Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province ranked fifth nationwide in terms of intelligent manufacturing capacity, after Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing and Hefei, according to a recent report. 

The 2019 China Intelligent Manufacturing Index (CIMI) Report is compiled by the 21 Century Industry Research Institute and is the first intelligent manufacturing index independently released by a domestic think tank.

Intelligent manufacturing refers to manufacturing using intelligent systems combining machines and human experts.

Intelligent manufacturing reduces the need for manual labor, according to the report.

Guangdong province led the nation in terms of the strength of its intelligent manufacturing, followed by Jiangsu, Beijing, Zhejiang, Shandong, Henan, Shanghai, Hubei, Fujian and Hunan.

CIMI included four indexes—policy environment, industrial environment, industrial development and green manufacturing.