Opportunities or challenges for China to intellige

"Smart manufacturing in China" in the eyes of German scholars: opportunities or challenges in Europe

China, which is regarded as the world's factory, is currently experiencing industrial innovation and upgrading from top to bottom. Due to the rising labor prices, the depression of the global economy, and the economic challenges from neighboring countries, the competitive advantage of China's low-end industries is gradually disappearing. Based on this, Chinese enterprises and the government have worked together to formulate the plan framework of "made in China 2025", aiming to improve China's position in the global industrial value chain. The plan mainly includes China's domestic industrial upgrading, China's national financial support and China's overseas investment strategy

in the eyes of German intellectuals, the industrial plan currently being implemented by China is particularly important for the economic development and operation of Germany. German industry has always been at the top of the intelligent manufacturing industry chain, and the status of German industry has also driven China's recent massive investment plan in the EU. So what does China's slowly expanding industrial upgrading mean for Germany and even Europe? Is it an opportunity or a challenge for Europe? What is the impact of Chinese overseas investment on European companies? Will European investment in the Chinese market be affected by China's industrial plan? Can China and Europe achieve a win-win situation in the process of China's commitment to upgrading the global industrial value chain

William square, Gottingen University

on July 17, 2017, at 2 p.m. Berlin time, Germany, a modern East Asian Research Center hosted by Gottingen University, Germany, with the theme of where is the future of made in China? The round table Seminar on opportunities and challenges for Europe was held in Emmy Noether hall, a historic building located in William square of the University of Gottingen

made in China 2025: situation, goals and prospects

the first speaker is Professor Sebastian Heilmann from the Mercator Institute of China in Berlin and the former chair of Chinese political economics at Trier University in Germany. He also serves as a researcher at the feizhengqing East Asian Research Center of Harvard University, the China Research Center of Cambridge University, the Harvard Yanjing society and other well-known research departments and institutions, He is a famous European scholar in the field of Chinese research. The theme of his speech is made in China 2025: what is it? Why? Can it be achieved

Han Botian first reviewed the industrial development and upgrading policies of the Chinese government from 2012 to 2016, such as industrial informatization, made in China 2025, Internet + and so on. He pointed out that "made in China 2025" is an industrial upgrading plan covering a wide range of fields, which aims to catch up with and eventually become a global industry technology leader in ten fields. This plan pays particular attention to intelligent manufacturing and robotics. The Internet + plan hopes to take the Internet economy as China's new economic growth driver, while paying attention to e-commerce (including B2B mode), artificial intelligence, cloud computing and other sub fields

Han Botian then listed some specific measures of China's industrial upgrading policy. For example, through the commercialization of patents and the income of industry licensing fees, we can stimulate the enthusiasm of practitioners in the field of scientific research, so that scientific research and industrial applications can be combined; Support small and medium-sized enterprises in fund, credit and production land; Through the cooperation of relevant domestic companies and industry associations, upgrade the industry standard system, etc. He analyzed that according to this industrial upgrading plan, the share of new energy vehicles, industrial robots, renewable energy equipment, advanced medical devices and other industrial products in the domestic consumer market will increase by about 10% to 20% from 2020 to 2025

he also pointed out that the Chinese government hopes to reverse the competition situation of different enterprises in the Chinese market through these industrial policies, and analyzed it from four aspects: market access, financial preference, scientific and technological standards and company operation data management. For example, a series of measures, such as raising import tariffs, giving financial priority to Chinese enterprises, formulating domestic scientific and technological standards, and requiring that the operation information of foreign companies must be subject to the supervision and evaluation of Chinese state departments, are aimed at improving the competitive advantage of domestic enterprises in dealing with foreign enterprises. He believes that China's industrial policy is a kind of techno nationalism to some extent. For example, the Chinese government guides and controls scientific and technological R & D activities and protects intellectual property rights, and regulates and intervenes in key industrial sectors such as the IT industry. In his view, Germany bears the brunt of the impact spectrum of China's implementation of high-tech industrial policies, and the success of China's industrial upgrading is extremely related to Germany's national interests. He also mentioned some shortcomings in the implementation of China's industrial policies, such as the lack of skilled workers, the existence of a large number of low-tech enterprises is not conducive to scientific research, the dominant position of state-owned enterprises and overcapacity in emerging industries

the second speaker is Barry Naughton, sokwanlok professor of international affairs in China and an authority in the field of Chinese research at the school of global policy and development strategy at the University of California, San Diego. His recent research interests mainly focus on China's regional economic growth and its relationship with import and export trade and foreign investment. The theme of his speech was that China was looking for a new economic growth model, mainly focusing on China's semiconductor industry and emerging artificial intelligence information technology

Norton first analyzed the development speed and mode of China's annual GDP growth of more than 10% from the reform and opening up to 2010, and pointed out that due to the global economic crisis, China's economic growth slowed down after 2010, and the Chinese government began to seek a new economic development mode that can maintain an annual GDP growth of 5%-6%

Norton predicts that China's future economic growth and industrial policy model may face three difficulties. First, China's economic growth model has changed. China's labor force, the structural transformation from planned economy to market economy, and the contribution of late capital investment to economic growth have declined greatly, while the growth of total factor productivity (TFP) of China's industry is currently in a declining state; Secondly, it is very difficult for China to invest a large amount of natural and social resources in the field of industrial/scientific and technological policies in a very short time; Finally, the world's scientific and technological environment has also undergone unprecedented changes. Moore's law in the information technology industry may have expired, and the field of big data and AI based on big data must be subject to new industry laws

he reviewed the growth situation of China's total factor productivity (TFP) since 2000 through two methods, hoping to predict China's future TFP growth trend. The first is to investigate by taking the provincial administrative regions as the unit through the way of aggregate production function, and the second is to investigate by taking the large industrial enterprises as the unit through the statistical method of panel data. The same conclusion obtained by the two methods is that the weighted average annual increment of TFP in China since 2008 is about 2%. In addition, by analyzing the incremental capital output rate (ICOR) in three-year cycles since China's reform and opening up, he believes that China's economic development policy must drive GDP growth through more unit capital

Norton said that China's industrial policy has experienced a process from scratch. Its embryonic form was conceived in the 4trillion investment plan issued by the Chinese government in response to the global financial crisis in 2009. Accordingly, the Chinese government issued the strategic emerging industries (SEIS) support plan in 2010. Today, China's industrial policy has been involved in many fields, including semiconductor industry, electric vehicles, advanced manufacturing, industrial robots, etc. Take the semiconductor industry as an example. By the end of 2016, the total investment has been estimated to be equivalent to US $69million, and it has spread to at least 14 provinces. In contrast, the total financial support investment of the U.S. government in emerging industries is dwarfed

he further pointed out that China's political and industrial policies have three important characteristics: multiple, overlapping and cumulative. Norton said that since 2006, the Chinese government has rapidly formulated and developed a series of superimposed and highly targeted policies and measures, such as subsidies and tax incentives for manufacturers, demand side subsidies, the formulation of scientific and technological standards and preferential measures for corporate lending. The above measures form a highly targeted collaborative function group. In addition, since 2014, the Chinese government has issued a series of industrial policies aimed at improving the overall environmental capacity of its economy, such as innovation driven development, "made in China 2025", and Internet plus, and has also established a set of fund mechanisms that can act on investment plan screening and yield analysis

then, taking the semiconductor industry as an example and focusing on the innovative product market, he focused on China's industrial innovation. Norton believes that in the past 15 years, the IT hardware industry (such as semiconductors) has been governed by Moore's Law (the number of transistors that can be accommodated on semiconductor integrated circuits/chips will double every 18-24 months). However, Moore's law has gradually failed, and the growth rate of the number of transistors in integrated circuits (chips) has slowed down. In the past 25 years, the Chinese government has strongly supported the semiconductor industry and wants to catch up with the global leader in semiconductor production based on the number intensity of transistors. However, there is always a gap, and so far, the industry can only be at the upper middle level. The reason for this is that leaders in the semiconductor industry can obtain a premium through cutting-edge (high-end) product series (such as Intel's Pentium processor), which is enough to offset the previous scientific and technological research and development costs, so as to further promote scientific and technological research and development. Although the low-end product series can also make profits, the amount of profits cannot offset the previous research and development costs. Since Chinese manufacturers can only produce semiconductor chips that lag behind global industry leaders by one or two generations, the profits can never offset the total costs of previous production and scientific research

however, there is a new trend in the semiconductor industry, that is, low-cost and low-end chips have been able to be mass produced, and only a few professional manufacturers need to produce cutting-edge (high-end) products. In addition, a new technology leader has emerged in the IT industry, that is, AI supported by big data. Although big data operators, such as Google, have inherent advantages in the possession of big data, China has greater potential in the quantity of big data. For example, China has 1.3 billion users, and the Chinese government is actively cooperating with Internet operators to collect and analyze user big data information. Some AI products, represented by Alibaba's tmall elf x1, are not only cheaper than the same products of Amazon and Google, but also more powerful