Evolution of Anhui's manufacturing sector
Inland province has emerged as one of China's fastest-rising production centers
In an old Chinese family photo album, a roll of Lucky color film might once have captured a birthday, a wedding or a first day at school. Today, the film itself has faded from daily life, but the technology behind it has not.
At Hefei Lucky Science & Technology Industry Co, transparent sheets of optical film now stream through automated production lines, destined for televisions, laptops, smartphones and other electronic products. What looks like an unremarkable sheet of plastic can help control how light passes through a screen, affecting brightness, clarity and energy use.
Founded from a Chinese photographic film business dating back to 1958, the company set up its Hefei operations in Anhui province about two decades ago as it shifted into high-end optical materials.
That transition offers a window into a much bigger change sweeping through Anhui, an inland province that has emerged as one of China's fastest-rising manufacturing centers.
China's most advanced factories are not becoming less important, but the things that increasingly determine their competitiveness are becoming harder to see: the chemistry inside a film, the algorithm behind a production schedule, the data streaming from a welding robot or an artificial intelligence system deciding whether something on the line needs attention.
In other words, the factory is no longer defined simply by its walls.
That shift was on display when the 2026 World Manufacturing Convention opened in Hefei, Anhui's capital, on Sunday. The event has attracted more than 1,000 guests, including over 500 overseas representatives.
More than 900 companies are set to showcase over 10,000 products across 70,000 square meters, ranging from intelligent connected vehicles and semiconductors to robots, embodied AI, quantum technology and biomanufacturing. Organizers have also identified 946 potential cooperation projects worth more than 400 billion yuan ($59.72 billion).
Liang Yanshun, Party secretary of Anhui, said at the convention that every minute, factories across Anhui produce about 190 home appliances, 50 laptop computers and four new energy vehicles.
"Such momentum benefits from Anhui's decades of technological innovation and intelligent transformation. More and more Anhui-made products are setting sail overseas and benefiting consumers around the world," he said.
The convention comes as Anhui moves unusually quickly up China's industrial rankings. Latest data from the Anhui provincial government showed that during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), revenue from Anhui's industrial enterprises above a designated size climbed to 5.9 trillion yuan from 3.8 trillion yuan, taking the province to fifth place nationally.
Behind those numbers lies a broader experiment: whether China can turn the scale it built over decades into deeper technological and systems-level advantages.
