China becomes world leader in industrial economy scale

China became the world leader on the industrial economy scale, with the digital economy scale reaching 31 trillion yuan ($4.36 trillion) in 2018, accounting for one-third of the country's GDP.

China has become the only country in the world to obtain all the industrial categories listed in the United Nations industrial classification, said Miao Wei, minister of industry and information technology, at a news conference on Friday.

The industrial added value of the country saw an average annual growth of 11 percent from 12 billion yuan in 1952, to over 30 trillion yuan in 2018, Miao said.

The country's added value of the manufacturing industry accounted for over 28 percent of the world's total in 2018, becoming an important engine driving world industrial growth. Among the world's more than 500 major industrial products, China ranks first in output at over 220.

Statistics from the World Bank indicate the added value of China's manufacturing industry surpassed that of the United States to become the world's number one manufacturing country in 2010.

Meanwhile, the technological innovation capacity of China's industrial communications industry has greatly improved and the country has the largest number of necessary patents for 5G standards.

In the past 70 years, China's small and medium companies and private companies played an important role in increasing employment, keeping stable growth and stimulating innovation, according to Miao.

By the end of 2018, the number of small and middle-sized companies surpassed 30 million and the number of self-employed industrial and commercial households exceeded 70 million. These contributed over 50 percent of the country's tax revenue, over 60 percent of the GDP, over 70 percent of technological innovations and more than 80 percent of labor force employment.

Miao also emphasized the importance of promoting high-quality development of major technical equipment, including the homegrown large passenger plane the C919, which effectively promoted the upgrading of China's industrial technology and enhanced basic industrial capacity and the industrial chain on the one hand.

On the other hand, major technical equipment could also provide basic support to key areas in the national economic development, including energy, petrochemicals and transportation, Miao added.

China will continue to take supply-side structural reform as its main task, and work to address major weaknesses in research and development, engineering, and industrialization to enhance our innovation capabilities and promote the high-quality development of major technical equipment, according to Miao.