China's political advisors called for fresh measures in building resilient industrial supply chains in their remarks during the fourth session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the top political advisory body.

One advisor flagged up that "the most fundamental problems" restricting the high-quality development of China's manufacturing industry was the market-oriented reforms not being sufficiently pushed through. 

The fair competition mechanism of enterprises was not yet sound, and some hidden market access restrictions still exist, Miao Wei, a national political advisor, who is also a former minister of industry and information technology, said on Sunday.

He called for a step up in reforms, and an acceleration in building the mechanisms that are conducive to high-quality development in the manufacturing industry in order to enhance the development vitality.

He also referred to allocating resources needed to promote innovation and improve education and training for talent in the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) fields.

This proposal echoes another advisor who called for more investment in basic research.

China should conduct in-depth basic research in core technologies in the process of industrial upgrading so as to tackle bottleneck problems from the source, Gan Lin, deputy chief of the State Administration for Market Regulation, said on Monday.

Keep up the manufacturing strength

In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, China's complete manufacturing system has played an important role and maintained the stability of its manufacturing industry, Miao commented.

China is the only country in the world that has all the industrial categories listed in the United Nations Industrial Classification. It maintained its position as the world's largest manufacturing country for the 11th consecutive year in 2021. 

Miao stressed keeping the manufacturing sector's share in the economy stable.

A too fast and too early decline of manufacturing proportion in GDP will drag down the current economic growth and affect urban employment, Miao cautioned, adding that it will also weaken China's ability to counter risks and hurt its international competitiveness.

China's manufacturing industry has made great achievements in recent years, but the large scale doesn't mean the sector is strong, instead, bottleneck risks in core technologies increased significantly, said Miao.

He proposed that China should speed up the establishment of a technological innovation system with enterprises as the mainstay.

Other advisors pointed to problems in coordination. "Insufficient coordination of industrial policies could lead to redundant construction," warned Qin Boyong, deputy auditor-general of the National Audit Office.

Qin specified that, when more chip-related companies emerged in China in the past two years, some large-scale semiconductor projects went into a standstill, raising risks in waste of investment. He called for more efforts in improving the overall planning of industrial supply chains at the national level.