The Foundation of Modern Industry

From industrial robots and new energy vehicles to engineering power equipment, all require screws, nuts, and bolts to connect and secure their "joints" and "skeleton." In Yongnian District, Handan City, Hebei Province, these seemingly insignificant fasteners—often called the "rice of industry"—are consolidating into a powerful industrial cluster. Produced locally, they are shipped across China and exported globally. In 2025, the district's fastener output reached 7.8 million tons, generating a production value of 55.16 billion yuan, representing year-on-year growth of 9.9% and 9.88% respectively. This small northern city has scripted a transformation story from family workshops into a vital global hub for the fastener industry.

Innovation-Driven Shift from Industrialization to Intelligence

Stepping into the modern production workshop of Hebei Xilide Hardware Manufacturing Co., Ltd. (Xilide) in Yongnian on a summer day, rows of fully automatic equipment hum efficiently. Just seven or eight workers move among the machines, with each person effortlessly controlling 20 devices simultaneously. The company has developed a proprietary integrated continuous production line that connects all processes—from material receiving, cold heading, clamping tails, thread rolling, heat treatment, and surface finishing to final packaging. "The workshop is equipped with a three-dimensional logistics conveyor system, so workpieces are transported without any manual intervention. With eight intelligent production lines running concurrently, each line requires only eight maintenance workers. The workforce has shifted from repetitive loading and unloading to equipment inspection and digital quality control, boosting the overall workshop automation rate to over 90%," said Zhao Lijie, Xilide's foreign trade manager. As a benchmark enterprise for digital transformation in Yongnian's fastener cluster, Xilide focuses on its core self-drilling screw product. By restructuring the entire process flow, it has implemented step-by-step upgrades in equipment digitization, production line automation, warehouse intelligence, and management informatization, carving out a path for intelligent upgrading in traditional hardware manufacturing. "Relying on a digital production scheduling system, data from all production lines is interconnected. It can automatically allocate capacity based on customer orders for flexible production, ensuring a stable daily output of 200 tons," explained Li Xueming, Xilide's operations supervisor, while monitoring the equipment.

Xilide is not an isolated case. Yongnian District has leveraged the foundational strength of the "rice of industry" to build cluster momentum, nurturing a group of nationally leading high-end equipment manufacturers. "We have successfully increased the proportion of mid-to-high-end fastener products from 40% to 80%, and the average profit per ton of product has doubled, exceeding 1,000 yuan," stated Hu Hongtao, Deputy Director of the Yongnian District Fastener Industry Development Service Center.

AI Empowerment Lights Up a New E-Commerce Track

Building on its robust fastener industry base, Yongnian District has launched the city's first cross-border e-commerce AI digital human live-streaming platform, using intelligent virtual hosts to break through overseas marketing bottlenecks. Inside the overseas live-streaming center of the Yongnian Cross-border E-commerce Incubation Park, visitors can see AI digital humans acting as streamers, promoting Yongnian fastener products to overseas customers. With a few clicks of the mouse at the operator console, the host system instantly generates scripts and commentary in 16 languages, including English, Spanish, and Arabic. The screen can freely switch scenes to factory production lines or intelligent three-dimensional warehouses, all while the AI digital human host remains perfectly in frame, with synchronized gestures, lip movements, and speech. "To better suit the habits of buyers from different countries, we designed each digital human's appearance and attire to match local hosts," said Li Shuai, a park staff member, pointing at the screen. "This immediately dissolves the sense of distance in cross-border communication, making overseas customers feel a connection." During the live broadcast, visitors could see multiple overseas clients inquiring about various fastener products via pop-up windows. The AI digital human answered in detail, from thread pitch to strength and torque parameters. "Due to time zone differences, the time many overseas clients have for inquiries often falls during our late night hours. A real person can't be online 24/7. But with the AI digital human, whenever a customer comes, we respond, achieving truly uninterrupted 24/7 live streaming," Li Shuai calculated. "Operating this AI live-streaming model has reduced costs—including manpower and content operations—by over 67% compared to traditional live streams with real people." Li Xiaokang, head of Yongnian's "One Product, One Stream" task force, explained that to tackle the difficulties small and micro-enterprises face in going online—such as "no one to do it," "not knowing how," and "doing it poorly"—the district partnered with a leading domestic e-commerce company in June 2026 to create Handan's first cross-border e-commerce-focused AI digital human host platform. This has enabled a new live-streaming marketing model: "AI Digital Human Host + Factory Live + Warehouse Live + Short Video Matrix + Social Media Promotion." To date, Yongnian has activated cross-border network routes to 20 countries, using AI digital humans to promote its fasteners and successfully attracting over 100 potential customers.

Exhibitions and Overseas Warehouses: A Dual Engine for Global Markets

Against the backdrop of a complex and volatile global trade environment, Yongnian District's foreign trade has shown remarkable resilience. "From January to April 2026, total import and export volume reached 923 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 23.1%, which is 17.7 percentage points higher than the city's average. Exports alone reached 914 million yuan, a 22.6% increase, outperforming the city's growth rate by 14.5 percentage points," reported Wang Feng, the official in charge of foreign trade at the Handan Yongnian District Development and Reform Bureau. Behind these impressive figures lies a series of practical measures to help enterprises deepen their presence in international markets and cultivate new drivers for foreign trade. Since the beginning of 2026, Yongnian has been intensifying its "Hebei Goods Go Global to Expand Markets" initiative, organizing companies to participate in six key domestic and international exhibitions in Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Germany, and other locations. By consistently taking part in high-level trade events, companies have been able to directly connect with global buyers, effectively securing orders. Statistics show these activities resulted in 1,130 intended orders worth approximately $37.97 million, and 281 signed orders worth about $12.27 million. To tackle international logistics challenges and foster new growth points, Yongnian has actively guided companies in deploying overseas warehouses. In 2026, local companies added three new overseas warehouses in Saudi Arabia and Russia, bringing the total number of overseas warehouses built by Yongnian enterprises to 14. These overseas warehouses not only enhance cross-border logistics efficiency and lower operational costs but also facilitate a shift for companies from simple exporting to a model of "using warehouses to go global" and deeply serving local markets, providing a new lever for expanding trade scale. "Our goal is to upgrade the industry's level, technology, market, and business model," said Hu Hongtao. "We are focused on a core philosophy: using digital intelligence to reshape industrial organization, leveraging shared manufacturing to solve the problem of small, scattered, and weak enterprises, achieving coordinated governance across the entire region through government planning, and promoting market-based cooperation with an equity finance mindset to create borderless sharing. This will transform the government from a manager and service provider into an ecosystem builder, shift industrial development from isolated enterprise silos to a cluster community, move from dispersed capacity to a cluster super-factory, and evolve from experience-based decision-making to data-driven decision-making. The ultimate vision is to establish Yongnian as a global center for digital shared manufacturing and digital trade in fasteners."