Is China a world factory or workshop?

China has become, is becoming or will become a "world plant," which is the optimistic estimation of many people. However, there is also another voice that China now is only a "world workshop". What the estimation actually means is that currently the main focus of the manufacturing industries in China lies in processing materials supplied by clients and the capability of manufacturing sophisticated products in China is not strong and the overall competitiveness is not high.

It is not important if China is a "world plant" or a "world workshop". What matters is that there are weak points in the manufacturing industries in China. China's manufacturing industries cannot match with the world's most advanced ones until the weak points are solved. With China's entry into WTO and the growth of economic globalization, it seems extremely urgent for China to solve the weak points.

Speaking at the World Engineers Conference held in early November in Shanghai, Xu Kuangdi director of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) said that China is still a material processing center instead of a manufacturing center due to the current manufacturing level, particularly the gap between the level of China's manufacturing industries and that of the world's advanced.

Xu also said that China's gap with the world was periodical, which meant that China is only like a pupil if compared with other advanced countries like a middle school student. As showed by the disparity, China's manufacturing industries are still dominated by low-end manufacturing industries and the added value of the products is only 26.23 per cent. Being the big exporter, China's exports are mainly the labor-intensive products with low technical contents. Meanwhile, the energy consumption of China's manufacturing industries is often 20-30 per cent higher than that of the advanced countries.

The equipment manufacturing industry is regarded as the "creation of the industry", but it is only takes up 26.46 per cent of the national gross output value of the manufacturing industries, 10 per cent lower than that of the advanced countries. Although regarded as a manufacturing giant, China imported large quantities of equipment worthy of 110 billion US dollars in 2001, accounting for 48 per cent of the nation's total imports.

China's equipment manufacturing has long been in separation. For instance, blower factory only produces air blowers while dynamo maker only manufactures dynamos. This situation results in the neglect of developing packaged technology, especially the systematic reliability. Even if the reliability of one part reaches as high as 99.99 per cent, the reliability of the equipment is only 60-70 per cent for 10,000 parts. China has to foster such engineering companies as ABB and Siemens, added Xu.

To catch up with the world's advanced level, China must know what the world's advanced level is. Simply speaking, China has to know what the advanced countries are currently doing. Scientists at the World Engineers Conference said that there appear four tendencies in the development of the world's manufacturing industries including: green manufacturing, extreme manufacturing, the integration of manufacturing with high technologies and the combination of information technology with traditional manufacturing industries.

By other's fault, wise men correct their own ones. The world's advanced level points out the direction for China's manufacturing industries. First, China should develop energy saving and environmental friendly industries. Secondly, China manufacturing industries should improve products and try to win through quality, and meanwhile integrate information technology into the electromechanical products. Thirdly, China should accelerate the technological innovation system with the enterprises at core. Finally, China should speed up high-tech industrialization.

China must follow the principle of "doing something and not doing something". "Doing something" means doing some key projects, for example, thermal and nuclear generating facilities. The newly installed capacity is expected to reach 600 million kilowatts by 2020, 90 per cent of the generating sets are homemade. China boosted two thirds of the newly added generating capacity in the world last year, but 90 per cent of the generators were imported. Currently, foreign large-scale generating facilities companies are rapidly marching toward Beijing with an aim of striving for a share in Chinese market. Unfortunately, domestic companies cannot compete with them.

Additionally, China should pay more attention to the new generation of packaged facilities and equipments. A large-scale steel enterprise with an annual output of 8-10 million tons will produce many industrial wastes if it follows the traditional techniques and flow. But under the new flow, the enterprise will not only take 14-28 tons of wastes as raw materials to promote the quality of steel, but also absorb 1.2 million tons of waste steel. Meanwhile, the enterprise will also generate 3 million kilowatts of electricity with by product cement.

Apart from that, digital and intelligentized design, extra large-scale integrated circuit, oceanic engineering equipment, key technology and clean-fuel autos should also be listed as key projects.

By People's Daily Online