China Sees Rise As Auto-Parts Power
BEIJING -- Raising the bar for competitors around the world, China is shifting its manufacturing resources to increasingly sophisticated goods, as shown by its rapid emergence as a global powerhouse in the auto-parts industry.
Just a few years ago, Chinese-made automotive components were plagued by a reputation for poor quality, and often cost more than U.S. or German parts. Detractors said the precision engineering required for the best parts was beyond the reach of inexperienced Chinese companies and their low-cost workers.
Last year, however, China for the first time exported more parts than its fast-growing auto industry purchased from abroad. Quality has improved so much that major Western auto makers like Volkswagen AG and DaimlerChrysler AG say they plan in coming years to buy billions of dollars of Chinese-made components -- such as brakes, fuel pumps, wheels and steering systems.
Those gains show how China continues to evolve as a manufacturer, posing new challenges for rivals in the U.S., Europe and Japan. After earning its stripes as a maker of simple consumer goods, such as furniture and textiles, China has branched out, quickly coming to dominate more labor-intensive parts of the consumer-electronics business, such as computer assembly, and moving into a broader range of industries.
The country's production of machinery and transportation equipment has surged, and export of those goods -- which range from auto parts to forklifts to vacuum cleaners -- totaled $352 billion last year, a fourfold increase from 2000.
Meanwhile, motor-vehicle production here has nearly tripled, and China is on pace to overtake Germany as the world's third-biggest auto maker. It has become the world's second-largest car market in terms of sales as millions of Chinese buy cars for the first time. Millions more are expected to do so as their incomes rise and car prices fall.
Now, 'China competes in the entire range of products from telecom equipment to textiles,' says Hafiz Pasha, director of the United Nations Development Program's Asia bureau.
The transition comes at a sensitive time for the U.S. and Europe, which have been finding it harder to hold on to high-paying manufacturing jobs. Employment in the U.S. auto-parts industry fell to about 644,000 in 2004 from about 721,000 in 2002, according to government figures.
More job losses could be on the way: Some major U.S. parts makers -- including Delphi Corp., which has plants in China -- have sought bankruptcy-court protection. And small and midsize suppliers, which often don't have the resources to set up lower-cost operations abroad, are facing growing pressure.
'In the past two years, Chinese bids for auto-parts orders have driven customer price targets to a level below our costs on some products,' said Larry Denton, chairman and chief executive of Rochester Hills, Mich., parts maker Dura Automotive Systems Inc., at a recent government hearing in the U.S.
U.S. parts makers have also raised concerns about their access to the huge Chinese market. Earlier this year, the U.S. joined the European Union in asking the World Trade Organization to overturn a Chinese tariff policy that the two trading partners say discourages imports of auto parts.
China says the policy, introduced in 2005, is designed to prevent tariff fraud. It imposes additional tariffs on auto parts that exceed certain thresholds in terms of value or number of components. China says the idea is to discourage anyone who might seek to circumvent its auto tariffs by importing dismantled vehicles at the lower tariff rate that applies to parts and reassembling them in China.
The growth of the Chinese parts industry comes as manufacturers here increasingly grapple with rising wages and higher energy and raw-materials costs. In China's booming coastal areas, where many factories are located, land and labor are no longer as cheap and abundant as they once were, says Lu Tie, a scholar at the Institute of Industrial Economics in Beijing. Those areas 'are now pretty close to the level of middle-income countries. Their comparative advantage is changing,' he says.
With local wages on the rise, Chinese manufacturers are seeking to improve their efficiency and reduce their reliance on low-cost labor. They are increasingly churning out higher-value products such as auto parts and shifting away from traditional exports such as textiles and toys.
Some Western companies are reaping the benefits of China's quest for greater productivity. Rockwell Automation Inc., a Milwaukee maker of high-end equipment and software to run factories, said it has seen its China business grow by more than 30% a year since 2003.
'There is a misperception' about China, says Scott Summerville, Rockwell's president for Asia Pacific. While China still has a lot of labor-intensive manufacturing, he says, 'there's a big push right now to make Chinese companies globally competitive. You can't do that just with cheap labor.'
Rockwell is part of an influx of foreign money and expertise that has contributed to the improving quality of Chinese-made auto parts and other products. The world's biggest auto companies are also bulking up in China, looking for growth that is increasingly hard to come by in mature markets. They, in turn, often demand that their parts makers be able to supply them directly in China.
In recent months, such major Western auto-parts suppliers as Robert Bosch GmbH, of Stuttgart, Germany, and ArvinMeritor Inc., Troy, Mich., have made significant investments in Chinese factories that can make parts for the local market as well as for export.
The higher standards that global companies have introduced, combined with the international growth of local auto-parts makers like Wanxiang Group, has spurred innovation. To gain access to more customers and better technology, Wanxiang has bought several U.S. companies and has expressed interest in buying some assets from Delphi. It says its sales have been growing an average of 26% a year and reached 25.2 billion yuan, or about $3.15 billion, in 2005.
Smaller Chinese companies are also climbing the technology ladder. Huaxiang Group, based in the coastal city of Ningbo, started out in 1982 making plastic caps for medicine bottles. Now it makes molded plastics for auto interiors. Though it has been supplying VW's China operations, about 20% of its 2005 revenue of 2.25 million yuan came from exports, says Xu Peiqi, who runs the office of the board of directors. Huaxiang opened an office in May in VW's hometown of Wolfsburg, Germany.
'The companies are very focused on exports,' says Huang Xiaohua, secretary general of the Auto Parts Industry Association of Ningbo. 'Products are going up-market,' as local manufacturers are increasingly becoming first-tier and second-tier suppliers for the major auto makers, he says.
'When we started exporting in 1997, people argued that you couldn't make' auto parts cheaper in China, says Jack Perkowski, chief executive of Beijing-based parts maker Asimco Technologies Ltd. 'People also argued that China would never be a large car market.'
Now, he says, 'the conventional wisdom is that China can copy but not create. That's going to go too.'
Andrew Batson
中国崛起为汽车配件制造大国
中国正在把制造业资源转向更高端产品的生产，这给全球范围内一系列行业带来了更大的竞争压力，从中国汽车零部件产业的迅速崛起中就可以感受到这一点。
就在几年前，中国国产的汽车零部件还饱受质量不可靠的困扰，而且，与美国和德国产的配件相比价钱更高。有人当时甚至断言，制造最上乘的零部件所需的精密工艺是经验不足的中国企业和他们的低成本劳动力所无法掌握的。
双语阅读
? China Sees Rise As Auto-Parts Power然而，中国去年的汽车部件出口首次超过了进口。中国国产零部件的质量取得了长足进步，以至于大众汽车(Volkswagen AG)、戴姆勒-克莱斯勒(DaimlerChrysler AG)等西方汽车巨头纷纷表示今后几年将从中国采购数十亿美元的刹车、油泵、车轮、转向系统等零部件。
这些成果表明中国人正在向制造业的高端产品领域不断迈进，由此也给美国、欧洲和日本的竞争对手带来了新的挑战。在家具、纺织品等简单消费品领域站稳脚跟后，中国迅即扩大战果，又在电子消费品产业链上的劳动密集型领域──如电脑组装──中取得了主导地位。中国的胃口似乎还不止于此，仍在不断把触角伸向更广阔的领域。
例如，中国的机械及运输设备生产呈现出快速增长的势头，去年这类产品的出口总额达到3,520亿美元，比2000年时扩大了3倍。
与此同时，汽车产量也增长了近2倍。中国正在朝著取代德国、成为全球第三大汽车生产国的方向稳步迈进。随著数以百万计的中国人拥有了自己的第一辆车，以汽车销量而论，中国已经是全球第二大汽车市场。随著收入的提高以及汽车价格的下滑，还会有数百万中国人也能开上自己的第一辆汽车。
联合国开发计划署亚太区域局局长哈菲茨?帕沙(Hafiz Pasha)表示，从电信设备到纺织品，各个领域中都可以看到中国人的身影。
而此时的美国和欧洲正处于一个敏感时期，这两大经济体均发现越来越难以留住成本高昂的制造业岗位。政府数据显示，美国汽车零部件产业的就业机会从2002年时的721,000个下降到了2004年的644,000个。
还有更多的工作岗位可能流失：德尔福(Delphi Corp.)等几家美国重要的汽车零部件制造商均已申请了破产保护。至于那些没有本钱在海外建立低成本生产基地的中小厂商，处境就更艰难了。
例如，Dura Automotive Systems Inc.近期在政府举办的听证会上就表示，在过去的2年中，中国汽车配件企业对订单的争夺导致一些产品的售价已经低于了该公司的成本。
美国的汽车零部件制造商还对进入庞大的中国市场表示了关切。今年早些时候，美国联合欧盟向世界贸易组织(WTO)提起申诉，指责中国的关税政策导致海外产品难以进入中国汽车配件市场。
中国于2005年推出的一项政策规定，对超过一定金额或数量限制的进口零部件征收额外关税，此举主要是为了打击关税欺诈。中国方面称，部分不法分子企图绕过汽车关税，以较低税率进口汽车零部件，之后在中国组装，本办法意在对这部分人予以打击。
在中国汽车零部件行业蓬勃发展的同时，中国制造企业正面临工资上涨、能源和原材料成本居高不下的困扰。中国社会科学院工业经济研究所(Institute of Industrial Economics)的学者吕铁称，在工厂聚集的沿海开放城市，土地和劳动力成本已远不如过去低廉，资源也不像过去那样充足。他说，这些地区的状况已经接近中等收入国家，它们的比较优势正在发生转变。
随著本地工资的上涨，中国制造商开始寻求提高生产效率、降低对低成本劳动力的依赖。很多企业开始生产汽车零部件等高附加值产品，并从纺织和玩具等传统出口行业解脱出来。
一些西方企业从中国提高生产力的需求中受益匪浅。美国密尔沃基的高端设备及软件生产商罗克韦尔自动化公司(Rockwell Automation Inc.)称，2003年以来其中国业务实现了年均30%以上的增幅。
“人们对中国存在著误解，”罗克韦尔亚太区总裁斯科特?萨默维尔(Scott Summerville)说。虽然中国仍有大量的劳动密集型生产，但眼下中国企业正努力提高全球竞争力，而单靠低廉的劳动力是难以做到这一点的。
外资及海外技术的涌入使得中国产汽车零部件以及其他很多产品的质量大为改善。全球最大的几家汽车制造商早已蜂拥而至，在中国寻找成熟市场所难以具备的增长机会。与此同时，他们也经常要求零部件生产商直接从中国供货。
近几个月，德国罗伯特?博世(Robert Bosch Co., Ltd.)和美国阿文美驰(ArvinMeritor Inc.)等大型零部件供应商先后在中国投资建厂，在供应本地需求的同时也将产品出口海外。
海外企业带来的高质量生产标准以及本地零部件制造商的国际化发展进一步激发了产品创新。为了获取更多客户和更好的技术，汽车零部件生产商万向集团(Wanxiang Group)已收购了多家美国企业，并表示出对德尔福(Delphi)部分资产的浓厚兴趣。万向集团表示，其销售额年平均增长26%，2005年达到人民币252亿元，合31.5亿美元。
一些较小企业也在技术上登上了新台阶。总部设在沿海城市宁波的华翔集团(Huaxiang Group)从1982年那家为医用药瓶生产塑料瓶盖的企业一跃发展为汽车塑料零部件生产商，该公司管理人士徐沛祺表示，公司一直是大众汽车(VW)中国业务的供应商，不过2005年已有20%的收入来自出口。该公司2005年收入总额为人民币225万元。华翔集团5月份在大众汽车总部沃尔夫斯堡设立了办事处。
“这些企业非常重视出口，”宁波市汽车零部件产业协会(Auto Parts Industry Association of Ningbo)秘书长黄小华称。由于中国很多生产商已经成了大型汽车制造商的一线和二线供应商，它们的产品正在打入高端市场，
北京的汽车零部件生产商Asimco Technologies Ltd.的首席执行长杰克?潘考夫斯基(Jack Perkowski)称，“我们从1997年开始出口，人们总认为你不能在中国生产更便宜的零部件，他们还说，中国永远不能成为庞大的汽车市场。”
他说，“传统观念认为中国只会照搬，不懂得创新。但现在这些理论已经不攻自破了。”
Andrew Batson
