On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event "Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka" took place in Colombo, reconnecting two millennia-old port cities separated by thousands of miles. This cross-Indian Ocean dialogue echoes the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a new outbound development path for Ningbo, which is building a global trade landscape powered by smart manufacturing.
A thousand years ago, merchant vessels from Mingzhou Port set sail southward loaded with Yue Kiln celadon porcelain, passing through Ceylon to deliver Oriental crafts across the Indian Ocean coasts. Today, the cargo carried by giant ships has undergone a dramatic transformation, with intelligent equipment, digital home appliances, and industrial robots dominating shipments. Official statistics show that Ningbo's exports of intelligent equipment, including mechanical arms and industrial robots, hit 440 million yuan in 2025, surging more than 40% year-on-year. From January to May 2026, Ningbo's exports of mechanical and electrical products reached 247 billion yuan, a 4.1% year-on-year increase, accounting for 58.0% of the city's total export volume. The new energy sector saw explosive growth, with exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumping 138.4% year-on-year, and electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%.
Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlighted Ningbo's outstanding going-global enterprises and their products, illustrating the profound shift in Ningbo's trade structure. Alongside traditional Maritime Silk Road staples like celadon porcelain and silk, smart manufactured products—including AI translation glasses, intelligent outdoor gear, and digital small home appliances—occupied prominent display spaces. In Sri Lanka, Ningbo smart water meters are widely adopted nationwide, while handheld cooling fans and intelligent kitchen appliances have entered ordinary households. Leveraging Colombo Port's transshipment advantages, massive volumes of Ningbo smart manufactured goods are distributed onward to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. What Ningbo exports today is not mere commodities, but a complete outbound solution integrating technology, brand value and after-sales services.
Faced with mounting challenges including homogeneous global market competition and rising trade barriers, Ningbo's manufacturing sector has abandoned the old model of low-cost OEM production, relying on intelligent transformation to consolidate its competitive edge. Over more than a decade of digital transformation, Ningbo has achieved full digital upgrading of all industrial enterprises above designated size. Many local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines, escaping vicious price competition through continuous technological iteration. Represented by five specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative enterprises dubbed Ningbo's "Five Little Tigers," these niche manufacturers have developed differentiated technical routes and full-spectrum production capacity, cementing irreplaceable competitiveness for Ningbo smart manufacturing on global markets.
Beyond trade expansion, Ningbo has built a supporting cultural communication system to ensure "products go global, accompanied by local culture." The launch of Sri Lanka's first "One-Meter Cultural Space" cultural station during the Colombo event marked a tangible milestone of Ningbo's go-global initiative. Built on enterprises' overseas outlets, these miniature cultural exhibition halls integrate intangible cultural heritage crafts, urban stories and smart products, enabling overseas clients to experience cutting-edge manufacturing while gaining insight into Ningbo's profound cultural heritage. During the twin-city story-sharing session, Ningbo entrepreneurs based in Sri Lanka and local designers blending Chinese and Sri Lankan aesthetics shared stories of bilateral exchanges.
From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping to every corner of the globe, Ningbo, the ancient Maritime Silk Road port, has preserved its enduring gene of openness. Where exchanges once relied purely on commodity trade, today smart manufacturing underpins a stable, diversified and high-value-added global trade network. The Ningbo-Colombo dialogue stands as a vivid microcosm of this transformation: the port still links lands and seas, yet the core of its trade has undergone a full intelligent upgrade. Rooted in its historical legacy as a key Maritime Silk Road hub, Ningbo has consolidated its industrial foundation through a decade of digital development, expanded global market reach via worldwide port networks, and softened trade cooperation through cultural exchanges. This brand-new outbound shipping route forged by smart manufacturing has not only reshaped the city's foreign trade landscape, but also delivered a replicable port-city development model for Chinese manufacturing to go global.
