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In a special outdoor arena in Hunan's capital city Changsha, a crowd has gathered around performances of street dancing, cup stacking, and Chinese calligraphy. Yet these familiar feats of skill are not acted by dexterous youths, but bulky, lumbering excavators and bulldozers.
This heavy machinery gala was staged on the sidelines of the 2019 Changsha International Construction Equipment Exhibition held in May. Nearly 1,200 Chinese and foreign companies showed their latest products in front of 150,000 industry professionals from over 100 countries and regions. Host city Changsha also had the chance to showcase its achievements to the global industry.
Hunan province has a strong standing in the construction machinery community, with four of the world's top 50 enterprises based in the provincial capital Changsha. The city's rapid rise in construction machinery manufacturing is worth the world's notice and discussion. In 1978, Changsha became an R&D base for China's construction machinery, but the industry did not really take off until two decades later. Over the ensuing years, China's drive toward urbanization resulted in the building of more railways, roads, and housing, which then led to a rising demand for hi-tech equipment. Hunan seized the opportunity and established itself by acquiring new technologies and absorbing best practices, then adding self-developed innovations to its products.
Today, faced with a new wave of revolutionary technologies and the coming 5G era, the Hunan provincial government has made plans to encourage innovation and facilitate the industry's smart and digital transformation.
Hunan has now become China's largest manufacturing base for construction machinery, with its revenue accounting for 26% of the country's total. The province has also nurtured several leaders of the industry. China's high-speed trains are equipped with a large number of devices developed by a company in Hunan, and Sany Heavy Industry Co. Ltd has also been developing the AI-enabled excavator, which demonstrates the highly developed technologies in AI system and operational precision.
What Hunan has achieved was not only attributable to innovations in technologies, business models, and management methods, but also due to its active participation in global competition and cooperation. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Hunan's rise in manufacturing, while representing the emergence of the central and western hinterlands, has also epitomized China's dramatic transformations in the past seven decades.