With the rapid development of China's economy, "Made in China" swept the world. However, the rapid expansion of the past 30 years has been difficult. On the one hand, due to the international economic downturn, the demand for Chinese-made products in the international market has shrunk greatly; on the other hand, the development of China's manufacturing industry has been constrained by the environment and resources.

Currently, competition in global manufacturing has transformed into competition for technology and innovation. With the continuous enhancement of independent innovation capabilities, the transformation of “Made in China” to “China's Smart Manufacturing” is becoming a new entanglement. "Made in China 2025" proposes to achieve the strategic goal of manufacturing a strong country through "three steps." In the air, China's Internet industry, robot industry, and high-end equipment manufacturing are all "golden pigs" that take off at any time. "Made in China" is on the road to manufacturing a strong country. From now on, we will launch the "‘Made in China 2025' Path Focus” series, so stay tuned.

The close-up of China's manufacturing industry outlined by the data is quite bleak. Since the beginning of this year, a number of data to express the decline of manufacturing has been falling.

Is the reality equally frustrating? The author has been visiting Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Fujian, Chongqing and other manufacturing industries for more than a month. I have witnessed the “pain” and the “tiredness” of the development of nearly 100 companies under heavy pressure. I also feel them. Still strong beat pulse.

Different from the past, after 30 years of sustained high-speed growth, the "world factory" has gradually moved away from China. Through the current complex and even contradictory industrial phenomena and data "fog", the "China Manufacturing" industry comparative advantage is being replaced.

Weak data highlights the grim situation

In the first quarter of this year, the added value of China's industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 6.4% year-on-year, the increase was the lowest since May 2009, which further aggravated people's deep concern about the "China manufacturing" in a severe downward trend.

The macro data is not optimistic and continues to suffer downward pressure. It is the most intuitive reflection of China's industrial manufacturing industry to the global market since the second half of last year. According to the latest data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, in March this year, based on the low innovation in the first quarter, the added value of China's industrial enterprises above designated size increased by only 5.6% year-on-year, which was 1.2 percentage points lower than the growth rate of the previous two months. By May of this year, the added value of industrial enterprises above designated size increased by 6.1% year-on-year, but it has rebounded but has not reached this year's high point; HSBC China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) fell from 49.6 in March to April. And 49.2 in May, it did not rise to 49.6 until June. In addition, in the first two months of this year, the cumulative freight volume of the railways that are closely related to the manufacturing industry also decreased year-on-year, with a drop of 9.1%. The daily average output of power generation, which is also closely related to the manufacturing and the real economy, was also in March. There was a 3.7% year-on-year decline... all kinds of data are constantly increasing the anxiety of the outside world.

Does the data “falling down” mean that tens of thousands of Chinese manufacturing companies are really “sorrowful”?

Luo Wen, dean of the China Electronics and Information Industry Development Research Institute, said that the grim situation reflected by the data downturn can be described as “plateau climbing”. “In the first two months of this year, the overall profit rate of industrial enterprises above designated size was only 4.9%. In this case, funds will flow to real estate and the stock market instead of entering the manufacturing industry, which will bring more pressure."

Although the data is not optimistic, it is not simply to use "good" or "bad" to judge the true state of China's manufacturing industry. The coexistence of multiple contradictions and the interweaving of multiple complex forms is the true portrayal of "Made in China."

The transition barrier is facing a lot of challenges

Negative factors such as increased exchange rate volatility, rising labor and raw material costs, and slow recovery in global market demand continue to affect Chinese manufacturing. After more than 30 years of sustained high-speed growth, the market base and social environment in which China's manufacturing industry is located has undergone fundamental changes. Many industry insiders and experts believe that it is the fundamental pressure of this round of "transformation test" to enable self-development and social needs to achieve integration and docking.

China's manufacturing industry at the transition gate is facing a lot of challenges.

One of the tests of transformation is how a large number of manufacturing companies shift from meeting the needs of the international market to meeting the needs of domestic and international markets.

Harry Saydin, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in South China, said that a clear trend in the past two years has been that the foundry companies that simply use China as a manufacturing base have survived and even shut down and turned, but the manufacturing companies that target the Chinese market are selling. Procter & Gamble, Midea, Amway and multinational auto giants are constantly increasing capital and expanding production. The fundamental reason is that years of economic growth have made the Chinese market grow stronger and the social costs generally rise, which means that “Made in China” can’t actually It is similar to the "world factory", but should be mainly to meet the "Chinese demand" as the starting point. Take the Chamber of Commerce as an example. As of the end of 2014, 79% of its member companies have provided products and services specifically for the Chinese market, which is in stark contrast to only 23% before 2003.

"Foreign-funded enterprises are still the case. Many local enterprises in China, especially export-oriented enterprises, need to change their business from personnel training, team building, product positioning, etc., otherwise they will be eliminated." Said Aidin.

The second test of transformation is how manufacturing companies shift from scale expansion to quality improvement, technological breakthroughs and cultural leadership.

Jin Hao, director of the Institute of Industrial Economics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, pointed out that after more than 30 years of sustained growth, China is already the world's largest manufacturing industry, but the industrialization process of a country depends not only on “flow” but also on "Stock", and the latter is what we lack. "On the surface, it seems that our manufacturing industry has no room for development, but in-depth view, except for individual fields such as high-speed rail, the technical commanding heights of most industries are not in China. This is in the past, our industrial development is generally flat. The lack of height and depth is directly related. Both history and reality show that improving the quality of manufacturing cannot be achieved by investment. If we go down, we must rely on technological breakthroughs and cultural leadership. This change is difficult and painful. It is also the gateway for a considerable number of companies that may not be able to pass," he said.

Economic columnist Wu Xiaobo believes that after more than 30 years of continuous development, China has formed a stable and influential middle-class consumer group, whose demand for consumer goods and industrial manufactured goods is changing from quantity requirements to quality requirements. "The emergence of them actually constitutes a turning point in 'Made in China'."

The third test of transformation is how to compare the comparative advantages of domestic manufacturing industry from policy preferential and resource-based to complete industrial chain and market system.

Zhu Gaofeng, head of the research team of the Chinese Academy of Engineering's "Strengthening Powers Strategy", said that in the past few decades, policy preferences and the supply of land and labor factors have been sufficient, which has provided a comparative advantage for China's manufacturing industry to catch up with the world, but now these advantages are China’s becoming the second largest economy and the continuous improvement of the market legal environment have been difficult to maintain, but this does not mean that China’s manufacturing industry has lost its competitiveness. “Our current advantage is precisely the accumulation of the past 30 years. The new advantages include the improvement of the industrial chain and the strong domestic market. Now, are there not many companies moving out of China and moving back? The key is how to adapt to these changes."

Enterprises actively respond to the need to relive

In this environment, the authors have seen a high degree of overcapacity, weak market demand, and increased foreign exchange volatility. The short-term anxiety of the market and the development of medium- and long-term optimism have existed at the same time.

In the southeast coastal area, a clothing business owner spoke to the author, and 70% of the enterprises in his village have closed down in the past two or three years. “I myself lost more than 4 million to the bank’s running companies last year. yuan".

In a city in the south, the local government recommended to the author a large labor-intensive enterprise with a number of tens of thousands of workers as a model of “contrarian development”. However, the person in charge of the Hong Kong-owned enterprise once complained to the author, saying that I am very optimistic about the labor cost advantage of Myanmar and other places. "In the next two or three years, we will either shut down the factory or move the whole factory to Southeast Asia."

However, in this factory “one wall apart” in Shenzhen, Huawei’s rotating CEO Hu Houkun told the author that the world’s top communications company achieved global sales revenue of 288.2 billion yuan last year, up 20.6% year-on-year; net profit was 27.9 billion yuan. It grew by 32.7% year-on-year, which is a lot more than the sum of Ericsson, Alang and Nokia.

"In the next five years, we still have the confidence to continue to achieve steady growth of more than 10% per year!" In Jiangsu, Zhejiang and other places, the photovoltaic industry, which once fell into a trough, once again sprang up again, not only the whole industry realized a turnaround, but also a group of advantageous enterprises. Also stand out, the head of Trina Solar Group in Changzhou told the author that it is expected that this year's production capacity can account for one-tenth of the world's total, "being the world's first."