Jinjiang, a county-level city in east China's Fujian Province, has seen its private economy growing in recent years thanks to its promotion of the so-called "Jinjiang experience", which covers intelligent industrial upgrading, cost reduction and efficiency improvement.
In July 2023, the Chinese government published a central document on the development and expansion of the private economy which called for continuously innovating and developing the ''Jinjiang Experience".
At Seven Brand, a clothing brand based in Jinjiang, the intelligent production system can produce a regular blazer in about 40 seconds.
"We follow the real-time video transmitted via 5G to learn how to sew. Previously, we could only make five pieces of clothing in an hour and learning new processes took about six months. Now, we can learn these skills very quickly and can make nearly 20 pieces in an hour," said Lin Qiuli, a tailor at the plant.
"This is the first factory in the country to apply China Mobile's 5G private network to garment production. The entire process, from cutting and sewing to packaging, is digitalized. Our efficiency has increased by nearly 20 percent," said Zhou Li, senior director of quality management center of Seven Brand.
Seven Brand is also among the first garment companies in China to use automated guided robots, according to Zhou.
"This is our robot transporting raw materials to the sewing workshop. The elevator system can also work with it. It will send materials to our designated workshop, and can operate 24 hours a day," said Zhou.
Growing from a family workshop in 1979, Seven Brand's brand value has surged over 50 times and it has become one of China's 500 most valuable brands.
According to data from the Jinjiang financial bureau, 51 domestic and overseas listed companies now call Jinjiang home, ranking the county second in the country in the number of listed companies it hosts.
"We have been continuously innovating. In 1998, we invested over 7 million U.S. dollars to establish a suit factory. Before then, all suits in China were imported. In recent years, we were among the pioneers in the garment industry to fully digitalize our operations," said Zhou.
Apart from textiles, many entrepreneurs in Jinjiang also started their businesses in another light industry that requires a relatively low entry barrier, shoes.
Back in the 1980s, during the early days of China's reform and opening-up, almost everyone in the small town of Chendai in Jinjiang was starting their own shoe business.
"When I was seven or eight years old, I started making shoes. At that time, almost every household in Chendai was a family workshop making shoes," said Ding Wanyu, founder of Haiou Shoes Material.
Today, Jinjiang produces 1.6 billion pairs of sports shoes annually, accounting for 40 percent of China's total output, including for well-known Chinese sports brands like Anta, 361 degrees, and Xtep.
Shoe companies are also using smart machinery to reduce labor costs and increase efficiency in various production processes such as gluing.
"In 11 to 15 seconds, we can glue a pair of shoes. Two machines can operate together, and the same production line can produce multiple styles of shoes. Gluing used to release some volatile substances that were harmful to the human body, but now it's completely pollution free," said Wu Yibin, chief technology officer of Bozhang Intelligence.
Jinjiang has accelerated the intelligent transformation of its traditional industries in recent years with official data showing that in 2022 more than 90 percent of companies in Jinjiang were connected to the "industrial internet."
"Previously this technology could only be imported from abroad. The process of roughing shoes by hand was prone to injuries. Now these machines can replace human laborers and work with an accuracy of up to 0.1 millimeters," said Wu.
Bozhang plans to launch the first fully self-designed automatic shoe roughening machine in China. Developing these technologies takes a lot of time and funding, but Wu says the "Jinjiang Experience" has always encouraged him to be a pioneer in the industry.
"We want to lead the entire industry in digital transformation, helping the whole shoe industry to upgrade, not just to change our own factory," said Wu.
"Jinjiang experience" offers support to help local private economy expand
