacturing industry. We should strengthen cooperation between enterprises, schools, institutions, and build a digital talent training system, optimize curriculum design, and cultivate composite and innovative talents who understand both manufacturing technology and digital technology. At the same time, we will continuously improve the evaluation and incentive mechanism for digital transformation talents in the manufacturing industry, establish a talent pool for digital transformation in the manufacturing industry, and provide strong talent support for small and medium-sized enterprises. Author: Hou Chenliang (Assistant Researcher at the School of Economics and Management, Tsinghua University)