Situations About Chinese Bearing Industry
Chinese bearing industry is facing new challenges. Although it has developed a lot, it still lags behind the development of machinery industries. The situations are quite complex.
Firstly, because the bearing industry lags behind, it can not meet the requirements of the maintenance and supporting of the main engines which result in a significant increase of imported bearings year by year.
The structure and level of bearings do not meet the development of main engines. Because the national economy develops sustainably, rapidly and healthily, main engines develop towards high precision, high performance, high reliability, and high values. But as the configured part of the main engines, bearings can not catch up with the development pace of main engines. Taking the railway bearing as an example, the train speed has been increased several times, but trains with the speed of above 160 km/h all use the imported bearing products. Besides, most of automobile bearings are also imported. And the imported bearings are also applied in the metallurgical and mining machinery, engineering machinery, and machine tools, etc. Even home appliances such as the air conditioners use imported bearing products.
Secondly, China had entered the WTO. It should participate in the world economy and face new situations of the transformation of world manufacturing industry to China.
The entering of WTO just likes a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can provide a lot of opportunities for development. On the other hand, China has to face more severe challenges. These challenges can be briefly summed up as followings: the domestication of international competition and the internationalization of the domestic competition. More and more multinational companies go into the Chinese bearing market to compete with Chinese enterprises.
The following is the analysis on the status of those multinational companies’ entering of China’s market. Currently, multinational companies have developed rather quickly in China. They set joint ventures or wholly-owned factories in China. Meanwhile, they expand the production scale and speed up the implementation of policy about personnel and procurement localization. These all make much impact on the advantages of China’s bearing industry. Therefore, China bearing industry has to face more intense competition.
With the development of their products, multinational companies began to occupy China’s railway, automobile, metallurgy, mining, and machine tools markets. They even reduce their domestic productivity, and shift the production to Chinese market. In order to adapt to Chinese market, some of those companies establish R & D Centers in China. Besides, they also build up sales network. Actually, they are turning China into a part of multinational bearing industry. This is one of challenges for China’s bearing industry.
All in all, in recent years, China’s bearing industry has achieved sustained, rapid and healthy development. It has attracted worldwide attention. If it wants to be the bearing power in the international market, the Chinese bearing industry should develop its technology. Additionally, Chinese bearing enterprises should develop high-tech products. And they should seek partnership with some stronger companies to increase their competitiveness.