Over the past 20 plus years since the Reform and Opening-up, industrial design has not only gained recognition from all walks of life but has also emerged as a massive industry that cannot be ignored. Today, design has permeated every aspect of life, continuously reshaping our understanding of ourselves. As you stroll through the streets and alleys, you'll see all sorts of banners waving the flag of design, promoting their products. The term "design" has such a broad application that it's overwhelming. As society evolves, the meaning of design becomes increasingly complex. It's becoming more blurred. Our country's industrial design has seen significant progress, with a preliminary industrial system forming.

One, the industrial scale continues to expand: Firstly, the rapid growth in the number of enterprises. By the end of 2016, there were already over 12,000 industrial design-related companies in China, with more than 5,000 being scale-up professional industrial design firms, a nearly 60-fold increase from the 90-plus firms at the end of the 20th century. Secondly, the continuous increase in the number of industrial parks, including the Guangdong Industrial Design City, Shenzhen Design Industrial Park, and Beijing DRC Industrial Design Creative Industry Base, among others. Currently, there are over 50 specialized industrial parks across the country, with more than 1,200 cultural and creative industry parks and manufacturing service industry parks making industrial design their main business. Thirdly, the sustained expansion of the employment scale and the number of institutions offering industrial design majors. The total number of industrial design professionals in the country exceeds 600,000, with over 600 colleges offering industrial design programs, 1,800 colleges offering related industrial design majors such as interaction design and service design, with a total of over 1.5 million design students, and over 500,000 graduates from industrial design-related programs each year.
Manufacturing's demand for industrial design continues to grow. Firstly, the urgent need for industrial design in the process of manufacturing brand upgrading is evident. With the intensifying global commodity competition and the continuous upgrade of consumer consumption structures, the traditional product systems centered on technology and function have gradually been replaced by branded service and experience models. Domestic manufacturing enterprises such as Lenovo, Huawei, Midea, and Haier, to enhance brand recognition and product competitiveness, have significantly increased their investment in industrial design research and development in recent years, leading to a noticeable improvement in product quality and brand value. Secondly, the collaboration between professional design companies and manufacturing enterprises is becoming increasingly close. Represented by consumer electronics, communication equipment, transportation, and equipment manufacturing, the model of professional industrial design companies providing targeted services to manufacturing enterprises has become very common, with some design companies even having the capability to produce customized products independently. Thirdly, the number of industrial design patents is rapidly increasing. For instance, in 2009, the number of registered appearance patents, utility model patents, and invention patents related to industrial design in China were 6.7, 3.8, and 7.9 times that of 2011, respectively.
Three, the industrial space distribution pattern has initially taken shape. Industrial design has essentially formed three major industrial space distributions: the Bohai Rim (centered around Beijing, extending to Liaoning, Shandong, and other areas), the Yangtze River Delta (centered around Shanghai, extending to Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and other areas), and the Pearl River Delta (centered around Guangdong, extending to Fujian, Hong Kong, and other areas). At the same time, due to their manufacturing bases, the industrial design industry in the central region (centered around Hunan and Hubei) and the central and western regions (centered around Sichuan and Chongqing) has also developed to a certain scale. In the future, this pattern will further drive the development of the industrial design industry in surrounding and underdeveloped areas.