On July 4, 2026, the cultural exchange event Encounter & Insight: Dialogue Between Ningbo, China and Colombo, Sri Lanka took place in Colombo. Separated by thousands of miles, the two millennia-old port cities reconnected, leveraging their ports as a bond and cultural exchanges as a cohesive force to hold in-depth talks on integrated port-city development and bilateral economic and trade connectivity. This cross-Indian Ocean dialogue echoes the ancient Maritime Silk Road while charting a new outbound development path. As a pivotal starting port of the ancient Maritime Silk Road, Ningbo is building a new 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 cargo ships has undergone a dramatic transformation. Beyond traditional daily necessities, intelligent equipment, digital home appliances and industrial robots now dominate 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 foreign trade sector saw explosive growth, with exports of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products jumping 138.4% year-on-year, with electric vehicle exports skyrocketing 215.9%.
Complementing the Colombo forum, an exhibition highlights Ningbo's outstanding going-global enterprises and their products. Alongside time-honored Maritime Silk Road staples such as celadon porcelain and silk, Ningbo's smart manufactured products—including AI translation glasses, intelligent outdoor gear and digital small home appliances—occupy 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 no longer 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. A large number of local factories have built unmanned black-light workshops and flexible production lines. Represented by five specialized, sophisticated, distinctive and innovative enterprises dubbed Ningbo's "Five Little Tigers"—famous for core proprietary technologies, including highly 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.
Beyond trade expansion, Ningbo has built a supporting cultural communication system. 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. During the twin-city story-sharing session, Ningbo entrepreneurs based in Sri Lanka and local designers shared stories of bilateral exchanges. Economic and trade ties have evolved into a bond for people-to-people communication, bridging divides in cross-cultural trade.
From Tang-dynasty celadon porcelain sailing across the Indian Ocean to intelligent equipment shipping to every corner of the globe, 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 new outbound shipping route forged by smart manufacturing has reshaped the city's foreign trade landscape and delivered a replicable port-city development model for Chinese manufacturing to go global.
