"It functions like an 'air taxi', with a maximum range of 200 kilometers and capacity for six people, including the pilot—one more seat than a standard taxi." In the midst of summer, at the exhibition hall of Sichuan Aerofugia Technology Development Co., Ltd. in Chengdu High-tech Industrial Development Zone, Chief Marketing Officer Fei Lan introduced the company's product—a manned electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft—to a visiting delegation from abroad. With 80 percent of its components overlapping with new energy vehicles, this aircraft essentially extends the automotive industry chain into the skies.

"Making targeted efforts to build a modern industrial system" is both the earnest instruction from the General Secretary Xi Jinping to Sichuan and a vivid practice of the province's industrial transformation. With the overarching strategy of promoting new industrialization, Sichuan has translated the blueprint of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) into an actionable roadmap for quality enhancement and output doubling in six advantaged industries. Today, a modern industrial system characterized by integrated upstream-downstream linkages, synergistic industrial chains, and highly efficient coordination across all sectors is rapidly taking shape and gaining momentum across the land of Tianfu.

Soaring through the Skies, Connecting the Cloud through Industrial Chains

When envisioning the future of urban low-altitude mobility, Fei Lan pictures a comprehensive scenario: across busy urban areas like commercial centers and transportation hubs, there will be "flight stations" similar to bus stops or subway platforms. Passengers can simply book a ride via a mobile app, and a vehicle will pick them up and take them to the nearest station, enabling them to "hail a flying taxi" with a single tap.

"The 'air taxi' does more than just improve transportation networks," Fei Lan remarked, pointing at the AE200 eVTOL (electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft) before her. "From a supply chain perspective, about 80 percent of eVTOL components overlap with those of new energy vehicles, while the remaining 20 percent are related to aviation. This is a classic example of an integrated innovation industry."

In Sichuan, the automotive industry is steadily extending its advantages "upward". Building upon the foundation in "three electrics" (battery, motor, electronic control), new materials, and smart technologies accumulated through the new energy vehicle sector, a growing number of innovations are now taking flight, injecting robust momentum into industrial integration and development.

In the workshop of Chengdu Chenfei Zhijiang Technology Co., Ltd., milling cutters and support devices meticulously smooth the aircraft's surface. The aircraft skin processed by mirror milling now achieves a precision of 0.1 millimeters, an improvement over the previous standard of 0.3 millimeters. This 0.2-millimeter improvement translates to a weight reduction of hundreds of kilograms for the aircraft. "Globally, only three companies are capable of producing this type of mirror milling equipment—and one of them is from China," stated Shi Jing, General Manager of Chenfei Zhijiang, with palpable pride. He brought this technology to Sichuan with a clear goal: to advance the manufacturing of skin panels for China's domestically developed large passenger aircraft. "The company's first domestically produced aircraft skin has already been delivered and accepted," he added.

From producing the nose section that houses the "brain" of the C919 aircraft to applying the "skin-polishing" technology that enables hundreds of kilograms of weight reduction, Sichuan-made components are shining ever more brightly in the field of China's domestic large passenger aircraft manufacturing.

On the aerospace manufacturing track, Sichuan is steadily advancing forward. Leveraging its refined standards of high-precision and cutting-edge craftsmanship, a "high-reliability" quality system, and capabilities in "extreme manufacturing", the province is turning more and more aerospace visions into reality.

At Galactic Energy, an aerospace company in Ziyang City, workers are assembling the third Ceres-1 rocket with intense concentration. "The Sichuan-made Ceres-1 rocket has already successfully delivered two 'packages' to space," said Zhang Jiaju, head of the Integrated Management Department, with unmistakable pride in his voice.

On September 5, the third Ceres-1 rocket, having completed final assembly and testing, was successfully launched from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center. The mission not only deployed three satellites but also precisely delivered the Eros Retained Orbit Test Platform into its planned sun-synchronous orbit. As China's first commercial rocket upper stage stay-in-orbit test platform, independently developed by a private enterprise, the Eros platform will remain operational in orbit after completing its primary mission to conduct long-term in-orbit tests and maneuver verifications.

With the successful launch of the platform, the "space delivery service" is steadily evolving into a "provider of key core technologies". Behind these developments, Ziyang has already begun building the "Western Region Commercial Rocket Valley", positioning itself to become a core growth engine for the commercial aerospace industry in western China and a national benchmark for low-cost manufacturing in the sector.

From "air taxis" to large passenger aircraft and onward to the stars, Sichuan is centering its strategy on the "chain" approach, achieving coordinated advancement across ground, cloud, and space—enabling one industrial chain to drive breakthroughs in multiple sectors.

Sichuan's Torrents Flow into a Smart-Tech Future

Viewed from a drone's perspective, the millennia-old Dujiangyan Irrigation System lies nestled among the mountains and rivers. "Ancient people achieved maximum benefits through minimal intervention, and today, our digital twin system makes such interventions even more precise and reliable," remarked Li Jin, Director of the Dujiangyan Irrigation District Command Center of Sichuan Province, succinctly capturing the enduring wisdom of water management across the ages.

On the large screen in the command center, data streams in real-time from 1,604 hydrological monitoring stations and 1,792 video surveillance devices. Combined with the "sky eye" capability of drones, the Dujiangyan headworks digital twin system achieves multi-dimensional monitoring of hydrological and engineering conditions across the irrigation district. Empowered by digital twin technology, Dujiangyan's regulatory capacity that ensures "no waterlogging in heavy rain, no drought in rainless spells" has become more precise and effective than ever.

This wave of "digital intelligence" is flowing along the millennia-old waterways, permeating the land of Sichuan. It has endowed the ancient irrigation system with the ability to "think," while simultaneously pushing the modern energy equipment to break through new limits in its performance and reliability.

Inside the digital workshop of Dongfang Electric Machinery Co., Ltd. of Dongfang Electric Corporation, robots are performing precision welding on the runner of a 500 MW impulse hydroturbine, the world's largest in terms of single-unit capacity.

"The challenge was to ensure each bucket could withstand 15 billion impacts—equivalent to the energy of a 7.5-ton truck crashing at 100 kilometers per hour," explained Jin Bao, a senior welding process engineer at the company, using this vivid analogy. "The result has been astounding: the first-pass yield exceeded 99 percent after robotic welding."

So what makes robotic welding so exceptional? "By strictly executing pre-programmed welding parameters, the robots produce flawless welds. Although the precision required rivals 'using an iron arm to embroider', the technology has significantly enhanced both welding quality and efficiency." Yang Wangbo, Deputy Director of the Digital and Smart Manufacturing Technology Department at the company, stated that over 95 percent of the runner's manufacturing process now employs digital and intelligent methods. "This lays a solid foundation for the high-quality, high-efficiency, and scalable production of future products designed for even higher hydraulic heads and greater capacity," he added.

At Leshan Port, the surging Minjiang River carries a steady flow of record-setting energy equipment from Sichuan to power plants at home and abroad, with the wave of digital and intelligent transformation gaining momentum along the way.

By 2024, Sichuan had established over 270 smart factories and more than 1,200 digital workshops. As of now, the numerical control rate of key production processes in industrial enterprises across the province has reached 64.7 percent, and the adoption rate of digital R&D tools stands at 85.3 percent, marking increases of 0.6 and 0.3 percentage points, respectively, since the beginning of 2025. Empowered by digital intelligence, Sichuan's traditional industries have gained a more robust foundation, while new growth sectors are seeing smoother development.

Tapping into the Subsurface: Unlocking Carbon Potential

Nestled deep in the mountains of Yanting County, Mianyang City, the Yanting Natural Gas Processing Plant—operated by PetroChina Southwest Oil &Gasfield Company—is China's first full-chain, multi-condition cryogenic treatment facility for natural gas, hailed as a "cryogenic aircraft carrier". Although the plant has been fully operational for only about two months, its significance is considerable: it is tackling key challenges in extracting high-value-added products from natural gas in China.

Wen Lianyong, a superior technician in the plant, explained, "Our work involves breaking natural gas 'into pieces' as its temperature plummets from ambient to an extreme -170°C."

Can natural gas really be "broken into pieces"? He continued, "Underground natural gas contains various impurities and valuable components. To extract and commercialize them, we need to separate the gas using different equipment and methods within specific temperature ranges. In the past, this would have been impossible to achieve with a single processing plant." Wen Lianyong noted that through utilizing independently developed cryogenic and cogeneration technology for natural gas, the Yanting plant can simultaneously separate and commercially produce seven products, including pipeline-quality natural gas, ethane, and LPG, and achieve large-scale production. This technology has boosted the overall resource recovery rate to 95 percent, with an annual processing capacity reaching two billion cubic meters.

This breakthrough technology fills a critical domestic gap, enhancing the "green value" of natural gas as a low-carbon energy source and significantly strengthening the security of China's supply chain in the high-value-added natural gas industry.

Sichuan's exploration and expansion into the subsurface extend far beyond energy extraction.

Not long ago, more than 500 scientists from China and abroad, including Nobel laureates in physics, gathered in the Daliang Mountains. They brought with them the latest research findings in cutting-edge fields such as neutrinos, dark matter, cosmic rays, and gravitational waves, aiming to unravel the mysteries of the universe.

Why here? The answer lies buried beneath 2,400 meters of mountain rock. The Underground Laboratory, the world's deepest and largest ultra-deep underground lab, offers more possibilities for frontier research in world physics with its absolute advantages of the deepest rock coverage, the lowest cosmic ray flux, the lowest radiation background and the largest available space. By "posing questions" to the universe and persistently capturing the "phantom" of dark matter, the facility has produced China's first independently achieved research results in dark matter studies.

From empowering today's green "smart" manufacturing to probing the origins of the universe through fundamental science, Sichuan is leveraging both down-to-earth industries and cutting-edge research to tap into the boundless potential buried deep beneath the surface, driving future development from the extremes below.

Reaching the sky, diving into rivers, delving underground— Sichuan is forging a new "Shu Road" that spans from the cloud to the earth. Paved with new quality productive forces, this "New Shu Road" stretches toward digital intelligence, green transformation, and integrated development. It is fostering the growth of six trillion-yuan-level industrial clusters: electronic information, equipment manufacturing, food and textiles, energy and chemicals, advanced materials, and healthcare. Meanwhile, breakthroughs in emerging industries such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and the low-altitude economy are creating a synergistic cluster effect, driving coordinated prosperity across multiple sectors and continuously elevating the region's industrial capabilities.

Sichuan is fostering an innovation-rich ecosystem by attracting top-tier talent, advancing core technological breakthroughs in key fields, and deeply empowering traditional industries with intelligent and digital transformation. By precisely aligning innovation, capital, and talent chains with industrial needs, and targeting policy support to the most critical phases of development, the province is building a dynamic ecosystem where new-quality productive forces surge forward and traditional and new drivers of growth transition seamlessly.

Beneath the vast sky and across the land of Shu, the rising radiance of Sichuan is lighting the way to high-quality development.