The world today is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century.The new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation has given rise to new technologies, new industries, new forms of business and new models. Unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise, and the comparative advantages of countries around the world are changing. Many factors have contributed to the significant adjustment of the industrial pattern of the global manufacturing industry.
The complex and volatile external environment has brought many challenges to the better development of China's manufacturing industry.At the same time, we should also recognize that China's manufacturing industry has obvious advantages in terms of industrial foundation, innovation capacity, human resources and market size. This has laid a solid foundation for China's manufacturing industry to move toward high-quality development, move up the global value chain, and enhance its voice in the global industry.On the whole, the evolution of the global manufacturing pattern and the profound impact of the scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation have provided important opportunities for China's manufacturing industry to realize, run and even take the lead in strategic emerging industries and future industries.
The global manufacturing value chain shows a trend of "shortening"
In recent years, the global manufacturing value chain shows a trend of "shortening".Research by the McKinsey Global Institute shows that the intensity of trade (the ratio of total exports to total output) has fallen in almost all value chains of goods production, but particularly in the most complex and most traded ones.
The "shortening" of the global manufacturing value chain is the result of multiple factors.
First, developing countries, especially China, have improved their innovation capacity and domestic supporting capacity. Many intermediate inputs are now produced domestically, without the need to purchase them in the international market.
Second, with the growth of economy and the improvement of income level, the scale of the local market of developing countries continues to expand, and more domestically made goods can be sold locally rather than exported abroad.
Third, robots, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, intelligent manufacturing and other technologies continue to mature, "machine substitution" is more common, and the industrial capital intensity and knowledge intensity are increasing, making the industrial chain that is easy to achieve global labor cost arbitrage become profitable even if the layout is within a country.
In addition, the undercurrent of "anti-globalization" and the "reshoring" of manufacturing in some countries have also had a certain impact on the "shortening" of GVCs.Many factors, such as faster supply chain response due to production proximity to market and improved supply chain resilience due to value chain localization, have also contributed to the "shortening" of global manufacturing value chains.
The change of industrial pattern has a profound impact on the development of China's manufacturing industry
At present, the international economic, scientific, technological, cultural, security and political landscape is undergoing profound changes.The change of the development trend of the global manufacturing pattern has a significant impact on the development of China's manufacturing industry.
First, changes in factor endowments of various countries have continued to promote the development of the "Wild Goat Pattern".
The famous "wild goose array pattern" reveals the characteristics of the labor-intensive industries transferring from developed countries to less developed countries and the least developed countries.Developed countries, with the highest level of development, are the main driving force for industrial transfer among countries. With the rising cost of production factors, developed countries gradually lose their advantages in labor-intensive industries, thus promoting the transfer of labor-intensive industries to developing countries with lower costs.
At present, the "Wild Goose Pattern" continues to develop among developing countries.In the development of labor-intensive industries, sustained economic growth in developing countries, labor wages, its low labor cost advantage will be weakened gradually, thus promote the development of labor-intensive industries to lower cost countries transfer, it is under the existing technical level labor-intensive industries in the global transfer, the distribution of the general trend.
Since the reform and opening up, especially since China joined the WTO, China has complied with the trend of international industrial division of labor reform and industrial transfer, made full use of labor advantages to undertake international industrial transfer, and become the world's important labor-intensive industries and links of production and export base.Along with our country economy continued to maintain rapid growth, people's income level continue to improve, labor cost advantages gradually weakened, if a "substitution" machine efficiency and labor-intensive industries significantly increased capital intensity is not appear, the labor-intensive industries in our country and the value chain of labor-intensive links will also shift to low-cost developing countries.
It should also be noted that the increase in China's household income means further expansion of domestic demand, which will drive the growing demand for higher-quality and higher-performance products and services, which will become an important driving force for the upgrading of China's manufacturing industry.In particular, the role of the domestic cycle continues to appear, will increase the attraction of international industrial capital, so as to further promote the development level of China's domestic capital, technology and knowledge-intensive manufacturing industry to continue to improve.
Second, the deepening of the new scientific and technological revolution will intensify global competition in high-tech fields.
Strategic emerging industries and future industries represent the development direction of the industry and have huge development potential, which is directly related to a country's future economic growth and its voice in the global industrial division of labor system.If we seize the opportunity of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial reform to make breakthroughs in strategic emerging industries and future industries, then the latecomers will further narrow the gap with the developed countries, and conversely, the latecomers will spend more to catch up in the high-tech field.Therefore, in order to consolidate their position in the field of high technology, developed countries not only grasp the layout in the development of science and technology and industry, but also step up the suppression and containment of the later-developing countries.
As a key link of the global industrial chain and supply chain, the intensified external competition will undoubtedly cause pressure and challenge to the development of relevant industries in China, but it can also force relevant enterprises to find new sources of supply in the domestic market, which provides a market space for continuous improvement and perfection in the application of new high-tech products in China.
Third, the layout of global supply chains has been adjusted at a faster pace, with obvious trends in diversification, regionalization and localization.
The global industrial division of labor follows the logic of efficiency first.In consideration of transaction costs such as transport and communications under the premise of fragmentation of the global value chain, each link is configured to have the most consistent with its investment areas of factor endowments, thus minimizing the cost of the final product delivery, this creates a developed countries engaged in research and development design and brand marketing, developing countries engaged in processing and assembling division of global value chain pattern.Although the supply chain occasionally encounters local problems caused by natural disasters, trade conflicts and other reasons under the condition of a high degree of global division of labor, on the whole it can maintain smooth operation.However, the COVID-19 epidemic is widespread and lasts for a long time, and its impact on the supply chain is more serious and lasting, highlighting the importance of supply chain security.Globally distributed supply chains have to pass through many factories and transport links in many countries, so the vulnerability caused by long space distance and many links in the face of the impact of an epidemic is exposed.Many national and multinational companies are beginning to rethink the risks of too concentrated supply chains, considering the repatriation of supply chain companies and promoting the diversification of supply sources.
China is the world's largest industrial nation, and some developed countries and multinational companies are considering cultivating new sources of supply beyond China.However, to realize the diversification and localization of supply chain is affected by many factors, and the investment is large and it takes a long time.At present, with its complete industrial system and huge domestic market, China will continue to be a major part of the global production system.
The development direction of China's manufacturing industry in the period of the 14th Five-Year Plan
The development of China's manufacturing industry is facing many challenges, but the super-scale market, increasing innovation ability, perfect industrial system and the good situation of the vigorous development of digital economy, etc., provide a solid foundation for China's manufacturing industry to better cope with new challenges and occupy a favorable position in the major adjustment of the world's manufacturing pattern.In the face of the complex internal and external situation, we need to further adjust the development direction of China's manufacturing industry in the global industrial system. We should not only have strategic determination, but also timely respond to the situation to promote the high-quality development of the manufacturing industry.
On the one hand, we must continue to open wider to the outside world.The trend of globalization is irreversible. The intra-industry and intra-product division of labor has been developed for decades, and many industrial chains have achieved a high degree of globalization.No country has an advantage in all links of all industrial chains. Only by integrating global resources can we produce the most internationally competitive products.In this regard, we must continue to open wider to the outside world, balance domestic and international situations, and make good use of both domestic and international markets and resources.
On the other hand, we should insist on self-reliance and self-improvement.It is the economic logic of industrial globalization to give full play to comparative advantage and participate in global division of labor.However, we should also note that at present, non-economic factors have a greater impact on the global industrial chain and supply chain.In this regard, we must enhance the security and stability of the industrial and supply chains, strengthen the "weak boards" in some key links, and forge the "long boards" in some key links.We should draw lessons from industrial hollowing out in developed countries, maintain the capacity of production, innovation, upgrading and appropriate capacity of labor-intensive industries, and strengthen the security guarantee capacity of the domestic industrial chain and supply chain.
Specifically, need to send force in the following aspects.
First, continue to increase investment in research and development.The technological gap between China's manufacturing industry and developed countries is largely due to the short period of industrialization and the insufficient accumulation of scientific and technological strength.Therefore, it is necessary to further increase research and development investment whether to enhance the industrial basic ability, solve the problem of "jam neck", or forge technology and industrial "long board".At the same time, we need to encourage enterprises, social organizations and individuals to increase their input in scientific and technological innovation by removing institutional barriers to innovation and strengthening IPR protection.
Second, the early layout of future industries.Future industries represent the future direction of industrial development and contain new driving forces for economic development in the future.The future industry has great uncertainty, and all countries are in the "starting line" close to each other, so it is an important opportunity for the latecomers to catch up.We should strengthen the strategic research on forward-looking technology and future industrial development direction, increase the investment in R&D of forward-looking technology, actively cultivate early market, and guide enterprises to carry out the engineering and industrialization work of forward-looking technology.
Third, we will accelerate negotiations and signing of free trade agreements.We will continue to make China's super-large market, complete industrial facilities, and strong manufacturing capacity more attractive to transnational capital, deepen reform of domestic systems and mechanisms, align with international trade rules, and promote the shift from openness based on the flow of goods and factors to openness based on rules and institutions.We will work hard to negotiate and sign higher standard free trade agreements and regional trade agreements with our trading partners.To further deepen industrial chain cooperation with geographically adjacent regions such as East and Southeast Asia;We will strengthen production capacity cooperation with countries along the "One Belt And One Road" routes and improve the layout of the global industrial chain of China's manufacturing industry.
Fourth, we will promote the digital transformation of industries.Promote the construction of new infrastructure with digital technology as the core, and lay a good digital foundation for China's industrial upgrading while accelerating the development and maturity of cutting-edge digital technologies.Give full play to China's advantages in the field of digital technology and digital economy and encourage cooperation between digital technology enterprises and manufacturing enterprises;We will formulate technical specifications for intelligent manufacturing, unify data format standards, promote data openness, and develop digital platforms for manufacturing such as the industrial Internet.We will support the digital transformation of manufacturing enterprises, and enhance the supply capacity of service-oriented manufacturing such as remote maintenance, personalized customization, and value-added services.
