An overseas buyer talks with an exhibitor at an area featuring integrated housing products at the 137th edition of the Canton Fair in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, April 23, 2025.
At Dongguan Port in south China's Guangdong Province, gantry cranes hoist container-like units onto ocean-going vessels bound for Australia, North America and the Middle East. Each unit is, in fact, a complete room, ready to be assembled like building blocks into hotels, apartments and hospitals overseas.
In Huiyang district, Huizhou, Guangdong Province, a fully automated production line spanning more than 400 meters runs around the clock at the smart factory of CSCEC Science and Industry, a subsidiary of Chinese construction giant CSCEC, where steel-structure modular products are manufactured.
Robotic arms move in sync with automated guided vehicles on what is China's first smart production line for modular steel-structure buildings.
At the factory, a room is broken down into six components: a floor, a ceiling and four walls. These are manufactured in parallel before being assembled into a complete module at the end of the production line.
