HANGZHOU — As Chinese skater Sun Long stood on the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics podium, the vibrant China Red of his award ceremony outfit signaled more than national pride, it pointed to the growing role of artificial intelligence in China's manufacturing sector.

At a textile factory in East China's Zhejiang province, digital printers hum as newly designed sportswear fabrics roll off the production line. AI-powered image-processing systems calibrate colors with remarkable precision, automatically detecting and correcting deviations in real time.

"We used to rely on master craftsmen with decades of experience to judge color formulas by eye. Now AI reads colors with X-ray-like precision," said Xiao Xingshui, general manager of Qianyong Textile Co, located in Shaoxing, a city long known as a textile hub.

Since introducing AI-driven printing technology, the pass rate of solid-color fabrics has risen from about 50 percent to over 90 percent, helping the company overcome a longstanding production bottleneck.

The shift reflects a broader trend across Zhejiang, one of China's manufacturing powerhouses, where AI is steadily moving from concept to workshop floor.

At Zhongce Rubber Group in Hangzhou, the provincial capital, engineers are using AI to redesign how tires are developed and manufactured. Instead of the conventional sight of roaring machinery and oil-stained workshops, the company's digital platform now allows engineers to generate dozens of three-dimensional tire models within minutes.

"In the past, data input during the design stage alone required support from a team of more than 20 people," said engineer Wang Xueyan."Now, with AI, I can complete the work independently."

Zhongce has thus far deployed 18 AI agents across its operations, covering research and development, production, and testing. Company executives say the goal of integrating AI into manufacturing is not to replace workers, but to equip them with smarter tools.

"It's about finding the sweet spot between efficiency and humanity in industrial upgrading," said Zheng Li, executive deputy general manager of a manufacturing factory of Zhongce.

With AI assistance, the company has increased labor productivity fivefold while reducing daily pollution and energy consumption at the source by roughly 80 percent.

The application of AI is also reshaping automobile manufacturing.

At Zeekr's 5G-enabled smart factory in the coastal city of Ningbo, four robots operate in sync at the tire installation station of the final assembly workshop. The time needed to mount a single tire has been reduced to 45 seconds.

Zeekr's production lines handle multiple vehicle models simultaneously, each with customized configurations. "Every car you see is different," said Dai Longcai, the company's director of manufacturing and quality digitization.

Tire specifications vary widely and were once among the most error-prone steps in assembly."Now, through 5G-enabled AI visual inspections, we can verify tire information within one second, achieving a 100 percent error interception rate," Dai said.

Across Zhejiang, AI is increasingly embedded in traditional industries, as the province accelerates its push toward digital and intelligent upgrading.

By the end of 2025, Zhejiang had achieved full digital-transformation coverage among industrial enterprises above the designated size, according to local authorities. The province has established 608 digital workshops, 381 smart factories and 93 "future factories" integrating AI, 5G and industrial internet technologies.

"Intelligent transformation serves as a defining characteristic of the future new-type industrialization," said Lan Jianping, deputy head of the Zhejiang Development and Planning Institute.

Xinhua