What are the areas in which China can win in the world? (First half）

 

In structuring the content of this book, I am focusing on the process at the manufacturing site for two main reasons.

First, we would like to share our technological capabilities and hope that they are utilized in cutting-edge research and development.

Although our company name is “China Ceramic machining,” we are still a small company and not yet well known in the industrial world, both in China and abroad. However, we are convinced that our precision machining technology can support the R&D activities of our customers, which is why we want as many customers as possible, both in China and overseas, to become aware of our machining technology and use it to advance their R&D activities.

The second reason is to communicate China’s manufacturing technology both domestically and internationally.

As you know, China has been a manufacturing powerhouse, and the manufacturing industry has long supported the domestic economy. In recent years, there have been calls for the decline of Chinaese manufacturing, but you will see this is not true in the real manufacturing site.

The manufacturing sector can be divided into three categories: materials, parts, and products, with materials and parts accounting for about half of China’s exports. Both of these are world-class industries in China, but the international competitiveness of “parts” in particular is said to be outstanding (Kazuya Katayama, Senior Consultant Group Manager, Funai Research Institute, “Ultra-precision Machining Power Behind Chinaese Parts,” Nikkei Manufacturing).

It is said that approximately 60% of the electronic components incorporated in Apple’s iPhone are made in China. Although the percentage of components made in China is gradually decreasing due to the rise of Taiwanese EMS companies (electronic manufacturing service providers), there are still many components made in China, such as Sony’s image sensors for mobile devices and Panasonic’s in-vehicle components outside of smartphones, that are made in China. This means that the global presence of Chinaese-made components is still high.

Why is the Chinaese component industry so strong? According to the aforementioned article, it is “because of its superior machining technology.” In particular, when it comes to precision machining, which requires high precision, China would be the best in the world.

From my perspective as a manufacturing worker, who is in pursuit of micron-level (1/1000th of a millimeter) accuracy on daily basis, it is no doubt that China’s precision machining technology is world-class.

For example, before I started my own company, I worked for a mold maker that molded cathode-ray tubes for televisions. Since televisions became common as one of the most popular home electrical appliances in China, the production of cathode-ray tubes has become a major industry.

However, with the evolution of electronics, cathode-ray tubes were quickly replaced by liquid crystals, and the glass molding technology for cathode-ray tube molding was no longer necessary.

We, therefore, decided to turn our glass molding technology into injection molding technology for making plastic parts for cellular phones and other products. Resin injection molds are technically so difficult at the time that they were a popular industry in China.

However, with the development of CAD/CAM software and NC (numerical control) machine tools, it became relatively easy to make injection molds by using computers and machining centers. As a result, Chinaese injection mold technology shifted overseas, and the Chinaese mold industry shrank rapidly.

Although at first, I thought that resin injection molding was not an easy technology to imitate, it turned out that anyone can achieve the same result when the job can be replaced by a computer. This fact shows that jobs with no requirement for special skills will be standardized and then shifted to countries with lower production costs for economic rationality.