Amid weak export demand, China has unveiled an ambitious 10-year action plan titled "Made in China 2025" with a focus on manufacturing.
This is the first leg of a 30-year plan to transform China from a big manufacturing power to a strong manufacturing power.
Premier Li Keqiang has endorsed Made in China 2025, which will be further expanded by another two plans for transforming China into a leading manufacturing power by year 2049, according to Xinhua. 2049 will mark teh 100th anniversary of the founding of People's Republic of China.
"Realization of the plan means by 2025 China will basically realize industrialization nearly equal to the manufactututing abilities of Germany and Japan at their early states of industrialization," said China's Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei, according to Xinhua.
Wei earlier pointed out that this strategy has great significance to the development of China's manufacturing industry. China became the world's biggest manufacturer in 2010 but lags behind becoming a strong manufacturing power due to a lack of enterprises and international competition.
Economy experts view this initiative as China's answer to Germany's high-tech strategy, "Industry 4.0".
On the other hand, the new strategy has been unveiled at a time when China's factories are struggling with sluggish demand, weak domestic growth and facing tough competition from other developing economies. The plan also did not give details of how China would achieve set targets, but, it shows determination of government to revive manufacturing, according to Wall Street Journal.
Demands of China-made products in foreign countries is decreasing as its export growth reduced to 6.1 percent in 2014 from 7.9 percent in 2013.
Chinese manufacturing accounts for about 20 percent of the world's total, but only 33 percent of foreign investment in China went to manufacturing last year, much below the service sector's 55 percent, according to Dow Jones news wire.