China's first locally-designed and locally-built passenger plane, the COMAC C919, has completed most of its ground-based pre-flight evaluations and is expected to make its maiden flight later this year. The aircraft marks a significant milestone in Chinese manufacturing, as China moves up the global production chain.

The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) says future global and domestic markets will hav‍e a strong appetite for civil aircraft such as the C919. The company has now received orders for 570 of these planes, and China will hand more than 3,000 civil aircraft by 2029. Boeing and Airbus have estimated that China's civil aviation market needs 5,000 to 6,000 more aircraft to meet demand in the coming 20 years.

By 2020, the proportion of high-end equipment, including aviation, satellite, and high-tech equipment, will have expanded to make up 25 percent of overall manufacturing revenue in China. That will make high-end manufacturing a pillar industry for the world's second largest economy. The future of Chinese manufacturing, the Made In China 2025 Plan, focuses on upgrading China's manufacturing sector to improve the nation's ability to innovate.

Aircraft manufacturing requires expertise in avionics, automatic control, material science, mechanical design, aero-engines and many other disciplines, which, in turn, promote research, innovation and investment to develop related, high value-added fields. The manufacturing of integrated industrial products, such as high-speed railways, the BeiDou satellite system, and the C919, is paving the way for the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing industry sector.