Sichuan Province

The skeleton of Sichuan's modern industry was erected by Third Front construction. After 1964, the state laid out and launched more than 300 construction projects in Sichuan across defense, machinery, electric power and many other industries, investing over 30 billion yuan; among the "key Third Front projects" chart displayed in the Party history exhibition hall, Sichuan accounts for 16. On October 13, 1958, Deyang held the groundbreaking ceremony for the Southwest Heavy Machinery Plant (later renamed China Erzhong) and the Deyang Hydraulic Power Equipment Plant (later renamed Dongfang Electric). Erzhong went into full production in January 1971, and the Dongfang Turbine Plant was completed and commissioned in November 1974. Between 1964 and 1978 the state invested 1 billion yuan in Deyang — one-twentieth of the national total. Chengdu's eastern suburbs, under the combined push of the First Five-Year Plan and Third Front construction, became one of the country's three major electronic-industry bases: the Jinjiang Electric Motor Plant (Plant 784) was prepared in 1953 as one of the 156 key Soviet-aided projects and entered production in December 1958; the same year Plant 420, Plant 132, the Hongguang Electron Tube Plant and the Hongming Radio Equipment Plant followed, and the eastern suburbs eventually gathered 253 large and medium-sized enterprises. In Mianyang, military-industrial enterprises including the Huafeng Radio Equipment Plant (Plant 796), the Changhong Machine Plant (Plant 780) and the Fujiang Machine Plant (Plant 783, today's Jiuzhou) were built between October 1958 and December 1960; in May 1965 the central government approved the China Academy of Engineering Physics' research base in Mianyang, and by the late 1970s total state Third Front investment in Mianyang exceeded 2 billion yuan. Luzhou was anchored by the "Chang Three Plants" and the Luzhou Natural Gas Chemical Plant, while Yibin took on 49 key construction projects in 1964–1968, 17 of them military. After reform and opening up, Third Front enterprises broadly shifted from military to civilian production; Mianyang was designated a national pilot city for "invigorating the city through military-to-civilian science and technology" in 1991, and in September 2000 the central government announced the construction of Mianyang Science City. Third Front enterprises were generally "large and all-inclusive" — main plants handled final assembly while dedicated cooperating plants supplied components — a structure that meant later technological upgrades were usually whole-plant retrofits rather than single-machine replacements. The Panzhihua steel base broke ground in 1965 and tapped its No. 1 blast furnace on July 1, 1970; the Chengdu–Kunming Railway opened the same period, linking the Panxi vanadium–titanium magnetite resources with the interior.

In 2025, Sichuan's GDP reached 6,766.534 billion yuan, up 5.5%, of which industrial value added was 1,843.91 billion yuan, up 6.2%, contributing 31.8% to economic growth. At year-end there were 20,088 above-scale industrial enterprises; full-year above-scale industrial value added grew 6.5%, with a sales-to-output ratio of 96.1%. Value added grew in 33 of 41 major industry categories: automobile manufacturing up 16.7%, electrical machinery and equipment manufacturing 13.2%, computer, communications and other electronic equipment manufacturing 12.9%, and chemical raw materials and chemical products manufacturing 12.8%. High-tech manufacturing value added grew 12.3%, and the six major advantaged industries grew 6.8%. Above-scale industrial enterprises recorded operating revenue of 4,938.58 billion yuan, up 2.1%, and total profit of 341.97 billion yuan, up 2.5%. Among major products, industrial-robot output grew 45.9%, lithium-ion batteries 45.1%, automobiles 29.6%, and integrated circuits 15.4%. The six major advantaged industries are electronic information, equipment manufacturing, advanced materials, food and light textiles, energy and chemicals, and medical health; in 2024 the province's food industry recorded operating revenue of 650.82 billion yuan and total profit of 105.16 billion yuan. On clusters, the Chengdu–Deyang–Mianyang–Liangshan aerospace cluster was selected as a national advanced-manufacturing cluster; the province has cumulatively cultivated five national advanced-manufacturing clusters and 21 national-level characteristic industrial clusters for SMEs, with 544 national specialized and innovative "little giant" enterprises. Provincial industrial investment grew 7.3% in 2025. On the agricultural side, grain output was 36.625 million tons in 2025; 62.48 million hogs were marketed, keeping the province first in the country; and total agricultural machinery power at year-end was 53.057 million kW, up 2.6%. By region, Chengdu has built momentum in electronic information and aviation equipment, Mianyang in new displays, Deyang in high-end energy equipment, Yibin in power batteries and crystalline-silicon PV, and Luzhou in baijiu and chemical new materials. On the investment side, provincial fixed-asset investment fell 2.4% in 2025, yet industrial investment grew 7.3% against the trend and purchases of equipment and tools grew 11.5% — funds flowed mainly to production lines rather than factory buildings.

In 2025, provincial industrial-robot output grew 45.9% year on year. Through the three-year action plan for smart upgrading and digital transformation, Sichuan has cumulatively implemented over 130,000 smart-upgrade projects covering more than 19,000 above-scale industrial enterprises; the CNC-ization rate of key processes reached 68.8%, and adopting enterprises lifted average efficiency by 25.2%. As of 2025 the province had built 761 basic-level, 104 advanced-level, 20 excellent-level and one leading-level smart factories (Chengdu Aircraft Industry is the only one in the western region), plus 48 national 5G factories and four global Lighthouse Factories. Automobiles are the most concentrated application: Sichuan Lynk & Co has more than 600 manufacturing robots and over 600 AGV logistics robots, with automation rates above 95% in the stamping and welding workshops. In heavy equipment, Dongfang Turbine's "lights-out" blade line achieves 0.03 mm machining precision and a 99% pass rate, with per-capita efficiency up 650%; Dongfang Electric's "unmanned workshop" for stator punchings raised capacity from over 9,000 tons to 15,000 tons. Baijiu brewing is the most distinctive: at Luzhou Laojiao's Huangyi smart packaging center, five lines average 15,000 bottles per hour and the workforce was cut from 150 to 10; its self-developed steamer-loading robot reproduces the traditional craft of "light, even spreading and steam-sensing loading," and an automated grain-mixing system completes in two minutes a process that once took 40. In agricultural product processing, Yibin Dekang's 3-million-hog-per-year slaughter project uses CO2 stunning and automatic grading robotic arms, slaughtering 450 head per hour; a citrus smart-sorting line in Qionglai, Chengdu uses AI machine vision to grade sugar content with over 95% accuracy. Systematic data on sectoral industrial-robot holdings and robot density (units per 10,000 industrial workers) have yet to be authoritatively published (to be verified). Definitions first: holdings are the cumulative number of units in service at a point in time (stock); annual installations are units newly installed in the year (flow); robot density follows the IFR definition of units per 10,000 industrial workers. In May 2026 the provincial Commission of Economy and Information Technology released the first batch of 14 typical "robot + industry" scenarios and 65 key products (39 complete machines plus 26 key components), covering the five links of welding, logistics handling, grasping and machine loading/unloading, inspection, and assembly and machining — a ready-made benchmark list for model selection. Lithium batteries and PV are concentrated in Yibin: Sichuan CATL is the world's second lithium-battery Lighthouse Factory, with a 95% automation rate and 97% domestic-sourcing rate; its fourth-generation line produces one cell per second, and its self-developed automatic PACK line runs at 80% automation. In tobacco, the Shifang Cigarette Factory became the industry's first cigarette factory to pass the Level 4 smart-manufacturing capability maturity assessment in 2023; intelligent production scheduling improved efficiency by more than 500%, and AGVs plan routes by 5G signal to deliver auxiliary materials.