This article comes from the WeChat public account:Knowledge Automation (ID: zhishipai), author: Linkoping, head Figure from: vision China
Foreword: 18 Luohan falls
With the escalation of Sino-U.S. technology friction, chip off supply seems to overthrow black dominoes. From chips to software, from materials to semiconductor devices, cards are turned up one by one. Worries begin to spread like peeling onions layer by layer, and people have to worry deeply about the machine tool. As an industrial mother machine, China’s machine tool industry has always been large but not strong, not too weak. It is difficult to make progress in high-end equipment, but is eroded by Taiwan’s machine tools in the mid-range field.
The history of Chinese machine tools is closely linked to China’s industrial system. The 156 engineering projects during the first five years and the construction of the third and third lines advancing to the west have basically established the framework of the Chinese industrial system. Among them, 18 state-owned machine tool factories, called 18 Arhats, once played a decisive role in fixing the god of the sea.
However, after 40 years, the system formed under the planned economy has been swaying, has not been seriously repaired, and even damaged in many places. After joining the WTO, the open and rapidly growing global market injects a cardiotonic agent into the system. A global patch allows it to run forward for another decade.
However, such a system is fragile after all. In the deeper market competition, the overall decline is inevitable. At that time, the Chinese machine tool industry 18 Luohan, the final destination is basically bleak. Either it was merged into a large industrial group, or it was merged and acquired by a private company, which shows that some bankruptcies and bankruptcies can only be preserved, leaving only Jinan No. 2 Machine Tool Plant.
Figure 1: Eighteen Arhat Homage Map (self-drawing, copyright)
In addition to the Jinan No. 2 machine tool, China’s 18 Luohan has basically been wiped out, which shows that the Chinese machine tool system has come to an end. Only by rebirth, China’s machine tools need to rebuild a whole new system.
So, how is the global machine tool changing? Why is the Chinese machine tool road narrower and narrower?
Machine tool world trend
Gardner’s statistical survey of the world’s machine tool industry shows that global machine tool consumption was US$82.1 billion in 2019, the lowest level in the machine tool market since the world began to recover from the global economic recession in 2010. In this decline channel, the proportion of China’s machine tool consumption in 2019 is lower than 30% of the world’s for the first time in ten years.
In the downward trend of the global economy, the United States consumed 9.7 billion dollars in machine tool products in 2019, which was not much lower than the same period last year. As the manufacturing industry returns to North America, the US machine tool consumption pattern also shows the characteristics of backshore manufacturing to meet local consumption.
Although production in Germany has declined, Germany and the United States have increased their share of global machine tool production. Among the top 15 countries and regions for machine tool production, only Italy, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada have increased their share of global machine tool production, which shows the clear momentum of global machine tool production shifting from Asia to Europe.
From these data from Gartner, we can see that consumption of machine tools is being lost from Asia, China’s power is becoming weaker, and the United States and Europe are both looking up. It can be said that the leading positions of Germany and Japan are unbreakable; Switzerland favors a high-end corner, while the United States and Taiwan of China are major variables in development. The Chinese machine tool has a bigger worry, that is, the high-end machine tool can not be attacked for a long time.
In the past fifteen years, the gap between China’s high-end machine tool industry and the German, Japanese, and Swiss machine tools has been increasing. (Jinan Second Machine Tool is the only exception). Shenyang Machine Tool and Dalian Machine Tool, which were the first and second largest in the world in terms of industry scale, had to restructure their debts. It was just a microcosm of a big situation.
Rise and fall: a reversal cycle once every ten years
From 2001 to 2012, the twelve years after China’s accession to the WTO were the years of rapid advancement of the Chinese machine tool industry. At the time of the financial crisis, China leapt to the world’s largest machine tool producer in one fell swoop, and it has remained until now. In 2019, China’s machine tool output was US$19.4 billion, and its global share still reached 23%.
Figure 2: Changes in output value of the three major machine tool countries (2002-2012) (source: Gartner)
However, China’s machine tool industry is in a serious trade deficit, with an import and export deficit of US$5.4 billion in 2015. China’s machine tool trade deficit ranks 60th globally.
Figure 3: China has the largest deficit and Japan has the largest surplus (Source: Gartner 2016 Machine Tool Report)
According to Gartner’s report, the world’s largest and second-largest economies, machine tool consumption is second and first, respectively. Ironic