Two companies from Wuxi, Jiangsu province won a prestigious award known as the "Oscars of Chinese industry", the China Grand Awards for Industry, at a ceremony held in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Sunday.
The two Wuxi enterprises were among only thirteen companies in the whole country to win a Grand Award, the highest award for Chinese industry approved by the State Council, which recognizes companies and projects that have made a significant contribution to Chinese industry and China's economy.
Wuxi was the only city in Jiangsu province to provide two Grand Award winners, a reflection of Wuxi's strong and innovative manufacturing sector.
The two enterprises are Shuangliang Eco-energy Systems, a leading manufacturer of central air-conditioning systems, and Fasten Group, a diversified enterprise that produces a range of metal products.
These two enterprises have many common characteristics. They have both contributed a lot to the revitalization of Chinese industry, breaking technical monopolies held by overseas companies, and both are based in Jiangyin, a county-level city under the jurisdiction of Wuxi.
Shuangliang Eco-energy, the only enterprise in the environmental protection field to win a Grand Award this year, was recognized for its work on improving the energy efficiency and reducing the emissions of air-conditioning systems.
Over the last 30 years, Shuangliang's systems have saved an estimated 2.46 billion cubic meters of water, and their impact on the environment in terms of reduced emissions and energy usage is equivalent to planting 270,000 hectares of forest.
Shuangliang also produced China's first lithium bromide absorption central air-conditioning unit with independent intellectual property rights, breaking the monopoly held by multinational companies in the refrigeration industry.
The company also produced the first set of independently-designed air-cooled islands, which forced multinational companies to decrease their design costs from more than 3,000 million yuan ($434.8 million) to 500 million yuan, a drop of 80 percent.
Fasten Group is the first enterprise from the metal wire products industry to win a Grand Award. Through the enterprise's independent R&D, the price of single-mode fiber dropped from 1,000 yuan to just 50 or 60 yuan per kilometer, helping China make huge savings in constructing communications infrastructure.
Its development of high-performance bridge cables has also allowed China to reduce its dependence on expensive imported cables for bridge construction. Fasten Group's cables have already been used in the construction of Sutong Bridge, Changtai Bridge and many other bridges in China.
Fasten Group also did good job in the field of optical communications. It is the first Chinese company to develop optical fiber preform and inertial guidance with polarization maintaining fiber, breaking the technology and product monopoly of developed countries.
