BEIJING, July 17 (Xinhua) — Getting a cross into Xiaomi’s automotive plant in suburban Beijing appears like snagging front-row tickets to the world’s hottest live performance.
“Application accepted!” Wang Shuang crowed, posting a screenshot to social media. “The last time I felt this giddy was when I landed a Taylor Swift ticket.”
Welcome to China’s latest journey craze: high-tech factories have joined historic palaces and world-class museums because the nation’s must-see locations.
China has dominated because the world’s manufacturing powerhouse for fifteen straight years. Yet, in simply the previous two years, the strong rise of good manufacturing has revolutionized the nation’s as soon as dreary, clang-and-hiss meeting strains right into a cultural phenomenon or “industrial Disneyland.”
Chinese producers aren’t pioneering this manufacturing unit fascination. France’s Citroen ignited the pattern within the Nineteen Fifties. Boeing and Toyota crops stay the highest U.S. and Japan attracts.
As the nation’s industrial prowess ascends from the decrease rungs of the worldwide provide chain to a technology-driven frontier, a profound shift has taken maintain. An rising variety of Chinese individuals now rejoice mechanical ingenuity with reverence, as their pleasure in homegrown sectors prospers.
The registration web page of Xiaomi, a headline-grabbing newcomer to the electrical car (EV) sector final yr, was nonetheless reside ticking: beside the tiny line “20 spots only,” the counter learn “4,060 already applied” as a scramble ensued to witness robotic arms assembling electrical automobiles.
Wang snagged that coveted ticket solely after tenting on the official web site for days, finger tap-dancing like a twitchy set off, till the affirmation flashed alive.
TECH ODYSSEY
Under the scorching solar, the fortunate customer Wang stepped into the manufacturing unit advanced as scheduled. The two-hour journey felt like a tech-filled odyssey. She rode a shuttle car that zipped via the six main workshops: stamping, massive die casting, physique welding, portray, battery meeting and remaining meeting.
In her expertise, factories have been enclosed, dusty, and crammed with employees in security helmets. This time, she noticed robotic arms working with micron-level precision on the manufacturing unit ground and AI-driven robots transferring freely alongside deliberate routes to ship battery cell elements to their locations.
“It takes just 76 seconds to churn out a new car,” Wang exclaimed in amazement. “Quicker than whipping up a latte.”
NIO, one other home EV producer, has opened its “Second Advanced Manufacturing Base” to the general public since October 2023. Visitors can even tour the power, which is crammed with robotic arms, from an elevated hall. In 2024, over 130,000 individuals visited the location, together with about 900 from abroad.
The strikes to open manufacturing strains to the general public got here as China’s new vitality autos have topped the worldwide manufacturing and gross sales charts for 9 consecutive years. Along with lithium batteries and photovoltaic merchandise, they kind China’s “new export trio,” showcasing the technological upgrades of “Made in China.”
Freya Zhang, a analysis analyst on the funding consulting agency Tech Buzz China, informed the journal Wired that China’s EV manufacturing unit tour “offers a chance to not only see the production line up close, but also experience the human side of the brand.”
Beyond EVs, rising tech hubs have gotten pilgrimage websites. In Hangzhou, an modern magnet in east China, robotics pioneers like Unitree Robotics draw curated tour teams.
At the AG600 final-assembly plant within the southern Chinese metropolis of Zhuhai — host metropolis of China’s premier airshow — a gradual stream of holiday makers was submitting via the nation’s solely in depth special-mission plane manufacturing line that’s open to the general public.
The AG600 line attracts roughly 40,000 guests a yr, with open-day slots virtually booked out to a crowd dominated by the younger. The domestically developed amphibious plane, which has already entered mass manufacturing, can swiftly shuttle between water sources and fireplace websites, making it a strong device for forest firefighting.
The vacation spot of business tourism can also be rising from surprising origins: waste therapy crops. Not removed from Zhuhai, Shenzhen, an financial hub of China, now welcomes guests to 4 such “eco-parks.”
One social platform consumer from Xiaohongshu posted about their go to: The true spectacle lies within the industrial-scale choreography of the power’s central sorting corridor, the place a colossal hydraulic claw, working with uncanny precision, plunges into mountains of refuse and types recyclables. “It provides a sense of satisfaction akin to that of playing a claw crane game.”
NEW GROWTH
China hosts over 40 p.c of the world’s “lighthouse factories,” and extra meeting strains have been digitally remodeled, creating a super basis for remodeling people on manufacturing unit flooring right into a cultural canvas.
More Chinese cities have made industrial tourism their new engines for development. In February, Beijing vowed to create 5 nationwide industrial-tourism demonstration bases by 2027 and turn out to be a number one vacation spot by 2029.
The metropolis’s tourism blueprint contains opening high-level autonomous driving situations, rocket institutes, low-altitude economic system, and inexperienced vitality routes, whereas inviting analysis institutes to grant public entry to pick out labs and meeting halls.
Local governments are additionally seeking to outfit industrial tourism itself with next-gen stagecraft: Shanghai is ready to weave massive language fashions, the metaverse and blockchain into richer cultural narratives, whereas Hunan province in central China will deploy AR, VR, AI, 5G, 3D cinema, and holography to construct totally immersive worlds.
“Industrial tourism is a nexus where secondary and tertiary industries converge,” mentioned Chen Wei, an knowledgeable from Tsinghua University. “It can fuel consumption, expand domestic demand, and promote industrial science education.”
Among the services listed as nationwide industrial tourism demonstration bases are Jiangnan Shipyard in Shanghai, the aerospace supercomputing middle within the island province of Hainan, and the Zhuzhou electrical locomotive manufacturing line in Hunan, which is a cradle of China’s high-speed trains, in response to China’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism.
“Fast-tracking industrial tourism is a strategic move in building a modern industrial system, which serves to unlock growth potential for regional economic vitality,” mentioned Chen.