“The key to the development direction of China's machine tools in the next 30 years is to become stronger and stronger”. During this period, China will form a new industrial pattern represented by high-end machine tools, led by high-end equipment manufacturing industry and supported by various advanced manufacturing industries.
As the director of the Major Equipment Information Center of the Machinery Industry Information Research Institute, Shi Yong has been paying attention to the development of China's machine tool industry for many years. He believes that China's machine tool industry has entered a critical period of strategic transformation.
Strategic transition period
Shi Yong told reporters that there are six reasons for supporting him to form this judgment.
The first is market-based competition. The rapid growth of the machine tool industry in recent years, in addition to the guidance of national policies, an important reason is that the machine tool industry has basically allocated resources from the market, and it is one of the industries with full and active market competition. During this period, famous private enterprises, such as Vientiane, Haitian, Sany Heavy Industry (600031, shares), Xinrui and other enterprises entered the machine tool industry. According to statistics, the proportion of new private investment in China's machine tool industry has increased from 40% in 2004 to more than 70% in 2010.
The second is the stage of development. Just as the economic cycle of the last decade of the 20th century witnessed the rise of home appliances, textiles, clothing and other industries, the economic cycle of the first decade of the 21st century also set off a boom in the steel, cement and other industries. The new round of economic cycles also needs new The industry with long-term growth is leading, and the equipment manufacturing industry represented by the machine tool industry is duty-bound.
According to the Japanese economist's strategic industry leading growth theory, when the power and steel industry completed the mission of the first and second group of strategic industries, the third group of leading strategic industries will be the equipment manufacturing industry.
The third is the transformation of the development model. In the past, the development of China's machine tool industry was a period of “from scratch”. It took the model of the development of parts and components, and its development law was “top-down”; now China's machine tool industry has entered “from big to strong”. In the development stage, its development law is “bottom-up”. In the new stage and new era, China is entering the road of equal development of complete machines and components, and a real era of innovation has arrived.
Japan also proposed host development priority in the 1950s, but in the 1960s it quickly adjusted its development strategy and prioritized the development of basic technologies and basic components. Since then, the Japanese machine tool industry has developed very rapidly.
The fourth is the development path change. In the past, China’s development of the machine tool industry was the path of “trade and industry technology”, that is, the road of trade priority development, and the foreign trade policy was a strong policy; after entering the new period, in the case of overcapacity of a large number of products, “trade technology” to “ The development of technology, industry and trade has become an inevitable trend.
The fifth is that innovation has become the foundation of restructuring. The power of mergers and acquisitions in the machine tool industry is gradually shifting from the back end of the industrial chain to the front end of the industrial chain. Faced with increasing R&D expenses and R&D risks, it is a major trend in M&A of machine tool companies in the world to use a low-level common technology to support the above-mentioned diversified products.
The sixth is that innovation promotes the alternation of old and new development models. The machine tool industry will bid farewell to the sudden surge of the past into a period of steady adjustment, and the slowdown will undoubtedly make various contradictions surface.
In this situation, price competition will gradually shift to value competition. As a result of the competition, the high-quality resources of the industry will be further concentrated to the enterprises with strong competitiveness. By enhancing the innovation capability and driving the industrial transformation and upgrading, it will become an excellent method for solving various contradictory combinations, and it will also be a path for the machine tool industry to move toward the high end of the industry.
Technical blockade
Shi Yong believes that since the global financial crisis and economic recession, countries such as the United States, Europe, Japan and Russia have re-examined their development strategies and accelerated the promotion of "re-industrialization" in response to the crisis, recovery of the economy, and the preemption and commanding heights of future development. Cultivate and develop strategic emerging industries supported by technologies such as new energy, energy saving, low carbon, biomedicine, new materials, next-generation information networks, and smart grids, and rebuild industrial systems dominated by strategic emerging industries on a global scale. . The machine tool industry is not only an integral part of strategic emerging industries, but also an important basis for ensuring the healthy development of other strategic emerging industries.
In addition, under the background that there is no obvious sign of the recovery of the developed economies in the world, China's machinery industry will face more challenges in the global competition, friction will be more frequent, and will further spread from low-end products to high-end products. From the product trade link to the institutional environment, from a single "two anti-one insurance" trade remedy investigation to intellectual property, technical trade barriers, industrial competitiveness survey and other ways to spread. The domestic market share of the US equipment manufacturing industry, which had been declining before the financial crisis, rebounded from 67.4% in 2007 to 69.72% in 2010.
Moreover, with the improvement of the innovation capability of Chinese enterprises, governments and enterprises in developed countries such as the US, Japan and Germany have raised their awareness of the prevention of Chinese enterprises and increased the control over the export of advanced technologies and equipment to China.
Due to the long industrial chain of the machine tool industry, one link has been "card necked" and the development of the entire industry has been restricted. On the other hand, the cost of importing advanced technologies and equipment has risen sharply. Compared with the developing Chinese machine tool manufacturing enterprises, the competitive advantages of multinational companies are more obvious. It is mainly embodied in the construction of R&D systems and production systems by controlling global superior resources, and plays a leading role in the global network.
It is worth noting that at present, foreign investment has entered a large number of key infrastructure areas in China, and a closed monopoly of supply chain has been formed in the domestic basic parts market. Not only profits are transmitted to China through this supply chain, but also the entire industry is safe and economic. It has a very significant impact.
Based on this, Shi Yong put forward his own five suggestions:
1. Focus on supporting the key basic technologies represented by numerical control systems and functional components, and form a new situation in which the whole machine and key infrastructure technology innovations will jointly promote the overall capacity improvement of the industry.
2. Focus on supporting enterprises with vertical integration capabilities that provide comprehensive solutions, and support production-oriented enterprises to transform into R&D and service-oriented enterprises.
3. Encourage the establishment of intellectual property alliances to increase the competitiveness of the domestic industry as a whole, and to counterattack external competition and friction to avoid a major impact on industrial safety.
4. Encourage overseas M&A activities with the main purpose of enhancing technological innovation capabilities, and support the active use of global superior resources to establish a global R&D system and production network.
5. Build multi-dimensional industrial advantages, maintain cost advantages and price advantages, further expand the advantages of division of labor and market advantages, continuously tap the advantages of goodwill, rationally utilize capital advantages, and strive to build standard advantages and core technological advantages.
