31 janvier 2007
China’s WTO accession impacts on domestic automobile industry
As a result of successful domestic economic reforms combined with a fast-developing international market that is willing to purchase its labor-intense products, China’s economy has grown approximately 10% per year over the past 28 years and the GDP per person has grown up to 10561RMB in 20041. This remarkable development has made China the second largest beneficiary of direct foreign investment, behind only the US. China has by far the largest developing economy—more than 30% larger than Brazil’s. China’s ranking in the world economy is expected to continue improving in the coming decades [1]. Fueled by the favorable open environment for MNCs (multinational corporations) to invest in domestic manufacturers and the increasing income for urban residents, China’s automobile industry is likewise experiencing the fastest growth in its history. The total output (including saloon cars, camions and other special types) increased from 1475 thousand in 1996 to 5700 thousand in 2005, and the automobile possession rate per person increased from 0.2364% in 1996 to 1.1364% in 2004. On November 15, 1999, US and Chinese officials reached a bilateral agreement on China’s bid for membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO) [2]. Upon its admission to the WTO in 2001, China agreed to make several major reforms (including the Tariff Reduction Schedule and the Ration Abrogation Schedule) that will bring about great impacts on China’s automobile industry.
Much research has focused on the potential damage to domestic automobile producers when they have to compete with foreign magnates, some has given recommendations for China’s less developed automobile industry to meet the challenges, and others even claims that China’s inchoate automobile industry will not survive. But little has been written from the perspective of benefits, specifically the opportunities for the producers to enhance the manufactural technology and benefit from scale economy. This article attempts to fill this gap, offer evidence and data to prove that the expectation of potential competition when China is involved in WTO forces the automobile manufacturers to pursue industrial concentration, which will lead to scale economy and decrease the average cost in China’s automobile industry. This trend will ultimately narrow the price gap between domestic market and world market and the total social welfare will increase.
For other details, please refer to the http://www.mech.pku.edu.cn/robot/fourleg/members/shipengyi/paper21.pdf
30 janvier 2007
Re-balancing the cost burden
Solutions must be found to pass raw material price increase on to customers and consumers
Reluctance to change is a matter of principle for many customers and suppliers. but one thing is cetain - today's business model needs to change in order to re-balance teh cost burden, of rising material prices. The position is to convince OEM customers that we are all in the same boat and that it is in everyone's best interest to find a solution. Each one can not assume the entire burden. Long term partnerships are built by creating customer intimacy through open dialogue and transparency on facts and data. it is important to listen to the customer, but it is also important that the customer listens to us.One of automobile industry president said: " This type of partership already exists with certain OEMs. Who have accepted, for exemple, to apply the London Metal Exchange Indexation for copper, aluminum and zinc (Which automatically adjusts selling prices based on fluctuations over a given period), and some are now passing a share of the costs on the customer. This otherwise critical situations is , in fact, an ideal opportunity to get technical and process changes approved by the customer
25 janvier 2007
China auto market ranks second as economy booms
BEIJING - China surged past Japan to become the world's No. 2 vehicle market after the United States last year as car purchases by newly affluent drivers jumped 37 percent, the Chinese auto industry association said Thursday.
The announcement highlighted China's lightning evolution from a "bicycle kingdom" into a major auto market where foreign producers are racing to open factories and target a growing urban middle class.
Struggling U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford have gotten a boost from double-digit sales growth in China and fledgling Chinese manufacturers are starting to export their own cars, trucks and SUVs.
"There's money here, and people spend that money on cars," said Michael Dunne, vice president for Asia-Pacific for auto research firm J.D. Power and Associates. "The Chinese government has made no secret of its intention to develop a car culture and a car industry. All of the forces are working together."
China's overall vehicle sales, including trucks and buses, rose 25.1 percent to 7.2 million units last year, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. Passenger car sales rose to 3.8 million, it said.
Japan's total vehicle sales last year came to 5.7 million units, a slight decline from 2005, said the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.
U.S. car and truck sales totaled 16.5 million units last year, down a bit from 2005, according to research firm Autodata Inc.
The Chinese car boom is driven by economic growth that is estimated to have reached 10.5 percent last year.
The officially endorsed car culture has changed the Chinese landscape almost overnight, with ancient city centers bulldozed to make way for broad avenues and the government spending heavily to build a nationwide highway network. Big cities are ringed by car dealerships. Fast food restaurants are opening drive-through windows.
The car craze has taken a toll in smog and congestion. China has most of the world's 10 dirtiest cities, and air quality is worsening as car exhaust increases. Rush-hour traffic slows to a crawl in Beijing, Shanghai and other urban centers.
China could overtake the United States as the top car market some time after 2015, Dunne said.
"It could happen," he said. "China's annual income per person is just over $1,000, and they're buying 7 million vehicles. Imagine what happens when that goes to $2,000 or $3,000."
Red-hot Chinese sales have brought relief to U.S. automakers, which have seen weak demand at home.
General Motors Corp. said Monday that its total sales in China last year rose 32 percent over 2005 to 876,747 vehicles. Ford Motor Co. said sales of its brands, including Ford, Lincoln, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo, rose 87 percent to 166,722 units.
European and Japanese automakers report similar surges. Luxury auto maker Rolls Royce, owned by Germany's BMW AG, says its 2006 sales were up 60 percent. The company is expanding its work force to meet Chinese demand for its $380,000 luxury Phantom.
China's biggest-selling automaker last year was Shanghai General Motors Corp., a GM joint venture, with 365,400 vehicles sold, according to the Chinese industry group.
The top-selling car was the Jetta, made by FAW-Volkswagen Co., one of Volkswagen AG's joint ventures.
The biggest Chinese manufacturer was Chery Automobile Co., with 272,400 units sold. Chery and DaimlerChrysler AG announced a plan last month for the Chinese company to make small cars for sale worldwide under the Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep brands.
China's automakers exported about 325,000 vehicles last year, about 80 percent of them low-priced trucks and buses bound for developing markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the government says.
They also are eager to break into the U.S. market, though analysts say they will have trouble meeting safety and environmental standards.
This week at the Detroit Auto Show, China's Changfeng Motor Co. displayed a pair of sport utility vehicles and two pickup trucks ahead of what it said were planned exports to the United States.
23 janvier 2007
Undergrowth of China's Automobile Industry
One the one hand, many completed automobile manufacturers cannot meet the quota of production, and their production capacity has been laid idle for a long time. Factories have loudly called for starting up the market and stimulating consumption; on the other hand, new automobile projects have been started one after another. There are now nearly 30 factories producing various types of automobiles nationwide.
On the one hand, designated automobile factories with investment of several billion or tens of billion yuan shouted determinedly, "There is no space for price reduction, the price of sedan cars must not be cut"; on the other hand, some unlicensed automobile factories, acting contrary to them, have forced the price down to a very low point.
On the one hand, designated factories blamed the competent department for their "failure in macro-control"; on the other hand, "unlicensed" factories censured the designated factories, demanding for competition on an equal footing. The competent asserted that it would strengthen macro-control and repeatedly indicated that it would approve not even a single new project. However, when it come to specific projects, it approved one project after another.
The framework of a market economy has initially taken shape over the past 22 years of reform and opening up, the most competitive auto industry, however, still remains under the planned economy system. Without competition in its real sense, the automobile industry will never grow up.
Steady Development In Auto Industry
During the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" period, the auto industry, one of China's pillar industries has witnessed a steady growth. The repetition in the construction of auto-manufacturing industry has got contained and with its restructuring strengthened the economic benefit in mass-production has begun to show up.
Statistics show that in 1999, the volume of auto sales increased to 1.83 million cars, a yearly average increase of 6.33% from 1.46 million in 1995. By the end of 1998, the private cars accreted to 4.2365 million from 2.4996 million in1995, a rise of 23.615%.
By PD Online staff Du Minghua
People's Daily
19 janvier 2007
Should Private Cars be Encouraged in China
If you ask me, the answer is YES. I am always eager to own a personal car. Don’t you have the same dream?
Many people are against owning private cars because of some obvious reasons, such as air pollution, noise, traffic jams, and resource waste. But I don’t think that any of the above issues belong to the automobile uniquely. It is the industrialization that has brought us all of the problems. Why don’t we just stay in the agricultural society to avoid those troubles?
We should not always focus on the disadvantages of the cars but overlook their contributions and our great capabilities of overcoming the problems. Some cars have already adopted fuel batteries instead of gas engines. Cars will hardly generate any pollution when hydrogen replaces gasoline as the fuel. With cars, we run into traffic jam sometimes, but without cars, we will have to be congested at downtown all day long. We all dream of the rusticity, but without the car, life in the suburb is just a tragedy. Cars provide us much more convenience than troubles.
The automobile industry will contribute to our national economy enormously, just like what it has done for the American economy. As one of the mainstay industries, the auto industry will accelerate the progress of mining, manufacturing, capital construction, and other related domain. It will also provide tremendous employment opportunities. Domestic demand is playing a more important role in Chinese economy more than ever before. Private cars are the best stimulus of the demand expansion.
A private car is a symbol of freedom of individuals, and also an index of development level of a nation. There is no doubt that our government must encourage the development of private cars.
12 janvier 2007
the tools used and the ways of research
Direction of the research
The aim of this blog is not only a site to introduce automobile industry in China or some situations of automobile in the world, it is a tool to refer to the automobile industry development in the world and give some directions or suggestions to the automobile's future.
All the articles that I chose can give us a full condition of automobile industry and show us some solutions to manager the saturated automobile market.
Because of continually increasing price of raw materials prices and gas, automobile industry is facing a very serious situation, more and more european and american industrial entreprises began to fix their attention on Asia market, especaily Chinese market.
Chinese market is a developping market in the world, western campanise are making their effort to enter this market, but at the same time, Chinese own automobile enterprises are making their best to reduce the gap from western enterprise and to produce their own brand. However, what is the result?
The Strategy
Concerning the research, this is based on the research on internet on the subject automobile and investment: research on automobile history, automobile development, new technology in automobile industry, famous brands of automobile, actual automobile situation in China, automobile market, etc; After the intensive research on the internet, I began to gather and pick up these informations, then publish them on the blog according to my classement, of course, all the informations came from my search based on my primary key.
Searching methods:
Once I have chosen the suject that I want to put in my blog, I must collect information and try to use different methods to adapt these subjects, each method has its carater and can result in different quality and quantitiy
The Key words
Automotive Industry/Automobile
Chinese market
Raw Material / Metal Price
Auto China/Chine
Car/Car Export Import
Chinese Auto Market /Growth/Forecast
Auto Forums
The tools
1/ Searching engins
yahoo
www.yahoo.com, www.yahoo.com.cn
sina
sohu
baidu
MSN
2/ Information Gartograph (Commercial Uses)
3D field
KartOO Technologies
KartOO is similar to Google, but displays results as a topological surface and graph. KartOO have undergone a transition from being a provider of services based on the their search and information cartography technology, to being mainly a software publisher specializing in "cartographic visualization."
http://www.kartoo.net/e/eng/index.html
Acetic
Text-based content analysis software--"a collection of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Market Research and Survey analysis tools." Not classical information cartography, but "Massive data analysis and information cartography (text mining)" is one of the Information Retrieval capabilities described on Acetic's Software Characteristics page. Their Zoom product (Semantic Search Engine) also offers to "chart textual databases or knowledge bases, corresponding to a technological or competing environment, human resources of a company, etc."
http://www.semantic-knowledge.com/
"specializes in Information CartographySM" Their product is a graph where the connections between nodes represent "flows of communication, regulations, money and/or resources" while the nodes represent the entities involved in the system, and to which information such as as maps and documents are attached. The "info-cartographer" can then explore for "opportunities, information gaps, bottlenecks and areas to target for problem solving." For example, for "mapping the complex terrain of conflict and developing sustainable paths to resolution" (Papadopoulos, 2004).
http://www.viewcraft.com/index.html
With these websites, I can refer to some photographe and do some correct analyse on Chinese Automarket and get the good conclusion even good reseach using searching engins.
3/ RSS
RSS is a method that uses XML to distribute web content on one web site, to many other web sites.
- RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication
- RSS allows you to syndicate your site content
- RSS defines an easy way to share and view headlines and content
- RSS files can be automatically updated
- RSS allows personalized views for different sites
- RSS is written in XML
Without RSS, users will have to check your site daily for new updates. This may be too time-consuming for many users. With an RSS feed (RSS is often called a News feed or RSS feed) they can check your site faster using an RSS aggregator (a site or program that gathers and sorts out RSS feeds).
Since RSS data is small and fast-loading, it can easily be used with services like cell phones or PDA's.
Web-rings with similar information can easily share data on their web sites to make them better and more useful.
RSS is useful for web sites that are updated frequently, like:
- News sites - Lists news with title, date and descriptions
- Companies - Lists news and new products
- Calendars - Lists upcoming events and important days
- Site changes - Lists changed pages or new pages
4/ Encyclopedia
Wikipedia
5/ Internal Newletters
6/ Video upload
Dailymotion
The tools above is my principal technique that I used for my blog, of course, I also use other methodes to complete my information, for example, consulting books, newletters, subscription of free magazins, etc... With viarous ways and methods, I make my effort to complete the auto information in this blog.
11 janvier 2007
China Now World's Second-Largest Vehicle Market
BEIJING (AP) - China surged past Japan to become the world's No. 2 vehicle market after the United States last year as car purchases by newly affluent drivers jumped 37 percent, the Chinese auto industry association said Thursday.
The announcement highlighted China's lightning evolution from a ''bicycle kingdom'' into a major auto market where foreign producers are racing to open factories and target a growing urban middle class.
Struggling U.S. automakers General Motors and Ford have received a boost from double-digit sales growth in China and fledgling Chinese manufacturers are starting to export their own cars, trucks and SUVs.
''There's money here and people spend that money on cars,'' said Michael J. Dunne, vice president for Asia-Pacific for auto research firm J.D. Power and Associates. ''The Chinese government has made no secret of its intention to develop a car culture and a car industry. All of the forces are working together.''
China's overall vehicle sales, including trucks and buses, rose 25.1 percent to 7.2 million units last year, China Association of Automobile Manufacturers said. Passenger car sales rose to 3.8 million, it said.
The Chinese car boom is driven by economic growth that is estimated to have reached 10.5 percent last year.
The officially endorsed car culture has changed the Chinese landscape almost overnight, with ancient city centers bulldozed to make way for broad avenues and the government spending heavily to build a nationwide highway network. Big cities are ringed by car dealerships. Fast food restaurants are opening drive-through windows.
The car craze has taken a toll in smog and congestion. China has most of the world's 10 dirtiest cities, and air quality is worsening as car exhaust increases. Rush-hour traffic slows to a crawl in Beijing, Shanghai and other urban centers.
China could overtake the United States as the top car market some time after 2015, Dunne said.
''It could happen,'' he said. ''China's annual income per person is just over $1,000, and they're buying 7 million vehicles. Imagine what happens when that goes to $2,000 or $3,000.''
Red-hot Chinese sales have brought relief to U.S. automakers, which have seen weak demand at home.
General Motors Corp. said Monday that its total sales in China last year rose 32 percent over 2005 to 876,747 vehicles. Ford Motor Co. said sales of its brands, including Ford, Lincoln, Jaguar, Land Rover and Volvo, rose 87 percent to 166,722 units.
China's biggest-selling automaker last year was Shanghai General Motors Corp., a GM joint venture, with 365,400 vehicles sold, according to the Chinese industry group.
The top-selling car was the Jetta, made by FAW-Volkswagen Co., one of Volkswagen AG's joint ventures.
The biggest Chinese manufacturer was Chery Automobile Co., with 272,400 units sold. Chery and DaimlerChrysler AG announced a plan last month for the Chinese company to make small cars for sale worldwide under the Dodge, Chrysler or Jeep brands.
08 janvier 2007
Introduction of Competitive Intelligence
Competitive Intelligence is the process by which business enterprises gather and analyze information on their external competitive environment. There are several other definitions, all focusing on the same principle.
A second definition (from the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals) is "Competitive intelligence is a systematic and ethical program for gathering, analyzing, and managing Information about the external Business environment that can affect a company’s plans, decisions, and operations.
Key points of these definitions: 1) Competitive Intelligence is an ethical and legal business practice. (This is important as CI professionals emphasize that the discipline is not the same as industrial espionage which is both unethical and usually illegal). 2) The focus is on the external business environment. 3) There is a process involved in gathering information, converting it into intelligence and then utilizing this in business decision making. CI professionals emphasize that if the intelligence gathered is not usable (or actionable) then it is not intelligence.
02 janvier 2007
Introduction of Blog "Automobile Industry in China"
This blog is done by one student coming from Master 2 Global E-Business of University of Science and Technology of Lille I. I do several parts concerning automobile industry, such as actual situation, automobile market, business strategy of investment in the filed of automobile, etc.
This work is done in the field of Mr Pinte's course "Competitive Intelligence".