Guided by a mindset of chain-cluster synergy, Hunan's 13 key industrial chains have demonstrated ample vitality and resilience in their development. The industrial clusters that have evolved from these chains continue to enhance their competitiveness and influence, laying a solid foundation for shaping new advantages in industrial development.

As key industries of Hunan's development, each of the 13 industrial chains has its own strengths, yet all face numerous bottlenecks that need to be overcome. From August to September, journalists from Hunan Daily conducted visits along these chains, stepping into enterprises, industrial parks, and project frontlines, engaging in dialogues with entrepreneurs, experts, scholars, and government departments, to explore breakthroughs in Hunan's industrial transformation and upgrading, ecological renewal, and value reshaping.

From Small to Large, From Large to Strong, Both Established and Emerging Players Face "Growing Pains"

Hunan was exceptionally bustling in September. The Fourth International Summit on BDS Large-scale Applications drew huge crowds and saw the signing of 22 major projects. The Yuelu Summit, in its twelfth session, debuted with a fresh image as the Internet Yuelu Summit, with the HarmonyOS Ecosystem (Changsha) Innovation Center opening on the same day. The Hunan Tourism Development Conference, held five sessions over three years, has created a batch of cultural tourism projects with "traffic-driving appeal"… These rounds of matchmaking, exchanges, and cooperation represent Hunan's targeted moves based on its industrial realities and development potential.

Hunan has clear goals and a systematic approach to strengthening industrial chains. With the "4×4" modern industrial system serving as the "four beams and eight pillars," it has laid out 13 key industrial chains. Provincial leaders took charge of the industrial chains, mobilizing the efforts of the entire province to advance industrial upgrading. This aimed to fully concentrate various resource elements into the most promising and globally impactful "strategic points" to form cluster advantages.

Sustained efforts have yielded significant results.

The Changsha construction machinery industrial cluster has been listed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology as one of three world-class clusters under cultivation. The next-generation information technology industrial cluster has become the only national-level advanced manufacturing cluster in the computing sector. Taking the lead nationwide, Hunan has pioneered a new track in the intelligent weighing instrument industry. As the only national pilot province for green construction, the prefabricated building industry has broken through adversity. In the maglev field, Hunan is the only province in the country to achieve a complete chain from surveying, engineering construction, and rail manufacturing to final commercial operation.

Development always progresses in spirals and waves. Cultivating industrial chains requires continually breaking through developmental bottlenecks and steadily moving toward the high end of the chain. Inspections have revealed that while some industries possess relatively strong overall capabilities, their capacity to respond to external risks and challenges still needs improvement. A significant gap persists between being an industrial "plateau" and an industrial "peak." Certain industries, though uniquely recognizable as the "only ones in China," have yet to fully overcome the regret of "being early to start but late to the game."

A senior engineer at a leading construction machinery enterprise candidly noted that core hydraulic sealing systems remain partially reliant on imports, creating a "bottleneck" for the high-quality development of the industrial chain. The domestic self-sufficiency rate of high-end hydraulic components in the provincial construction machinery sector is relatively low.

As the core source of BeiDou technology, Hunan's industrial scale is less than one trillion CNY. "We possess unique expertise such as rapid BeiDou signal acquisition, but downstream large-scale applications are often overtaken by coastal regions leveraging market advantages," lamented the head of a BeiDou enterprise to the journalist.

"What we anticipate is not merely a simple clustering of enterprises but a deep 'chemical reaction,'" some enterprises reported during the survey of the intelligent weighing instrument industry. This industrial chain, both ancient and young, has long R&D cycles, deep research areas, and numerous applicable scenarios—which are both its strengths and challenges. Facing segmented vertical application scenarios requires higher-quality elements to support everything from timely upstream and downstream responses to standard-setting and international certification.

An official from the Development and Reform Commission of Hunan Province commented, "We need both to enable established players to sprout new branches and to allow new ones to strike deep roots—this is a process that demands patience and wisdom."

Wu Jinming, former director of the Economic, Scientific and Technological Committee of the CPPCC Hunan Provincial Committee and counselor of the provincial government, believes that the deep integration of "hardcore technology" with the "real economy" and the organic combination of "effective government" with "efficient market" have endowed Hunan's key industrial chains with distinctive characteristics. Based on its own "coordinate system" and "navigational markers," Hunan's industrial development should aim for the high end, strategically positioning "industrial chiefs" and the "crucial nodes of industries," emphasizing competition on "quality" and fostering "distinctive features."

"With Industry yet without a Leading Enterprise," "With a Leading Enterprise but without an Ecosystem" – Resolving the Dilemma of Clustering without Synergy

In modern society, with its high degree of division of labor and collaboration, industrial chains are long and involve numerous upstream and downstream links. A strong leading enterprise can significantly enhance the overall efficiency of the entire chain.

Let's examine vivid practices from within and beyond the province—

Through the "powerful collaboration" of two super chief enterprises, Muyuan and Shuanghui, Henan has achieved strengths in both farming and processing. Coupled with low feed costs as a major corn-producing area, the profit earned from a single pig in Henan is far higher than in Hunan.

The ability to gather tens of thousands of locomotive components in the time it takes for a cup of coffee underpins Hunan's status as home to the nation's largest rail transit equipment industrial cluster. Today, the industrial influence extends from Tianxin in Zhuzhou to surrounding counties and cities like Chaling, benefiting more enterprises within the chain.

With leading enterprises acting as "bellwethers" in digital and smart transformation, Hunan's construction machinery industry achieves "co-evolution" through "scenario-driven approaches." Changsha Jinzuan Machinery Co., Ltd. has been scaling up its operations, with company representatives noting, "By supplying components to leading main engine manufacturers, the quality and process standards of our products are also continuously improving."

Looking across the 13 key industrial chains, instances where leading enterprises drive the entire chain are still not common. During the inspection, enterprises in more than one chain expressed a sense of "having industries but lacking leading enterprises."

As a "land of fish and rice," Hunan has abundant water resources and ranks first and second nationally in rice planting area and output, respectively, yet it lacks nationally top-tier fish and rice brands. While Hunan's live pig slaughter volume ranks high nationwide, the annual revenue of its largest farming and meat processing enterprise currently exceeds 20 billion CNY, a significant gap compared to the nearly 60 billion CNY annual output value of nationally renowned meat processor Shuanghui. Agricultural products with strong Hunan characteristics, such as citrus, tea, and crayfish, face a similar situation. There are insufficient greening, standardization, and refinement in front-end production, coupled with a lack of leading brands and unified identifiers at the back end, making it difficult to strengthen the entire chain and expand comprehensive output value.

In 2024, Hunan's total tourism revenue surpassed the one trillion CNY mark, yet a true "chain-leading" enterprise has not yet emerged. The biomedical and medical device industrial chain in Hunan hosts 67,000 enterprises, but only one ranks among the national top 100.

Industrial chain development can occur through vertical integration or open collaboration. However, the dilemma of clustering without synergy—characterized by "having leading enterprises but missing crucial nodes" or "having chiefs but lacking an ecosystem"—troubles some current industrial chains.

Building a trillion-yuan modern petrochemical industry exemplifies the ambition of "oil-scarce" Hunan to propel traditional industries from the low end toward the high end. With leading enterprises emerging, two industrial "veterans" merged to form Hunan Petrochemical, driving the strategic transformation "from oil to materials." Through ambitious planning, a 600,000-tonne caprolactam project commenced production, and an integrated ethylene refining and chemical project accelerated construction, attracting supporting enterprises to settle in Hunan.

During the inspection, a staff member from the Yueyang Green Chemical High-Tech Zone said that internal synergy within the petrochemical chain is insufficient, supporting enterprises are "small, scattered, and weak," and the industrial predicament of having "both ends outside" has not been fully resolved. For example, a certain component needed for construction machinery within the province undergoes 20% of its processing from chemical raw materials in Hunan before being shipped to places like Hubei and Jiangsu for deep processing and then transported back to Hunan.

Only when enterprises are strong can the industry be strong. It takes large enterprises that "tower like pillars" and small and medium-sized enterprises that "blanket the landscape" to foster greater responsibility, more innovation, and a more prosperous industrial ecosystem.

Removing Bottlenecks, Coordinating the "Four Chains," and Building a "Rainforest-style" Industrial Ecosystem

From the perspective of the current national regional economic landscape, Hunan is at a critical stage of stabilizing its position while striving for advancement, navigating through arduous terrain. Only by confronting the gaps can the province possibly work to narrow them.

Looking inward, Hunan's industrial structure still heavily relies on traditional advantageous industries, which are themselves encountering growth bottlenecks. These industries have not yet formed strong support, and a pattern of "multi-point development" is not yet fully established.

Looking outward, compared to the "first-tier" coastal provinces, Hunan faces gaps in "developmental stage" and "opening-up capacity level." Compared to other central provinces, Hubei's strong "leading engine," Anhui's "breakthroughs in new tracks," and Henan's advantages in "scale clusters," are all worth learning from.

New tracks urgently require breakthroughs "from zero to one." An enterprise head noted that after completing the laboratory phase for new medicine development, they had to travel to other provinces to seek pilot-scale testing services, significantly increasing both time and capital costs. By 2024, the number of provincial-level or above pilot-scale testing bases was far lower than in provinces like Guangdong and Jiangsu, with some sectors having "zero pilot-scale platforms."

Tech-based SMEs face a financing drought. Enterprises in emerging sectors like commercial aerospace and chip design expressed, "Current investors mainly come from Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen," and "Why should local industrial funds take risks with early-stage investments if they cannot enjoy the industrial dividends?" On the talent recruitment challenge for SMEs, a Hengyang-based company specializing in high-end sensor technology had to search nationwide before finally recruiting a suitable chip architect.

Industrial chains form the "skeleton" of industrial development, industrial clusters constitute the "flesh and blood," and the industrial ecosystem represents the "soul." These three are not mutually exclusive substitutes but exist in progressively layered, mutually supportive relationships. Without robust industrial chains, clusters become "castles in the air." Lacking the spatial foundation of clusters, ecosystems struggle to take root. Without the nourishment of an ecosystem, industrial chains and clusters lose their capacity for continuous evolution.

Wu Jinming, diagnosing the shortcomings of Hunan's industrial chains, believes the essence lies in being "strong in isolated points, weak in systems; optimal in parts, yet scattered overall." This manifests specifically as insufficient resilience in industrial chains, disjointed innovation chain linkages, imprecise nurturing from the capital chain, and weak support from the talent chain.

In his view, the alignment of the industrial chain, innovation chain, capital chain, and talent chain—the "four chains"—is not a simple physical stacking but requires using scenarios as the thread to concentrate innovation, capital, and talent into Hunan's industries.

Aiming to optimize existing capacity and expand increments, Hunan has continuously improved relevant supporting policies for industrial development, issuing specific guidance or implementation plans. Guided by the "chain chief system," the "one map, two databases, and one team" approach for industrial chain investment attraction is constantly refined, further consolidating the collaborative synergy among "chain leaders, chain chiefs, and chain ecosystem." High-level coordination by provincial leaders dismantles barriers, integrates resources, and optimizes the environment. Dedicated industrial chain task forces have helped resolve a number of practical difficulties related to taxes, financing, logistics, and energy usage.

Starting last year, Hunan has been conducting the "Dual Entry and Dual Transformation" university-enterprise cooperation activity. It encourages enterprises to bring problems into universities and experts to bring achievements into enterprises, thereby promoting the transformation of achievements and enterprise transformation. Simultaneously, "three lists"—enterprise technology needs, expert teams, and university achievements—are published to support targeted matchmaking. Data from the Industry and Information Technology Department of Hunan Province shows this activity has facilitated the implementation of 522 cooperation projects, with contract values totaling 670 million CNY.

On September 19, Hunan hosted its first "Hunan Talent Forum." Condensing and forming a list of 275 key scientific and technological talent needs, with plans to introduce over 1,500 high-level talents of various types… Hunan has issued a "recruitment notice" to innovative talents globally, deeply integrating elements of "government-industry-academia-research-finance," enabling talent to not only "settle down" but also "thrive" in Hunan. Comments from internet users in other provinces remarked that Hunan is building industrial scenarios and forming angel investment alliances, preparing to overcome the hurdle where talent is easier to recruit than retain.

Xiao Linzi, an expert from the Hunan Academy of Social Sciences (Development Research Center of the Hunan Provincial People's Government), believes regional development must, based on its own industrial foundation and characteristics, progress from perfecting industrial chains to cultivating clusters, ultimately constructing an industrial ecosystem, in order to form a deep competitive edge that others cannot replicate. Relying on scientific research and talent is central to the race for industrial competitiveness, which will form a complete, closed ecological loop encompassing research, talent, projects, and industries, equipping industrial development with soaring wings.

One should take a long view of things. Holding the two trump cards of "core technology" and "manufacturing foundation," Hunan must maintain strategic resolve, persist in collaborative innovation, and allow various business entities to grow competitively like trees, shrubs, and grasses. Ultimately, this will form a vibrant, "rainforest-style" industrial ecosystem that "cannot be dismantled, relocated, or crushed."

Chinese source: hunan.gov.cn