Hot search is blowing up! According to Japanese media reports, Panasonic Holdings will spend 10 billion yen to transfer all mid-to-high-end household air conditioning production lines from China back to Japan by 2024.
Panasonic just signed a strategic cooperation with Xiaomi on the front foot, and moved the home air conditioning production line out of China on the back foot. The two news stories before and after inevitably caused the outside world to worry about China's air conditioning industry: does this mean that the high-end compressor technology mastered by Panasonic will become China's "stuck neck" technology, thereby containing the subsequent development of Chinese air conditioning companies?
First, the evacuation is a helpless move
In fact, the withdrawal of Panasonic air conditioners from China is more out of profit considerations. With the rise of China's domestic air conditioning brands, the old Japanese home appliance Panasonic air conditioner has fallen into a "dilemma" in the Chinese market.
In terms of cost control capabilities, the three giants of domestic air conditioners, Midea, Gree and Haier, occupy more than 70% of the market share, and the cost can be controlled to a low degree, and the large-scale production is enough to form a scale effect. However, Panasonic lacks both manpower, material resources and capital scale in the Chinese market, and cannot support its participation in the price war in the Chinese market.
At the technical level, in terms of self-cleaning, sterilization, intelligence, scene linkage and other technologies, domestic brands can already become the leader, the versatility of air conditioning is "played" handy, Panasonic's advantages in this regard are no longer obvious, market share has been squeezed by domestic brands.
In addition to various internal factors, the "winter" of China's air conditioning industry has promoted Panasonic's "retreat" to a certain extent.
Under the pressure of repeated epidemics, declining demand, rising costs and other aspects, China's air conditioning market in 2021 and 2022 has reflected a trend of decline, and various brands are actively helping themselves, but due to the close connection between bulk household appliances and the real estate market, it is inevitable to be "pulled off the cliff" by the real estate winter. Domestic brands are still struggling to survive, hoping to get rid of the quagmire through new products and break through the stock "ceiling", and the life of overseas brands is not very good, and they are deeply trapped in the dilemma of both production and sales.
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the cumulative output of air conditioners in China from January to September 2022 reached 174.915 million units, a cumulative increase of 3.5%. However, compared with the cumulative output of 218.357 million air conditioners in China in 2021, a cumulative increase of 9.4%, the decline is still not small.
In this case, Panasonic also had to "seek change", and the transfer of the production line was a helpless move. According to Japanese media's viewpoint, Panasonic's transfer is to adapt to the supply chain uncertainty caused by trade frictions, and also hopes to promote the process of local production and local sales to improve production and operational efficiency.
In general, the strong rise of domestic brands and the downturn in the Chinese market economy prompted Panasonic to shift its production lines, which is understandable for reasons of interest. But for China, the withdrawal of Panasonic's mid-to-high-end air conditioning production line sends a bad signal: Panasonic's high-end air conditioning technology, such as compressors, may not be shared with China.
Second, compressor technology "stuck neck"?
The reason why Panasonic's retreat caused heated public opinion is hidden public concern that China's air conditioning industry is too dependent on imports. At present, domestic air conditioning brands generally use Japanese compressors, such as Gree using Panasonic compressors, Mitsubishi compressors are also widely used, and domestically manufactured compressors cannot be accepted by the market on a large scale because of their cost, performance and other disadvantages.
For air conditioning, the refrigeration compressor is like the human heart, which determines whether the body can operate strongly, stably and long-lived.
It is constantly in motion to transport the refrigerant to the various important components, forming a flow cycle. Only by the compression brake of the compressor can the recirculating flow of the refrigerant be achieved, and its importance is self-evident.
At present, although domestic air conditioners occupy most of the "cake" of the domestic market, they are still subject to others in terms of core technology due to the high dependence of compressors on foreign countries. Although there are already domestic brands involved in the problem of self-production of compressors, the product quality is immature, and it is more at the level of self-production and self-sales.
Therefore, in the domestic compressor technology is not mature today, Panasonic's retreat is also believed by the industry, intending to contain China's air conditioning enterprises through the first-mover advantage of compressor technology and decouple from China's industrial chain.
This can't help but think, without imported compressors, where will China's air conditioning industry go?
Poor is thinking and changing. In fact, when facing the challenges of globalization, Chinese air conditioning companies also recognize the importance of mastering core technologies. As a result, the birth of the Haili brand broke the monopoly of multinational groups on compressor technology.
Today, it has occupied one-seventh of the world's market share, can produce different high-efficiency and energy-saving compressors, with a production capacity of 30 million units, truly becoming the "backbone of China" of the air conditioning compressor industry. Although Haili may have a gap with top brands at the technical level, it also makes Chinese air conditioning companies still "strong", and the living environment of domestic brands has been improved.
Of course, this does not mean that domestic brands do not have a sense of crisis. Overseas brands occupy a leading position in the high-end compressor industry because of their advantages in technology patents, and it is difficult for China to break through the restrictions of patents to break this barrier.
The more high-end the compressor, the more sophisticated the machine tools and software, once formed, it is difficult to break through.
Therefore, although Panasonic's retreat may release part of the domestic market, in the final analysis, the surpassing of core technology from 0 to 1 is the "engine" to further release the momentum of the market. China's air conditioning companies should have a sense of crisis, and how to catch up with this weakness is a problem that needs to be thought deeply.
Third, the status of Chinese factories is no longer the same?
Panasonic's retreat also reflects a core proposition, the global industrial chain that has long been rooted in China is gradually shifting, gradually returning to local or Southeast Asia and other places where labor is cheaper, and the status of Chinese factories has been replaced by Vietnam, India and other places. Under the current situation that the industrial chain is shifting outward, what is the future of China's manufacturing industry?
First of all, it must be clear that the outward migration of China's industrial chain is an inevitable trend. Looking at the international situation, the United States, Japan and other countries encourage manufacturing enterprises to return to their own countries; Places like India and Vietnam are favored for their cheap labor markets, compared with rising Chinese costs, which once held the title of "factory of the world."
In addition, coupled with factors such as Sino-US trade frictions, some multinational companies will choose to produce products in Southeast Asian countries in order to avoid the US suppression of Chinese companies. Since 2018, the United States has imposed tariffs on China's exports, not only the scope of goods subject to tariffs on China has been expanding, from 50 billion, to 200 billion, and then to 300 billion, but the tariff rate has also risen, and China's high-end manufacturing has borne the brunt of the impact.
From this point of view, Panasonic's withdrawal is inseparable from the Sino-US trade friction, after all, the interests of Japan and the United States are inseparable.
The essence of enterprises is "profit-seeking", it is worth understanding that "risk avoidance" for profits, the key is how China should respond to this industrial chain and supply chain transfer, and regain the advantages of a manufacturing country.
In any case, the "labor pain" caused by the transfer of the industrial chain is inevitable. Especially in today's weak domestic consumption and grim employment situation, labor-intensive industries have absorbed a large number of labor and are the "reservoir" of employment in the mainland. Once it moves out in large numbers, it may lead to a wave of unemployment, and even some multinational groups and the local economy achieve each other, which is difficult to separate.
Take Henan Foxconn as an example, with its own efforts, Henan, whose total annual foreign trade does not exceed 20 billion US dollars, has exceeded the 30 billion US dollar mark. By 2020, Foxconn had become the country's largest export trading company, contributing 60% of Henan Province's exports and 80% of Zhengzhou's total exports.
Today, Foxconn has become an indispensable part of Henan's economy, but who can guarantee that it will stay in China and continue to contribute to China's economic development? The same is true of the transfer of Panasonic's air conditioning industry, in addition to affecting the industrial layout, the negative impact on the Guangzhou plant is also difficult to estimate.
Therefore, China must be prepared to deal with problems before they occur, knowing that today's international situation is changing rapidly, and no one knows what will change next.
IV. Conclusion
It is undeniable that in the initial stage of the development of the mainland's manufacturing industry, the injection of foreign capital has brought us living water such as technology and capital, which has promoted technological upgrading and the development of the industrial chain, but once it is overly dependent on external factors and falls into the trap of insufficient endogenous cycle, it is easy to be controlled by people.
When the U.S. Department of Commerce announced that ZTE would ban any U.S. purchases of U.S. products for the next 7 years, ZTE's business quickly collapsed. Such a huge Chinese company, the world's fourth largest supplier of communications equipment, because the core technology is subject to people, it fell when the sanctions came.
Of course, China will not sit still. It needs to be understood that in order for China's manufacturing to truly rise, it cannot just be the world's "foundry", but must master the core technology. If there is no core technology, today we put forward the problem of "domestic replacement" of compressors, and tomorrow we will also raise the problem of various "stuck neck" technologies to seek domestic alternatives.
After analyzing the reasons, the next countermeasure is self-evident: to strengthen basic research and improve original capabilities.
It is true that it is useless to just shout slogans, the key is that policies and enterprises should coordinate development to break through the bottleneck. The more serious the stuck neck, the more "core critical" it means, and these technologies and related fields are also more likely to be tilted by domestic policies and resources in the future, and become future outlets. Just like compressor technology, in the case of immature domestic technology, Panasonic's withdrawal also gives many domestic brands the opportunity to enter the high-end market, and if the technology makes a breakthrough, it will inevitably obtain higher returns.
In short, China's path of relying on foreign capital for development is gone, and taking the road of self-reliance and self-improvement is the best answer to solve the problem.