(Bloomberg) -- China will take forceful measures to support the development of high-end manufacturing, President Xi Jinping said in his first comments at the closely watched National People’s Congress.

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The manufacturing industry must always be a pillar of strength for China, Xi told delegates from Jiangsu province. The country must ensure its self-reliance in technology, foster small and medium-sized enterprises and build global centers for innovation, state-run CCTV cited Xi as saying on Sunday. The commentary, also conveyed in a Xinhua report Monday, comes against a backdrop of accelerating shifts of production capacity from China to neighboring nations like India and Vietnam.

Big electronics assemblers from Foxconn Technology Group to GoerTek Inc. are responding to demand from their customers for a diversified supply chain and setting up more facilities outside China. That’s in addition to crippling US trade sanctions on China that are challenging the world’s second-biggest economy’s plans for growth and development. Xi, however, sounded a resolute note about China’s role as the world’s factory.

“I’ve always said there are two critical areas for China: one is to safeguard our rice bowl, and the other is to build up manufacturing,” the president said. “As a great nation with 1.4 billion people, we have to rely on ourselves to resolve those two issues. We can’t rely on international markets to save us.”

India has been particularly successful in emerging as an alternative site for electronics factories that assemble gadgets — including Apple Inc.’s iPhones — as Beijing and Washington drift further apart. Production of the latest generation of iPhone came much quicker to India this year than with prior iterations, and exports of the handset doubled. Foxconn plans a new $700 million plant in India, Bloomberg News reported last week.