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People's Daily Overseas Edition Reports on Zhongnan Intelligent: Embodied-Intelligent Equipment Sets Sail for Overseas Markets, Polishing a New Calling Card of China's Foreign Trade

Release date: 2026-09-07

On September 1, 2026, People's Daily Overseas Edition published a high-profile report titled "More and More New Calling Cards of China's Foreign Trade" on page 06, focusing on the trend that new products such as artificial intelligence, robots, and innovative drugs are rapidly opening overseas markets and becoming brand-new calling cards of China's foreign trade. Changsha Changtai Robot Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Hunan Zhongnan Intelligent Equipment Co., Ltd., was featured in the report as a benchmark enterprise in industrial robot exports. Gao Di, member of the CPC General Branch Committee of Zhongnan Intelligent and Chairman of Changsha Changtai Robot Co., Ltd., gave an exclusive interview, comprehensively expounding the company's technological innovation achievements and globalization strategy in the field of embodied-intelligent equipment.

Foreign Trade Upgrading: China's "New Calling Cards" Speed Toward the World

The report points out that after the "old three" export categories opened international markets with cost advantages and the "new three" showcased the competitiveness of China's green products, new products such as artificial intelligence, robots, and innovative drugs are becoming another batch of brand-new calling cards of China's foreign trade. Data show that in the first half of 2026, China's industrial robot exports grew by 18.6%, with products sold to 141 countries and regions worldwide; the export market for surgical robots expanded from 23 to 49 countries compared with the same period last year; and out-licensing transactions of innovative drugs reached about US$110 billion, setting a new record high. Over the past five years, China's total R&D spending has grown by 10% annually, firmly ranking second in the world. The report notes that innovation is the distinctive feature of these "new favorites of foreign trade" such as AI and robots, and also an important support for them to become new calling cards of China's foreign trade.

Standardized Products Going Global: Zhongnan Intelligent's Three Embodied-Intelligent Equipment Lines Brave the Waves

In the section "Continuous Innovation Effectively Enhances User Experience", the report highlighted the overseas practice of Changsha Changtai Robot Co., Ltd. The report wrote: Changsha Changtai Robot Co., Ltd. focuses on the R&D and manufacturing of intelligent high-end equipment, and its main export products are three standardized equipment lines: the embodied-intelligent wire-winding robot, the embodied-intelligent winding and fabric-inspection machine, and the embodied-intelligent cleaning and polishing robot. Gao Di, chairman of the company, said that the company is currently focusing on developing the Southeast Asian, European, and American markets.

These three standardized equipment lines are the core achievements of Zhongnan Intelligent's years of deep cultivation in the intelligent equipment field. The embodied-intelligent wire-winding robot serves the cable manufacturing industry, realizing the intelligent and unmanned operation of the winding process; the embodied-intelligent winding and fabric-inspection machine serves the textile industry, integrating the two processes of winding and fabric inspection and greatly improving production-line efficiency and quality control; the embodied-intelligent cleaning and polishing robot serves industrial surface-treatment scenarios, breaking through the bottlenecks of traditional polishing processes with hybrid force-position control technology. All three products are characterized by "standardization", possessing a solid industrial foundation for rapid replication and large-scale expansion into overseas markets.

Innovation Engine: Collaborative Industry-Academia-Research Breakthroughs Build Solid Technical Barriers

When talking about technological innovation and overseas strategy, Gao Di gave an in-depth explanation to the People's Daily reporter: "We have jointly built laboratories with Hunan University and Central South University to fully tackle key technologies such as embodied-intelligent perception and hybrid force-position control, consolidating our product technology advantages. In the R&D and innovation of new products for export, we are accelerating overseas compliance certification, iterating the full range of products in line with the standards of different regions including the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, relying on projects already implemented, we iteratively optimize algorithms in reverse to improve the environmental adaptability of our equipment, continuously refining our complete set of intelligent manufacturing solutions for overseas markets."

Industry-academia-research collaboration as the foundation, compliance certification paving the way, and real-project practice as the driving force — the three are closely interlinked, forming the underlying logic of Zhongnan Intelligent's overseas competitiveness and outlining a typical path for China's intelligent manufacturing from technological breakthrough to global implementation.

Over the past five years, China's total R&D spending has grown by 10% annually, with R\&D intensity surpassing the OECD average for the first time, and more and more research achievements are moving from laboratories to production lines. Zhongnan Intelligent's practice of tackling core technologies through joint university laboratories and exploring international markets with standardized equipment is a vivid sample of "from laboratory to global market" in this wave.

Moving Toward the New: Intelligent Manufacturing Equipment Polishes China's New Calling Card of Foreign Trade

Taking its inclusion in the People's Daily Overseas Edition report as a new starting point, Zhongnan Intelligent will continue to increase R&D investment, deepen industry-academia-research cooperation, accelerate the pace of overseas compliance certification, and iteratively optimize its product matrix around key markets such as the Middle East, Europe, and Southeast Asia, continuously enhancing the technological leadership and environmental adaptability of its embodied-intelligent equipment, and contributing Zhongnan's intelligent strength to polishing the new calling card of China's foreign trade.

Keywords: People's Daily Overseas Edition Reports on Zhongnan Intelligent: Embodied-Intelligent Equipment Sets Sail for Overseas Markets, Polishing a New Calling Card of China's Foreign Trade