The Analysis On International Competitiveness Of Chinese Equipment Manufacture Industry

With the globalizing of economy and the accelerating process of industrialization in china, equipment manufacturing industry, which is a strategic industry for national economic development, is playing a more significant role. Highly developed equipment manufacturing industry is not only a prerequisite for industrialization, but also 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. At the beginning of twenty-first century, more and more developed countries enter the post-industrial society and ushered in the Information Age as for the rapid development of information science and network technology. The manufacturing industry of world is bond to restructuring which is the third time shift of the center of the world's manufacturing center. As for this, we should find our advantage equipment manufacturing industries and fully prepare for the third-time-shift.In addition, the research of international competitiveness is one of the hotspots of modern economics. In 1990, Michael Porter wrote a book, named National Competition Advantage, which set off an upsurge of researching international competitiveness. Since then, more and more scholars and researchers continue to complement and improve this theory. International competitiveness research has been applied in practice as an important branch of economics. For instance, World Economic Forum (WEF) and The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) have been publishing their respective publications Global Competitiveness Report and World Competitiveness Yearbook. These publications, conducted on the basis of the International Competitiveness Theory, evaluate industrial competitiveness of many countries and regions around world, which are of high reference value.Based on the two points above, the international competitiveness of Chinese equipment manufacturing industry was selected as the major theme of this thesis. This selection was complied with the objective requirements of national economic development and conformity with the trend of world economics research. Further more, equipment manufacturing industry is an unique concept of China, which was proposed to separate it from the concept of Manufacturing. For this reason, however, there was reasonable blank in the study of equipment manufacturing industry. The domestic equipment manufacturing industry researches, however, were always focused on interdepartmental comparison rather than the international competitiveness of the whole country. Therefore, synthesizing the former theories and making supplement also has research significance.A combination of qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis methodology will be employed in this thesis. In the qualitative analysis part, the development status, characteristics and trends of equipment manufacturing industry around world will be presented in the first place which not only give an overview but also pave the way for the further analysis below. The latest information with a strong timeliness, mainly the ones of 2009 and the first half of 2010, will be used avoiding stale data. In this section, some typical aspects, such as industrial clusters, industrial services, technological innovation, and the aspects of policies and regulations, will be selected base on theory of competitive advantage for comparison. Through the comparison between developed county and China, the difference and problem of the international competitiveness will be found. In the final chapter, some suggestions and proposals which take four-levels-theory of international competitiveness as basis will be tabled.On the other hand, quantitative analysis will base on the theory of comparative advantage. There are four international competitiveness evaluation methods: Multi-factors Analysis, Productivity Method, Export and Import Evaluation Method and the Profit Method, which are most influential and representative ones. Based on the comparison of the four international competitiveness evaluation methods and we can find that the import and export data evaluation method act well. Among of which the Revealed Comparative Advantage Index, and Competitive Advantage Index exclude the domestic and world total volume fluctuations which makes these two index more reasonable. In addition, Zhang Jinchang, the Academy of Social Sciences, made an empirical verification prove that there is a positive correlation between international competitiveness and exports. Furthermore, Michael Porter, the famous Harvard professor specialize in the international competitiveness research, suggest the RCA index as the preferred indicator. Also, many domestic scholars and researchers use this index frequently which shows the scientific of this index.According to the above analysis, taking into account the availability of sample data, as well as the relevance of subjects Export and Import Evaluation Method will be chose for international competitiveness of Chinese equipment manufacture industry evaluation. It will take the export and import data of UN-COMTRADE (SITC Rev.2) database, "International Statistical Yearbook" and China Statistical Yearbook for evaluation, use both RCA and CA as analysis method. The time spans from 1995 to 2009 total 15 years. By processing the data, we can come to the conclusion as below:①"Manufa cture of Communication Equipment, Computers and Other Electronic Equipment" and "Manufacture of Measuring Instruments and Machinery for Cultural Activity and Office Work" are the competitive industry.②"Manufacture of General Purpose Machinery" and "Manufacture of Transport Equipment" have potential of development.③"Manufacture of Metal Products" and "Manufacture of Special Purpose Machinery" are domestic-oriented industry.④"Manufa cture of Electrical Machinery and Equipment" is of inferior equipment manufacturing sub-industry. Doing some further study on the source of advantage and the reason of inferior was on the agenda. It would be a pity, however, that the original plan had to be abandoned considering the difficulty of collecting data and bowing to restrictions of space.