By Cheng Yuanzhou, People’s Daily

By 9 a.m., the streets and alleys of Huaqiangbei in Shenzhen’s Futian district are already bustling with activity. 

SEG Electronics Market, the Electronic Technology Building, and other shopping centers open their doors one after another. Stalls overflow with a wide array of smart electronic products, while buyers and tourists from around the world navigate the crowded markets, suitcases in hand, exploring and testing the latest innovations.

Known as “China’s No. 1 Electronics Street,” Huaqiangbei is home to 35 specialized markets and more than 115,000 businesses. It supplies more than 1 million types of electronic components and consumer electronics to markets around the world, establishing itself as a major global hub for electronics and technology consumption. 

According to Chen Jiongwen, Party chief of Huaqiangbei subdistrict, the area receives an average of 750,000 visitors a day, including more than 8,000 international visitors. For most merchants, foreign trade accounts for over 70 percent of sales.

Indian businessman Mall Kaoyou arrived with his suitcase and a clear goal: sourcing China’s latest smart electronics.

He stepped into the global AI hardware selection center operated by Zhipinku, a supply chain and channel service platform, located on the first floor of the Electronic Technology Building. There, a pair of AI glasses caught his eye. Staff walked him through its full suite of functions: real-time translation, high-definition shooting, lossless music, and an in-built smart assistant. Kaoyou quickly tried on the glasses to experience them firsthand.

“It’s amazing!” he remarked during the demonstration, asking about technical specifications and pricing. “These cost at least 1/3 less than comparable items on global e-commerce platforms, yet  they offer more features,” Kaoyou noted.

The store also offers AI companion robots, smart headphones, misting fans, and more, carrying over 300 smart hardware products from more than 80 Chinese brands. Every product is labeled with information in both Chinese and English. As Kaoyou tried one product after another, his shopping list kept growing.

“I’ve never seen many of these products before. This place feels like a window into future technology,” he told People’s Daily.

In the past, foreign visitors to Huaqiangbei mainly came to source electronic components. Today, consumer electronics such as smart robots, AI wearables, and smart home appliances are increasingly popular. Many international visitors now come specifically to experience newly launched products at the earliest opportunity, said Meng Hangfang, co-founder of Zhipinku.

Overseas social media platforms are further expanding Huaqiangbei’s global reach. A new model combining online discovery, offline experiences, global sourcing, and cross-border sales is taking shape. More and more Huaqiangbei merchants are using platforms such as AliExpress to sell their products around the world. The latest data show that electronics from Huaqiangbei are now exported to more than 190 countries and regions.

Kaoyou first learned about Huaqiangbei through social media. “Many influencers recommend this place and call its electronic products a ‘Shenzhen specialty,'” he said. “After coming here, I found the biggest attraction isn’t just the low prices — it’s the innovation. Many products can be bought here before they appear anywhere else.”

After trying the AI glasses, Kaoyou came up with a new idea.

“If you could make AI glasses tailored to the Indian market, with multilingual translation and longer battery life for high-temperature environments, they would definitely sell well,” he said.

“No problem. We can help you work with the brand, and you could have a customized sample in as little as two days,” Meng replied immediately.

This kind of rapid customization is increasingly commonplace in Huaqiangbei. More than 90 percent of the core components needed for a smart device can be sourced within an hour. Merchants can also quickly adjust hardware functions, system languages and exterior molds according to the usage habits and needs of consumers in different countries, making it possible to combine small-batch flexible customization with large-scale production.

“In the past, sourcing a customized smart hardware product often meant working with dozens of suppliers in different locations. Just getting a prototype could take weeks or even months. Huaqiangbei is incredibly efficient,” Kaoyou said after hearing how the process works.

That efficiency is rooted in Huaqiangbei’s mature and highly integrated ecosystem for technological innovation and industrial development.

Huaqiangbei is developing a model in which a product can be designed in the morning, prototyped in the afternoon, put into mass production the next day and shipped overseas within a week. A new smart product can go from an initial concept to overseas shipment in just one week.

For smartphones and other complete devices, the fastest path from concept to mass production is about one month, while the average iteration cycle for consumer electronics has been shortened to three to six months, far faster than the global industry average, Chen said.

Kaoyou said some of his friends back in India had previously brought back small quantities of AI headphones and multilingual translators from Shenzhen. Their advanced features and high quality quickly made them sell out at retail stores in India.

“I hope Chinese AI-powered electronics can help upgrade India’s smart consumer market and make my business bigger and bigger,” he said. He is also looking forward to working with brands in Huaqiangbei on joint customization, bringing more products made with Chinese ingenuity to the South Asian market.

By Yu Sinan, People’s Daily

In Kuqa, a city in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, rows of solar panels stretch across the Gobi desert. The green electricity they generate travels more than 20 kilometers to a hydrogen production plant, where it is used to electrolyze water into hydrogen. The hydrogen is then piped to a refining and chemical enterprise for use.

This facility is the Sinopec Xinjiang Kuqa Green Hydrogen Pilot Project, China’s first photovoltaic-based hydrogen production plant to reach the 10,000-tonne scale. The project began producing hydrogen on June 30, 2023, and integrates hydrogen production, storage, transportation, and application. By tapping into the region’s abundant solar energy, it produces green hydrogen directly from photovoltaic power and supplies it to Tahe Refining & Chemical Company, a subsidiary of China’s largest oil refiner Sinopec. The green hydrogen replaces the natural gas that was previously used in the oil refining process.

“If the project runs at full capacity, it can cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 485,000 tonnes a year,” said Li Ruixia, manager of the hydrogen energy management department at Sinopec Star New Energy Co., Ltd. Li said the project has operated safely and steadily for more than three years, proving the feasibility of large-scale industrial applications of green hydrogen.

Hydrogen is an abundant, low-carbon secondary energy source with a wide range of applications. Hydrogen production is the first step in the hydrogen industry chain. Based on production methods and associated carbon emissions, hydrogen generally falls into three categories: grey hydrogen, derived from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas and associated with high carbon emissions; blue hydrogen, also produced from fossil fuels but using more complex and costly technologies that capture emissions; and green hydrogen, produced by electrolyzing water using renewable electricity from sources such as wind and solar.

Hydrogen is an essential industrial feedstock in oil refining. Replacing conventional grey and blue hydrogen with green hydrogen can unlock new growth potential for the hydrogen industry while supporting the low-carbon transition of the petrochemical sector.

The potential of green hydrogen extends beyond refining to industries such as steelmaking, power generation, and transportation. At the Linyi Lingang Economic Development Zone in Linyi, east China’s Shandong province, a pure hydrogen shaft furnace demonstration line operated by China Iron & Steel Research Institute Group Co., Ltd. has completed the full process of producing high-purity iron using pure hydrogen metallurgy technology. The line has achieved regular production of direct reduced iron with a metallization rate above 96 percent, along with batch trial production of 3N-grade (99.9 percent) high-purity iron.

When hydrogen is used to reduce iron oxide, the main byproducts are metallic iron and water vapor, meaning the tail gas from the pure hydrogen shaft furnace has no harmful emissions and significantly reduces environmental impacts. The demonstration project marks the first successful application of pure hydrogen shaft furnace technology in China. It has operated stably for more than 8,000 hours, with a single continuous run exceeding 2,000 hours, fully demonstrating its safety and reliability.

Hydrogen’s high energy density makes it particularly suitable for long-distance transportation, and it is now being used in public transit, cold-chain logistics and trunk-line freight.

During the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, 200 hydrogen-powered buses equipped with fuel cell systems developed by SPIC Hydrogen Energy under State Power Investment Corporation provided transportation services for the Games. The buses operated under challenging conditions, including low temperatures, snowfall and mountain roads, covering a total of more than 880,000 kilometers and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 620 tonnes, with zero carbon emissions, zero accidents, and zero operational errors throughout the event.

By the end of 2025, cumulative sales of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in China had reached nearly 40,000 units. Applications for hydrogen fuel cell technology had expanded beyond passenger vehicles to include mining trucks, ships, drones, and rail transit. Meanwhile, the country had built 574 hydrogen refueling stations with a combined daily refueling capacity of more than 360 tonnes. In the industrial sector, green hydrogen had begun to steadily replace conventional fuels in certain refining and coal chemical processes, and the country’s green hydrogen production capacity had reached about 250,000 tonnes. 

These developments signal a broader shift: China’s hydrogen industry is moving from technology demonstration toward large-scale commercial deployment, with its application potential continuing to grow.

The steady growth of China’s hydrogen industry reflects both rising market demand and the combined impact of enterprise innovation across the industrial chain, supported by proactive government policies. Several national plans have elevated hydrogen to a strategic priority: the outline of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) designates hydrogen as a key area for future industries, while the plan for building a new energy system during the same period includes hydrogen in the non-fossil energy supply system and sets a target of producing 2 million tonnes of hydrogen from renewable energy sources.

After years of development, China has become the world’s largest producer and consumer of hydrogen, with extensive experience and a solid industrial foundation in hydrogen supply. However, the industry is still at an early stage and faces several bottlenecks. These include high production costs, limited economic viability, and incomplete market and pricing mechanisms — challenges that continue to hinder the commercial rollout of green hydrogen.

Green hydrogen combines the advantages of clean energy and energy storage, making it an important pathway for deep industrial decarbonization and for achieving China’s dual carbon goals of peaking carbon emissions by 2030 and reaching carbon neutrality by 2060, Li said.

Li added that as technologies for solar, wind and other forms of green power continue to advance and costs continue to decline, while the capacity and performance of electrolyzers and fuel cells improve, ongoing technological innovation and material upgrades will help lower the cost of producing and using green hydrogen and enhance the industry’s competitiveness.

By Li Gang, People’s Daily

At Dongguan Port in Dongguan, south China’s Guangdong province, giant “express parcels” are being lifted onto ocean-going vessels. From a distance, they look like ordinary shipping containers. But up close, each container reveals itself to be a fully finished house. 

These modular units are shipped across the seas to Australia, North America and the Middle East, where they are assembled like building blocks to form hotels, apartments, hospitals and other structures.

Why have China’s container-like prefabricated houses become so popular in global markets? People’s Daily looked into the story.

Inside a smart factory operated by China Construction Science and Industry Corp. Ltd., a subsidiary of Chinese construction company China State Construction Engineering Corporation, in Huizhou, Guangdong, there is no dust or scaffolding typically seen at construction sites. 

Instead, a fully automated production line, stretching more than 400 meters, runs around the clock. Here, a house is divided into six panels, each manufactured simultaneously on six sub-lines before being assembled into a complete module. Construction precision is consistently maintained at the millimeter level.

A single production line at the factory can turn out 50 housing modules a day, according to Li Huakun, chief engineer of China Construction Science and Industry Green Technology Co., Ltd. That is 10 times the daily output of similar factories in North America, where the figure is around five modules.

At a smart construction industrial park operated by China State Construction Hailong Technology Company Limited in Longgang, Shenzhen, a four-story, 50-meter-high vertical factory likewise bears none of the raucous commotion typical of conventional construction sites.

Every 20 minutes, a fully equipped module rolls off the production line, said Wang Qiong, chief engineer of the company. With 190 workstations and more than 80 pieces of equipment linked together, the facility has essentially turned house building into an industrial manufacturing process: raw materials such as sand and gravel enter at one end, and a finished housing module emerges   at the other.

The facility is home to the world’s first flexible smart manufacturing production line for concrete MiC (modular integrated construction), overcoming a major challenge in the mass production of concrete modules. 

Construction materials are stored in a 10-story automated warehouse, while nearly 100 automated guided vehicles (AGVs) move around the factory, delivering materials according to production schedules. 

Inspection robots use laser scanning to reconstruct the interiors of modules in three dimensions, with any millimeter-level deviation automatically identified and flagged by the system.

“More than 70 percent of construction processes have been moved to the factory, which cuts construction periods by over 60 percent,” Wang said. The production line is capable of delivering 20,000 to 30,000 concrete prefabricated modules annually.

Prefabricated houses mainly fall into three categories: steel structures, concrete structures, and wooden structures. Chinese companies have developed strong advantages, particularly in steel and concrete technologies. The parallel development of the two technical approaches has given China’s construction sector greater flexibility and competitiveness in global markets.

With industrialized standards, digitalized precision, and automated efficiency, houses are increasingly shifting from being “built on construction sites” to being “manufactured in factories.”

In New South Wales, Australia, giant “express parcels” shipped from Dongguan Port are arriving one after another, and an apartment complex is rapidly taking shape.

Traditional building construction involves laying foundations, erecting scaffolding, constructing walls, plastering, and decorating step by step. But that is not how this project is being built. The giant “express parcels” arrive with structural components, walls, electrical and plumbing systems, and interior finishes already completed in Chinese factories. The only task left at the site is assembly — much like putting together building blocks.

From the arrival of the modules at the construction site to completion of the main structure takes only a few months, whereas a traditional project of the same scale in Australia would typically take two and a half years, Li told People’s Daily.

In Australia, labor costs account for 30 to 40 percent of the total cost of traditional construction. Modular construction shifts a large number of processes to factories in China, reducing on-site labor by more than half and cutting the construction period by more than half. As a result, overall construction costs can be reduced by more than 10 percent, Li said.

More importantly, modular construction delivers higher quality. Factory-built modules boast far higher precision than on-site manual construction. Every unit undergoes full-range quality inspection prior to delivery, enabling a perfectly tight, seamless fit during on-site assembly.

Dubai, a major hub for construction in the Middle East, has long relied on traditional cast-in-place concrete standards in its approval system. Before this, there had been no precedent for approving multi-story MiC projects.

In 2025, China State Construction Hailong Technology Company Limited obtained Dubai’s first preliminary approval in principle for a MiC project. The company adapted its technology to U.S. standards and Dubai’s building codes, improved structural calculation documentation, and transformed Chinese project experience into localized technical materials. The approval marked a shift for Chinese construction from “benchmarking against international standards” to “integrating into the international market.”

“Overseas clients care most about three things: delivery quality, delivery efficiency, and cost,” said Jiang Li, deputy general manager of China Construction Science and Industry. Supported by robotics, digital factories, and green building materials, China’s construction industry is increasingly able to deliver on all three fronts.

Behind this success lies the world’s most complete construction industry chain. From steel and concrete to bathroom fixtures and electrical appliances, almost every component can be quickly sourced in China. Customized solutions also ensure structural safety during overseas transportation.

“Modular construction represents a new quality productive force for the construction industry,” Wang said. Having achieved industrialized production and data-driven management across the entire process, Wang’s company is now confident that China’s modular construction technologies will become an important driver of the global transformation toward industrialized construction.