China proposed common prosperity this year, to rectify at multiple levels, narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, and there is an important concept behind the common prosperity, that is, to shift the economic center of gravity from the Internet to the real economy, in a more direct sentence to say that the manufacturing industry can not be lost.
So what is the gap between China, as the world's factory, and Germany, which has been regarded as a model of global industry for many years, compared to the two countries?
Comparison of machinery and equipment data exports between the two countries
Judging from the performance of the two countries in the export data of machinery and equipment, Germany is a long-term global leader in this field, but in 2020, something big happened, and China's exports accounted for 15.8% of the world's exports, and Germany was 15.5%.
Germany's "China Threat Theory"
When China becomes the world's largest supplier of machinery and equipment, this thing itself is very exciting, but the reaction of the two countries after the release of the data is more interesting, the German Trade and Investment Agency issued a research report, saying that Germany may be lagging behind China for a long time in machinery and equipment exports, and also said that in 2020, China has led Germany in 16 of the 28 fields of machinery manufacturing, including valve device material handling, heating and cooling technology, mining machinery.
From this report, we can see that Germany is worried that China has embarked on a path ahead of them, so what is China's reaction?
The Chinese government's response
Chinese state media published an article discussing whether German manufacturing is really afraid of Chinese manufacturing, which argues that Germany has exaggerated the Chinese threat.
For example, the German media said that China is formulating industrial standards, German companies have been left behind, but the fact is that the leader of the International Organization for Standardization is still Germany, the article also said that Germany's manufacturing strength is still strong, the current China also needs to guard against arrogance, why is there such a situation of mutual boasting on both sides?
In fact, this is the norm of competition between countries, we can recall the Sino-US trade war period, when the United States also popular the chinese argument, pulling up China's threat to the United States in science and technology and military, and China also issued a rebuttal, now in the manufacturing industry is the same, just mentioned in the official media article believes that this is the Western countries' China threat theory, want to shape the competition pattern with China, under the national competition ideology, how is the real strength of the manufacturing industry of the two countries?
The gap between China's manufacturing industry and Germany
From another data can be seen, is the global manufacturing reputation ranking, this data evaluation is the cutting-edge technology industrial design and safety standards of such projects, just mentioned that China's machinery and equipment exports are the world's first, but in the word of mouth ranking in the top 10, and Germany is the first place, more than the United Kingdom, Switzerland, the United States and Japan, which actually highlights the current mainstream view, China has long been with cheap labor huge market and preferential policies, become the world's factory.
However, in terms of product quality, it is still lagging behind Germany, and the top level of the German Machinery and Equipment Manufacturing Federation, the largest industrial association in Europe, has given a rather pertinent comment. He assumes that the price of Chinese manufacturing is 25,000 euros, then German manufacturing is 100,000 euros, behind different prices are different technologies and services, and the current Chinese machinery specializes in mid-range products to meet the needs of emerging countries in Asia, but Germany's strength is high-end products, providing cutting-edge customer customization services in the industry, although it seems that China is still lagging behind Germany in technology, but it is not difficult to make up for the technical gap.
The rise of German manufacturing
If we go back to the 1890s, we will find the story of the rise of Germany, which is a bit familiar, in 1896 there was a book that caused a sensation in Britain, called "Made in Germany" This book warned that Germany has become the world's factory, and compared with British entrepreneurs, the Germans are more radical, counterfeit, low-price competition, the British market that was proud of its own goods was full of German products, why was britain so jealous of Germany?
The reason is that before the 1860s, Germany, which had not yet been unified into an empire, relied on copycat products imitating British goods to fish in the market, and the United Kingdom passed the commodity marking method in 1887, requiring all German goods to be marked [Made in Germany] Consumers would know that this was an inferior Quality German product, at that time no British could expect Germany to become an industrial power in a short period of time, and [Made in Germany] became a symbol of glory.
The reason for the rise of German manufacturing
The reason why Germany is making such rapid progress is because of the investment of a lot of national resources into basic scientific research and education, this step is solid enough that Germany is still enjoying the benefits it brings, and this year there are indeed many people in China who have proposed that the German route is a direction worth emulating, and many large German companies in the Chinese market will certainly be able to provide great help to China's industrial level in the long run, but there is another problem in China's manufacturing industry that is much more difficult to solve than the technological gap, and even in the short term, it is difficult to solve.
The cause of china's manufacturing blue-collar labor shortage
Only 30% of workers in China have a high school degree or above, which is quite low in middle-income countries, and for China that wants to improve its manufacturing technology, this is the biggest gap between China and Germany, and at first glance this problem seems to be not difficult to solve, as long as there are more higher technical schools.
Low salary issues
But the point is that "young people don't want to go into manufacturing at all", there is a poll of students in technical schools all over China, and as many as 64% of them say that they may not work in factories in the future, and the reason behind this is two levels, one is the actual low salary problem, and the social circle is relatively small.
Social perception issues
The other is related to the inherent thinking of social climate, Chinese society always has a little contempt for blue-collar work, relatively speaking, many people will think that white-collar work is better, although the salary is relatively low.
For example, let's look at a story, a 20-year-old Chinese young man Xiao Fan was recently interviewed by the media, he is a trained mechanical technician graduated from technical school, but he did not work in the factory but chose to work as a clerk in an e-cigarette store, after two years of resignation and now lying flat at home, his parents are worried about helping him find a job.
Why did Xiao Fan Obviously have a skill and choose to lie flat? He said that he did have many classmates doing some technical-related work in factories in coastal provinces, but these classmates in Xiaofan desperately worked hard to only have a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan, and the prospects were bleak, and they did not dare to buy a house in a big city, and the results brought by their efforts were so humble, so he chose to lie flat and not compete with everyone, XiaoFan's story is not a special case in China, and this is the current most difficult problem in China's manufacturing industry.
The reason for the strength of German manufacturing
Looking at the situation in Germany on the other hand, as I just said, Germany's previous large investment in basic scientific research and education has created the later, and we will talk about Germany's world-renowned technical education.
Education system
The reason why German workers are professional is strong is because of their education system, they have a special scholar called [vocational training] In almost all occupations in Germany there will be more than 300 kinds of corresponding vocational training, from aircraft mechanics to chimney cleaners.
Generally speaking, students who participate in vocational training will spend 1 to two days a week in school, 3 to 4 days to work in the company, and there is a salary, 1 vocational training course takes about three years, three years after the exam to get the qualification for this job, generally speaking, students will stay in the original company after getting the qualification, there is no problem of unemployment after graduation.
It is this system that allows the German manufacturing industry to have more high-skilled workers, advocating the tradition of technical schools also allows students to participate in vocational training more than to go to university, but here to add, Germany has also begun to appear this year the problem of diploma worship caused a lot of social concern, but overall these multi-quality and fine technical workers are the cornerstone of German manufacturing, in summary, China with the advantages of population and market in the manufacturing field to stand firm from low-end products to start from low-end products has now been promoted to the king of mid-range products, The world's largest exporter of machinery and equipment, but there is still a technical gap between China and Germany in the high-end field.
In fact, the Chinese government is also attaching importance to this matter, and has made important instructions on vocational education, emphasizing that it is necessary to steadily develop vocational undergraduate education, build a number of high-level vocational colleges and universities and majors, promote vocational integration, enhance the adaptability of vocational education, accelerate the construction of a modern vocational education system, and cultivate more high-quality technical and skilled personnel, skilled craftsmen, and craftsmen in big countries.
As for the international competition pattern mentioned earlier, it should be noted that China and Germany are not so simple as dualistic opposition, in fact, China and the United States are also in the same ideological competition and the opposition of key industries of the state, there is also economic interdependence.
Looking to the future
Although Germany is worried about China's complete overtaking in manufacturing, China is also an important market for Germany and a partner of many large companies, and it is conceivable that the situation in the world will be more complicated in the future.