en.Wedoany.com Reported - In the recently released "semi-annual report" on China's economy for 2026, which sectors are the "main drivers" of industry? And who is "carrying the banner" within industry? The answer lies in two key terms: Equipment Manufacturing, High-Tech Manufacturing. Over the past six months, global orders for 3D printing equipment and lithium-ion batteries have exploded, leaving factories struggling to keep up.

Consumer-Grade 3D Printers:

China Holds 90% Global Share, Output and Exports Surge

A technology company in Shenzhen spent 240 days and invested millions of yuan to create a fully 3D-printed show home. All 2,000+ soft furnishings inside were printed in-house, ranging from small lampshades and ornaments to a 1.8-meter sofa. Multiple materials such as resin, ceramic, and titanium alloy can be printed, vividly demonstrating that 3D printing has long moved beyond the limitations of "handmade toys," covering scenarios from custom home furnishing to industrial precision machining.

Currently, this factory has over 30 workers on one assembly line, assembling one machine every two minutes. With day and night shifts alternating, daily production capacity reaches 800 units. They have nearly 20 such production lines. Yet, even with workers putting in overtime, demand still outstrips supply. Orders for the entire year are already fully booked, with order volume up 30% year-on-year. The company is accelerating expansion to meet the surging global market demand.

Leveraging Shenzhen's mature electronics supply chain, Chinese companies have reduced the cost of industrial 3D printing equipment, which cost hundreds of thousands of yuan years ago, to a fraction of that. Combined with AI-powered one-click modeling that simplifies operation, consumer-grade 3D printers have rapidly gained market traction.

In the first half of this year, domestic production of consumer-grade 3D printing equipment increased by 48.5% year-on-year. From January to May, exports reached 2.94 million units, a surge of 90% year-on-year, with an export value of 7.82 billion yuan, up 106.8%. China firmly holds 90% of the global consumer-grade 3D printing equipment market.

Energy Storage Lithium Batteries:

AI Computing Power Creates Essential Demand, Orders Surge 30-Fold in H1

A battery factory in Huizhou is also bustling with activity. The chief R&D engineer stated that production in the first half of the year was "incredibly hectic." On the day of the interview, they received an urgent order worth hundreds of millions of yuan, requiring the immediate delivery of over 8,000 energy storage battery packs. The company's energy storage battery orders surged 30-fold in the first half of the year, and a veteran employee with 15 years of experience had never seen such robust market demand.

The core driving force behind the explosion of the energy storage industry is the rapid global expansion of the AI computing power sector:

• Data centers for large model training and inference consume enormous amounts of electricity. Power outages can easily cause computing interruptions and hardware damage, making millisecond-level energy storage backup power an essential requirement for computing power infrastructure;

• The power load of AI server rooms fluctuates drastically. Energy storage devices can smoothly regulate the grid load, serving as an indispensable stable foundation for new computing power infrastructure.

A company executive stated that during the "15th Five-Year Plan" period, the total investment scale in the energy industry will reach 20 trillion yuan, with new energy storage and computing-electricity synergy being key development directions. Leveraging the "East Data West Computing" project, green electricity bases in Northwest China, combined with energy storage equipment, can directly export computing power resources, offering vast long-term growth space for the energy storage industry.

In the first half of this year, national lithium-ion battery production increased by 39.3% year-on-year, and the shipment volume of energy storage batteries grew by over 80%. National plans clearly set a target of 300 GW of new energy storage installed capacity by 2030, doubling the 136 GW scale at the end of 2025. "Computing-electricity synergy" was also included in the government work report for the first time, signifying coordinated planning of computing power and electricity, ensuring strong long-term demand certainty for the energy storage sector.

Industry has not only stabilized the fundamentals but has also become the main force driving economic growth.

• The added value of equipment manufacturing and high-tech manufacturing grew by 9.3% and 13.3%, respectively;

• The contribution rate of new growth drivers to the growth of industrial enterprises above designated size reached 47.9%, an increase of 12 percentage points compared to the full year of the previous year.

This means that the industrial structure is accelerating its shift towards innovation. The production capacity explosion and full overseas order books for high-tech products like 3D printing equipment and lithium batteries are vivid illustrations of this trend.