China urged to develop software to support industrial IoT, seek cooperation

China’s manufacturing faces challenges due to the lack of core software to support the industrial Internet of Things (IoT) and it should make efforts to reduce dependence on foreign software developers amid China-US trade friction, industry insiders said.

Faced with growing Sino-US trade tensions, Chinese information technology (IT) companies are being urged to develop basic and core software systems.

“It has never been so urgent for China to make breakthroughs in software development,” Chen Zhaoxiong, vice minister of Industry and Information Technology, told a conference held in Beijing on Sunday.

As its next steps, the ministry will focus on developing industrial software and proprietary open source systems, Xie Shaofeng, director of the IT and software department under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the same conference.

The nation’s Made in China 2025 strategy highlights major tasks to boost the country’s manufacturing sector such as breakthroughs in industrial software and proprietary platform software.

Chinese companies’ heavy dependence on foreign companies has meant they have accumulated little core data for manufacturing processes, which has increased the difficulty of developing the industrial IoT in the country.

“As we’ve been relying on foreign suppliers such as Siemens and Dassault for many years in industrial software, domestic companies lag in core technologies for smart manufacturing,” said Justin Ju, senior vice president of ChinaSoft International.

For instance, in the product lifecycle management and engineering software sector, Dassault Systemes and Siemens were among the top 10 vendors in 2016, and Dassault led with $2.5 billion in licenses, according to the industry information site appsruntheworld.com.

Industry representatives also called for more support from the ministry to encourage fundamental research and the creation of a special fund to support industrial software development.

Like foreign conglomerates such as GE and Siemens that have been undertaking merger and acquisition (M&A) deals with software companies, Chinese companies could also seek technology cooperation with foreign software developers, Ju noted.

“While seeking technology transfers from large companies like Dassault might be difficult, Chinese companies could carry out M&A deals with smaller companies in European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands,” he said.

The Made in China 2025 plan recently aroused concerns overseas over

preferential industrial policies for hinese companies. Addressing these concerns, Chia’s Ministry of Commerce said on hursday that Made in China 2025 nd other industrial policies implemented by the Chinese government e guiding documents in nature, and e open to all foreign-funded compasses. “China is mainly looking at the use of big data and the integration of the into production lines, so there is ope for foreign companies to participate in this blueprint in terms of providing core industrial software,” ang Jianmin, dean of the school of software of Tsinghua University, who participated in drafting the plan, told e Global Times. Wang noted that from shipbuilding to aircraft, most companies use reign-developed software. And the overnment’s push for smart manufacturing might offer new opportunies.