National People's Congress deputy and chief technician of CSSC, Fu Guotao

At this year's Two Sessions, Fu Guotao, a deputy to the National People's Congress and chief technician of China Shipbuilding Group, suggested promoting the rapid development of domestically produced industrial mother machines towards digitalization, intelligence, and complex functions from multiple aspects, laying a more solid foundation for a strong manufacturing country.

Deputy Fu Guotao emphasized that the key to improving the domestic production rate of high-end industrial mother machines lies in increasing investment in scientific research and policy support. On the one hand, the government and enterprises should work together to establish a long-term investment mechanism, increase financial support for the research and development of core components and breakthroughs in key technologies, encourage in-depth integration of production, education, and research, and accelerate the transformation of scientific and technological achievements into real productive forces. On the other hand, optimize industrial layout, cultivate a group of industrial mother machine leading enterprises with international competitiveness, and strengthen the coordination of upstream and downstream industries to form a benign interactive innovation ecosystem. In addition, attention should be paid to talent cultivation and introduction, building a high-quality team of technical skills to provide inexhaustible power for the continuous innovation and development of high-end industrial mother machines. Through the implementation of these comprehensive measures, it will effectively promote China's industrial mother machine industry to move towards the high-end of the global value chain, injecting strong impetus into the strategy of a strong manufacturing country.

In February this year, Fu Guotao conducted a survey on industrial mother machines. Through a survey of more than 10 mechanical processing enterprises in Chongqing, he found that the average domestic production rate of machine tools used by various enterprises is 90%. "At first glance, the domestic production rate is very high, but 90% of the machine tools are low-to-mid-range equipment with low precision requirements." He said that digital, intelligent, and high-precision equipment such as CNC machining centers and flexible production lines are mostly imported equipment. These core equipment, which seem to account for only about 10%, are usually used in the final finishing stage of products and contribute a large amount of benefits to enterprises.

Currently, the industry still generally faces the problem of aging and difficulty in repairing imported high-end industrial mother machines." Fu Guotao told reporters that in the enterprises he visited, many high-end industrial mother machines were purchased around 2010, and some have reached the end of their service life and entered a frequent maintenance period. Because they are imported equipment, there are many inconveniences in the maintenance process, and the maintenance cycle is very long, which directly delays production. Because of dependence on others, some equipment manufacturers even quoted a high price equivalent to 20% of the price of the entire machine for replacing a single part.

Further increase attention and investment in the industrial mother machine industry chain." To this end, Fu Guotao suggested that a scientific and technological innovation platform can be built to strengthen the national strategic scientific and technological forces, and coordinate innovation resources to form a joint force. Led by national laboratories, a multi-level and systematic strategic scientific and technological force system should be built to solve the problems of "point-like" technological research and development in scientific research institutes, dispersed scientific research forces, and fragmented research and development systems, and concentrate efforts on carrying out original and leading scientific and technological research and development; a federation can also be established to strengthen cooperation between scientific research institutes and enterprises, and promote the development of China's high-end industrial mother machine industry.

Fu Guotao also stated that in the next 5 to 10 years, the industrial mother machines of mechanical processing enterprises will generally face upgrading and replacement, and will fully realize CNC and intelligent manufacturing unit production, and the demand for high-end machine tool equipment will further increase. He suggested continuing to implement the policy of replacing old machine tools with new ones, providing price subsidies for old machine tools, and providing policy support in terms of funds.