Abstract: Manufacturing strategyhas attracted numerousresearchesin the past decades. Although manufacturing industries are the engines of Chinese economy, manufacturing strategy has not been drawn much interest domestically. An attempt is made to review the status of literature about manufacturingstrategy. A new framework of manufacturing strategy in the context of complex and volatile environment is suggested. Based on the view of environment and enterprise’s internal context, manufacturing strategy addresses the issues on the content, process, and output. The paradigms used in the manufacturing strategy literature have been categorized into best practice, contingency, resource-based view, and complex adaptive system. Based on the review of the manufacturing industries of China, some possible research opportunitiesare identified. The macro-level researches involve national manufacturing strategy and manufacturing strategies relevant to the industrial sectors and regions. The micro-level researches involve manufacturing strategy transfer, green manufacturing, knowledge management in network manufacturing, manufacturing strategy for medium and small-sized enterprises, service-embeddedmanufacturing strategy, and performance measurement. Also, the research progresses of these issues arereported.

Key words: manufacturing strategy, literature survey, complex and volatile environment, Chinese manufacturing industry, research direction