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. The dialogue focused on integrated port-city development and bilateral economic and trade connectivity, echoing the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a new outbound development path powered by smart manufacturing.
A thousand years ago, merchant vessels from Mingzhou Port sailed southward with Yue Kiln celadon porcelain, passing through Ceylon to deliver Oriental crafts across the Indian Ocean coasts. Today, the cargo has transformed dramatically. Beyond traditional daily necessities, shipments now include intelligent equipment, digital home appliances, and industrial robots. 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% increase, accounting for 58.0% of the city's total export volume. Exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumped 138.4% year-on-year, with electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%.
Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlighted Ningbo's going-global enterprises and their products, illustrating the shift in trade structure. Alongside traditional Maritime Silk Road staples like celadon porcelain and silk, smart manufactured products such as 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, while handheld cooling fans and intelligent kitchen appliances have entered ordinary households. Leveraging Colombo Port's transshipment advantages, Ningbo smart manufactured goods are distributed onward to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. What Ningbo exports today is no longer mere commodities, but a complete outbound solution integrating technology, brand value and after-sales services.
Facing challenges like homogeneous global competition and rising trade barriers, Ningbo's manufacturing sector has abandoned low-cost OEM production, relying on intelligent transformation to consolidate its competitive edge. Over more than a decade of digital transformation, Ningbo achieved full digital upgrading of all industrial enterprises above designated size. Local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines, escaping vicious price competition through continuous technological iteration. Represented by five specialized enterprises known as Ningbo's "Five Little Tigers," which include firms producing sophisticated visual inspection equipment, heat-resistant materials, sun-proof coatings, puncture-proof materials, and self-drilling fasteners, 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 marks 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 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, showing how economic ties have evolved into a bond for people-to-people communication.
From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping globally, Ningbo 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.
