The Scale Has Exceeded The Sum Of The United States, Japan And Germany. Why Does China Need To "Push The Manufacturing Industry Up"?

Manufacturing is a fundamental issue related to the level of China's economic and social development. The competitiveness of manufacturing industry and the quality of development are the key to solve the fundamental challenges facing China's economic and social future.

General secretary Xi Jinping recently inspects in Henan to achieve the goal of "two to one hundred years". He has made clear demands for grasping the manufacturing industry and grasping the real economy, and has provided important guidance for building a modern economic system and promoting the high quality development of China's economy.

With the change of China's economic and manufacturing development stages, there are some voices in academia and society in recent years.

These views are usually based on the following three kinds of evidence.

First, the scale of China's manufacturing industry is large enough. China's manufacturing industry surpassed Germany in 2004, overtook Japan in 2006, and surpassed the United States in 2009 to become the world's largest manufacturing power. In 2018, China's manufacturing industry added value of 40027 billion US dollars. It is nearly two times the size of the second largest manufacturing country in the United States, and it exceeds the three big manufacturing powers of the United States, Japan and Germany. Therefore, there is little room for China's manufacturing industry to develop in the future.

Two, the proportion of China's manufacturing industry is already high enough. In 2018, the proportion of China's manufacturing industry in the national economy was 29.4%, which has reached the peak of the proportion of manufacturing industry in industrialized countries, and the possibility of further improvement of China's manufacturing industry is very small in the future.

The three is that China's manufacturing industry has already seen a common phenomenon of overcapacity. The rapid growth of manufacturing industry has caused a series of serious problems, such as over exploitation of resources and destruction of ecological environment. Therefore, the problems caused by manufacturing industry should be solved by slowing down the growth of manufacturing industry.

After careful analysis, all the above judgments and criticisms about manufacturing industry fail to negate China's argument for developing manufacturing industry. A more comprehensive analysis of the basic facts of China's economy and manufacturing industry reveals that the correct policy extension of the above arguments is definitely not to slow down the development of manufacturing industry, but that the development of China's manufacturing industry has entered a new stage. The development strategy of the manufacturing industry should be adjusted at the right time, and the problems associated with the traditional development pattern should be solved in the process of developing the manufacturing industry.

First of all, although China has become the largest manufacturing economy in the world and has established the most complete manufacturing industry system, the problem of big and not strong industry in China is still very prominent. First, the manufacturing efficiency of China's manufacturing industry is still far behind that of the industrial powers such as the United States, Japan and Germany. In other words, Chinese manufacturing workers pay the same labor time and intensity than the United States, Germany, Japan and other countries, but the value created and remuneration are far lower than those of these countries. Two, China is still heavily dependent on developed industrial countries in the underlying technologies such as chips, basic software, high-end machine tools, advanced materials and other key components and key equipment. The reason why the US can ban the sale of some high-tech enterprises in China by core technology and key parts is that the problem of lacking core in China's manufacturing industry is still unsolved.

Secondly, although the proportion of China's manufacturing industry has reached the peak value of manufacturing industry in the process of industrialization, but considering Germany's national industrial strategy 2030, the target of 25% of manufacturing industry and 28% of the proportion of manufacturing industry in Korea are considered. The level of economic development in Germany and Korea and the higher proportion of China's manufacturing industry should be interpreted as a neutral economic fact rather than a problem.

Finally, overcapacity and ecological environment problems are common phenomena in the industrialized process of developed countries. In the early twentieth Century, there were more than 200 car factories in the United States, which could not be said to have no excess capacity. In 80s and 90s twentieth Century, the main reason for Japan's withdrawal from the traditional industries was also a serious excess capacity. In addition, the developed industrial countries had varying degrees of resources and environmental problems in the early and middle stages of industrialization. The low efficiency of resource utilization and the pollution of ecological environment indicate that there is still much room for improvement in China's manufacturing technology level. This shows that China's manufacturing industry has a heavy task of resource saving and environmental optimization through the structural adjustment and technological upgrading of heavy industry.

Manufacturing is the foundation of building a country, developing the country and strengthening the nation. The history of world economic development shows that manufacturing is strong while the state is strong. Britain has become a capitalist power by virtue of the great development of mechanization. Germany has become a European power by promoting the development of heavy chemical industry and the construction of industrial R & D center. The United States has achieved rapid competition in national competitiveness and national defense because of the rapid development of large-scale standardized production technology and the innovation of modern company system. Japan has become a world power by the development of automobile industry, electronic industry and lean manufacturing.

　　 Manufacturing is a fundamental issue related to the level of China's economic and social development. The competitiveness of manufacturing industry and the quality of development are the key to solve the fundamental challenges facing China's economic and social future. The two major challenges facing China's economic and social development in the future will come from external and United States and other countries. Two, from the inside, the growth rate will decline in the middle income stage, that is, the so-called "middle income trap".

In response to external challenges, on the one hand, we should actively integrate into a more open and inclusive Global trade and investment order. On the other hand, we need to enhance the competitiveness of manufacturing industries, especially high technology industries, and ensure the national security through the independence of core technologies and key industrial products. As for the internal challenges, some countries like South America and Southeast Asia are trapped in the "middle-income trap". From the industrial level, an important reason is that their manufacturing industry is too dependent on foreign capital and technology import, and there is no independent manufacturing enterprise and industrial system with independent innovation capability. It is an important condition for China to jump out of the "middle-income trap" to enhance the capability of independent innovation in manufacturing industry, thereby continuously improving the added value of products and creating more high-income jobs.

It is important to emphasize that although "upgrading the manufacturing industry" is the first step to enhance the quality and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry, it is still a question of "upgrading the manufacturing industry" to maintain the necessary growth rate of the manufacturing industry. From the experience of industrialization in other countries, the improvement of production efficiency and technological capability of manufacturing industry must be realized only if the manufacturing industry maintains sufficient growth rate. R & D investment and new product development of enterprises can not be carried out under the environment of no increase or negative growth of manufacturing industry. Therefore, "going up the manufacturing industry" must contain two levels of content. Its core is to enhance the efficiency and competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. The premise is that the manufacturing industry still has to maintain a relatively fast growth rate.

The main and fundamental position of manufacturing industry in China's economy will not change. It is the key to China's ability to overcome a series of major strategic challenges by firmly promoting the manufacturing industry and realizing the leap from a big manufacturing nation to a manufacturing power in China. Promoting the high quality development of manufacturing industry is the most important part in achieving the high quality development of China's economy.