Study On Industrial Competitiveness Of Hubei's Equipment Manufacturing

Equipment manufacturing is one of the strategic industries of national economy. Its full development is a precondition for the fulfillment of industrialization, an important index to evaluate the comprehensive competitiveness of a nation, and a key factor to determine a state's status in the international division of labor. Hubei province is one of the important members of Central China, one of the main old industrial bases and equipment manufacturing bases of the whole country. It is the revitalization of Hubei's equipment manufacturing that the key to successful transforming of Hubei's old industrial base and also the key to realizing Hubei's leading role in the economic takeoff of Central China. Thus a study on how to enhance competitiveness of the equipment manufacturing industry is meaningful to Hubei's industrialization both in theory and in practice. At first, the thesis illustrates in detail and comments on the various theories or research fruits in fields of China's equipment manufacturing development and industrial competitiveness, especially the theories of three aspects: connotation of industrial competitiveness, formation mechanism of industrial competitiveness, and metric analysis on industrial competitiveness. Then a "five-factor analysis method"is formed on basis of Michael Porter's "Diamond Theory", as a qualitative method for the analysis of industrial competitiveness of Hubei's equipment manufacturing. The conclusion of qualitative analysis is "large in scale, but not so powerful". As to quantitative analysis, the paper adopts two methods –Revealed Comparative Advantage Index method and Principal Component Analysis method –to fulfill the industrial competitiveness analysis. The conclusion of quantitative analysis is that the transportation equipment manufacturing is the most powerful sub-industry among seven sub-industries of Hubei's equipment manufacturing in both terms of comparative advantage and competitive advantage. Combining the conclusions of qualitative and quantitative analysis, the paper selects four major sub-industries as the key fields of the development of Hubei's equipment manufacturing: transportation equipment manufacturing, electronic & telecommunications equipment manufacturing, general machinery manufacturing, and electric machinery & machine parts manufacturing. In the following parts, the paper focuses on measures as how to improve the industrial competitiveness of Hubei's equipment industry, including guideline, positioning, and strategy for industrial development. It points out that in contrast to the four major sub-industries, five industrial clusters should be formed and healthily developed: automobile and ship manufacturing should be further developed in scale and quality, numerically controlled machine tool and dynamical machine manufacturing should form unique features, and development of optical communications equipment manufacturing should be speeded up. Meanwhile, informatization of equipment manufacturing is very important for competitiveness enhancement. Besides, the competitive vitality of enterprise is also the key to the industrial competitiveness. The enterprises of Hubei's equipment manufacturing industry should carry out institutional innovation and technical innovation.