Domestic machine tool industry is booming

In the past fifteen years, China's machine tool consumption has hit record. The total consumption of machine tools and imports in the mainland market have been ranked first in the world for five years in a row, making it a global powerhouse for machine tool consumption.

According to statistics, the consumption of machine tools in China's mainland market reached US$13.11 billion in 2006, which represented a year-on-year increase of approximately 20%. Machine tool imports reached US$7.24 billion, a year-on-year increase of 11.55%, an increase of 1.7 percentage points over the same period of the previous year. In response, Wu Linlin, director-general of the China Machine Tool Industry Association, said that China's machine tool consumption accounted for more than 20% of the total sales of machine tools in the world. This is difficult for any country in the world (world machine tool consumption ranks second and third. Japan and Japan account for about 15%, the United States about 11.6%, Germany about 10.6%). This provides a rare market opportunity for machine tool industry development.

The strong market demand led to the emergence of a booming production and sales situation in the domestic machine tool industry. Its industrial output value and sales revenue maintained a growth rate of more than 20% for five consecutive years. In 2006, it increased by 27.1% and 26.4%, respectively, which was an increase of 2.3 and 0.9 percentage points from the same period of last year. Among them, the sales value of domestic metal processing machine tools (including metal cutting machine tools and metal forming machine tools) has risen to the third place in the world since 2005, and reached 55.2 billion yuan (US$7.06 billion) in 2006. The domestic machine tool has regained the favor of domestic users due to the improvement of the technical level. The domestic market share has risen to 44.8%, an increase of 5.1% over the same period of last year. At the same time, the export value of China’s machine tools also reached US$1.19 billion in 2006, a year-on-year increase of 44.56%. Domestically produced machine tools can be described as both domestic and foreign markets.

In recent years, China's machine tool manufacturing industry has benefited greatly from the national environment to revitalize the equipment manufacturing industry. Among them, the advanced numerical control machine tool industry leading the current level of machine tool manufacturing technology is even better.

The level, variety, and production capacity of CNC machine tools reflect the country's overall technical and economic strength. As the strategic equipment of the national defense industry, CNC machine tools are the most important means of manufacturing all kinds of weapons and equipment and are an important guarantee for the modernization of national defense and military equipment. However, revitalizing the CNC machine tool industry has a certain degree of difficulty for the machine tool industry. According to experts, the digital manufacturing technology required for the development of CNC machine tools is the core of advanced manufacturing and is the key to achieving independent innovation. Therefore, for the whole industry, rejuvenating the CNC machine tool industry is both a strategic opportunity and a severe challenge.

At present, the Party Central Committee and the leadership of the State Council are highly concerned about the revitalization of the equipment manufacturing industry. The Eleventh Five-Year Plan has revitalized the equipment manufacturing industry as the main content for promoting the optimization and upgrading of the industrial structure, and CNC machine tools have become one of the key points in the revitalization of the equipment manufacturing industry. In 2006, the 16 major projects identified by the State Council’s Mid- and Long-term Plan for the Development of Science and Technology (2006-2020) and the State Council’s Opinions on Accelerating the Revitalization of Equipment Manufacturing Industry will all develop large-scale and precision High-speed CNC equipment and numerical control systems and functional components are listed as key support areas for development.