Multinational corporations are a small obstacle to the development speed of fasteners in China

The rapid development rate of China's fasteners has attracted the attention of the developed countries, while letting them discover a new type of big market. Multinational companies have come alive. As a result, when domestic companies suddenly feel that they have survived the market so hard, they look around and have strong competitors.

According to statistics from the China Fastener Association, most of the products exported by China’s fastener companies are low-grade products with low technological content, and they mainly rely on low-price competitive advantages to enter the international market. Under the premise of not knowing the target export market, blindly exporting and concentrating products on a few markets, they also bargained each other and seized market share.

If there is no core technology, from the perspective of the world's division of labor, China's fastener companies may increasingly work at the lowest value chain, and the highest value chain is occupied by others. The weight of fasteners we create and the value of the fasteners we create will grow.

On the one hand, in the domestic market competition, more and more multinational companies have accelerated their entry into China. After adjusting its strategy for China, with its own technological advantages, it has seized more and more market share in the Chinese market. This has made domestic fastener companies face greater competitive pressures and increasingly harsh living conditions. . In this case, the investigation and prosecution of anti-dumping will easily fall on China's fastener companies.

The other challenge comes from the international market. The low cost makes Chinese fastener enterprises appear disorderly in the export process. The direct consequence is that cases involving anti-dumping of Chinese fastener companies have gradually emerged in the past two years, and once the company loses the lawsuit, it is discriminatory and extremely high anti-dumping. The tax rate will lose the cost-price advantage of Chinese products.

Technology R&D is now a relatively recognized “soft underbelly” of competition. It has become an obvious fact for transnational corporations to use it as a “weapon” to make their long-term foundation. However, whether it can be mastered by domestic companies and become a "weapon," it is obviously too early to say yes. Until today, many enterprises still call for "independent research and development" to be very important. On the one hand, they are reluctant to increase investment in technological research and development, making "research and development efforts" an empty talk.

According to the survey, the top 500 fastest-growing companies in China are rarely relying on core technologies. This is a weakness of Chinese companies. Most of the top 500 companies rely on cheap, low-cost, and economies of scale. Under the background of global competition, can our resource monopoly superiority rival the core technological advantages of multinational corporations? Can our cost advantage be against the brand advantage of multinational companies' products? Is it better to survive?

In 2005, there were more than 7,000 fastener companies in China (excluding Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan). Under the effect of low-cost price advantage, the domestic fastener export business has grown more than 20%. In the first three quarters of 2005, domestic fastener exports reached US$1 billion. Compared with the same period of last year, it increased by about 24%.

As a whole, compared to special equipment used in advanced industrial countries, the special equipment for fastener production in China is not only the manufacturing precision of the equipment, the advanced degree of the structure, the scope of application of the technology, the material selection of components, the speed of manufacture and update, and the application of computers. There is still a considerable gap in terms of other aspects. High-strength fasteners must not only satisfy the mechanical properties of the product, but also meet the assembly process requirements. They strictly control the torque during production and assembly, and the bolts strictly control the friction coefficient to ensure the axial force. The study is still rather weak and it takes a long way to go.