Arya News - Chinese factory tours are booming, drawing families interested in manufacturing and technology. Despite their popularity, not enough young people are choosing to work in manufacturing.
ZHUHAI – A dozen young children descended upon an airplane factory one recent Sunday afternoon, filling the cavernous space with rapid, high-pitched chatter.
They snapped pictures of rows of sleek propeller planes and wandered through the assembly line of the hulking AG600 Kunlong – an amphibious half-ship, half-plane – all while peppering their guide with questions.
“Why does this have nostrils?” a little girl asked. “Why do the nostrils have stuff in them?” added a boy, pointing at the air vents on a plane’s nose.
The children and the 20 parents accompanying them were visiting AVIC General Huanan Aircraft Industry, a subsidiary of the state-owned aviation conglomerate. It is one of a growing number of Chinese factories that have become unlikely tourist darlings.
Across China, factory tours have surged in popularity as parents with small children, schoolchildren on field trips and curious young people line up for a look behind the scenes at the country’s manufacturing juggernaut.
Mr Allan Sun, a pilot who guides tours at the AVIC factory in Zhuhai city, told The Straits Times that the facility receives visitors every weekend and on most weekdays, many from primary or high schools.
During China’s eight-day Golden Week holiday in October, industrial tourism emerged as a “dark horse” trend, with aerospace and car factory tours accounting for more than a fifth of online searches, state news outlet Xinhua reported, citing data from travel service provider Ctrip.
On social media platform Xiaohongshu, posts tagged “factory visit” – many of which advertise tours or share tips on how to access them – have been viewed 4.6 million times. They span everything from cars and planes to milk, beer and Rubik’s Cubes.
One of the hottest tickets is to Xiaomi’s electric vehicle factory in Beijing. Visitors can walk through some of its highly automated production lines, ride in its flagship SU7 sports car, and even visit a staff canteen.
More than 100,000 people have visited the factory since Xiaomi launched public tours in 2025. Demand has been so overwhelming that the company ramped up the number of tours from three in January to 118 in December, which people can sign up for through its app.
“It’s really quite stunning,” wrote a Beijing-based mother on Xiaohongshu after touring Xiaomi’s facility. It was unlike what she had seen of factories more than 20 years ago, where workers had to “hold screwdrivers and turn screws on assembly lines”, she wrote.
Mr Gu Jin, who has been organising visits to aerospace factories since 2018, believes the swell of interest in industrial tours is a reflection of the people’s pride in China’s science and tech prowess, and a bid by schools and parents to pique the younger generation’s interest in these sectors.
“It’s one element in the popularisation of science,” said the founder of Beijing Zhiqiran Education Consulting, whose most crowd-friendly offering is a tour of a rocket factory in the Chinese capital.
More than 3,000 people have gone on the tour in 2025, he said, paying between 500 yuan (S$90) and 600 yuan each.
Education aside, such tours are also a source of revenue and advertising for Chinese businesses. The Tsingtao Beer Museum, offering tours of its production line and samples of its booze for a fee, pulled in some 200 million yuan in 2024.
But even as more young people flock to explore the factories that form the bedrock of Chinese manufacturing, too few are signing up to work in them.
Chinese officials had estimated that the manufacturing sector will be short of some 30 million workers by 2025. And while some of the jobs have been replaced by automation, a gap still remains.
“They are short of workers, extremely short,” said Professor Sun Zhongwei, who studies the labour market at the South China University in Guangdong province.
Even high-tech factories lack technicians, he noted, as the machines there still need to be operated by blue-collar workers, who are often graduates of vocational schools.
China has been pushing for more vocational training to address a mismatch between job openings and workers’ skills. But many young people still seem to prefer university, swelling the ranks of college graduates chasing a limited pool of white-collar jobs.
Across China, factory tours have surged in popularity as parents with small children, schoolchildren on field trips and curious young people line up for a look behind the scenes at the country’s manufacturing juggernaut. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
Tours of good factories, Prof Sun surmises, might help shift perceptions. “This can help many young people understand the sector, and inspire them to pursue careers in manufacturing.”
Guangming Daily, a newspaper of the Communist Party of China, appears to agree. In a June commentary, it argued that factory tours go beyond boosting tourism: They “subtly shape our reverence for the manufacturing industry and faith in vocational skills”.
Back in Zhuhai, such career decisions are still years away for the 12 young children roaming the airplane factory.
Ms Cece Zhang, 36, certainly was not thinking so far ahead when she took her four-year-old son on their maiden factory tour.
The Guangzhou-based marketer said her calculus was much simpler – find something fun and educational to entertain her son, instead of just going to a shopping mall.
“Little boys like planes, so we came to take a look,” she said.