The quality status and existing problems of Made in China
2021-2-20
The development of industry is a prerequisite for the development of other industries. Manufacturing is the leading force of a country's industry and plays a major role in the national economy. China has become a veritable "world factory" with its huge manufacturing capacity. As the "world factory", China occupies an important position in the world market with its advantages of high quality and low price. As the world's largest exporter of foreign trade, while China's manufacturing has achieved victory on the international stage, it has also brought huge economic benefits to the country. While my country's manufacturing industry has made great achievements, it is also facing many urgent problems. Such as industrial upgrading and quality control.
The quality status of "Made in China"
China's manufacturing industry is "big but not strong." China's manufacturing exports can only rank in the forefront of the world in terms of quantity, and can only lag far behind the world in terms of quality. This is because the development of my country's manufacturing industry relies too much on the input of material resources. The rapid development of the manufacturing industry also brings heavy costs, excessive consumption of resources and energy, and serious environmental pollution. The main reasons for this situation are:
First, the added value of products is low. The development of my country's manufacturing industry is mainly concentrated in the processing and manufacturing of non-core components with low added value and labor-intensive assembly links. It is at the low end of the global industrial chain and lacks core technology. The problem of "big but not strong" is very prominent.
Second, the technological level is low and independent innovation is lacking. Chinese companies still lag far behind the world's advanced level in many key technologies. Many important industries are highly dependent on foreign technology, and many core technologies are controlled by others.
Third, there is a lack of independent brands. The situation that my country has faced for a long time is that more than 90% of the products exported by the manufacturing industry are OEM production, mainly relying on my country's cheap labor costs and land resources, and this production method lacks Own brand is at the lowest end of the industry chain and has the smallest profit margin.
Made in China is "unpleasant" in the international market. While Made in China opened the door to the world with its low price advantage, due to some quality problems, it was hyped by Western media to demonize Made in China. This made Made in China once international There was resistance in the market. In addition to the problems related to Made in China itself, another aspect is political issues. Made in China is often put on a "political trademark" by the media or politicians in the West. This is related to the protection of the domestic market abroad, especially after the outbreak of the economic crisis. It frustrated the overseas development of Made in China.
Objectively speaking, after long-term efforts, the quality of Chinese products has been greatly improved. On the whole, the quality of "Made in China" is excellent. However, we should also realize that there is still a certain gap in the quality of Chinese products compared with developed countries. This gap is mainly manifested in product performance, stability, reliability, and service life in the early stages. Now it is mainly reflected in the aspects of safety, hygiene, and environmental protection.
In recent years, there have been repeated incidents of "quality gate" targeting Chinese products in foreign countries. Some of them are caused by foreign trade protection forces, that is, by deliberately "slandering" and "smearing" the reputation of "Made in China". The purpose of protecting related industries in the country. Although some of them are caused by differences between our country's quality standards and foreign standards, it is undeniable that some are indeed caused by product quality problems. Therefore, we must realize that quality is the foundation of an enterprise and the foundation and guarantee of technology and brand. If the scale expansion and cost control of an enterprise are at the expense of quality, the result is bound to damage the image, reputation and brand of the enterprise and its products, which is precisely the most important foundation for the survival and development of an enterprise.
The 2008 dairy product contamination incident in China (or the 2008 China milk powder contamination incident, the 2008 China tainted milk product incident, and the 2008 China tainted milk powder incident) was a food safety incident in China. The cause of the incident was that many babies who consumed milk powder produced by Sanlu Group were found to have kidney stones, and then the chemical raw material melamine was found in their milk powder. According to the published figures, as of September 21, 2008, 39,965 infants and young children who have received outpatient treatment and consultation due to the use of infant formula and have recovered, 12,892 are in hospital, 1,579 have been cured and discharged before, and 4 have died. As of September 25, 5 people in Hong Kong and 1 person in Macau have been diagnosed with the disease.
The incident aroused great concern and concerns about the safety of dairy products in various countries. After the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China announced the melamine inspection report on infant milk powder produced by domestic dairy manufacturers, the incident quickly deteriorated. The milk powder of many manufacturers including Yili, Mengniu, Guangming, Shengyuan and Yashili all detected melamine.
The incident also severely damaged the reputation of Chinese-made products, and many countries banned the import of Chinese dairy products. On September 24, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine of China stated that the milk incident has been brought under control. The melamine samples of major varieties of liquid milk samples including yogurt, pasteurized milk, and sterilized milk produced after September 14 have all been tested.
No melamine was detected. In September 2010, the governments of many places in China issued an ultimatum: If the problematic milk powder in 2008 is turned over before September 30, 2010, there will be no penalty. In 2011, China Central Television's "Weekly Quality Report" survey found that 70% of Chinese people still dare not buy domestic milk. After the incident was further escalated, in the online sample analysis of China's dairy industry, the public's confidence index dropped to the lowest point.
Many people in mainland China are panicked. Many people dare not eat mainland brand dairy products. Sales of foreign milk powder have begun to rise. They have even used small three links to buy Taiwanese milk products in Kinmen or Matsu, or go to Hong Kong to buy milk powder. The situation is like Fuyang inferior milk powder. After the incident, many mainlanders were afraid to buy mainland milk powder and insisted on buying Hong Kong milk powder. The quality and safety of "Made in China" still has a long way to go.
Problems with "Made in China"
The cost advantage is weakened, and the profit margins of Chinese manufacturing are getting smaller and smaller For a long time, Chinese products have mainly relied on low prices to compete in the international market. This is also the biggest competitive advantage of Chinese products in the international market. It is based on relatively low product costs, especially low labor and energy prices, which have created Chinese products. Low cost advantage. But with the development of time, China's wages have risen, the prices of raw materials, fuel, power and the RMB exchange rate have risen.
The current situation is changing. Chinese manufacturing is under tremendous pressure from rising costs, but under the conditions of rising product costs, it is difficult for the price of products to increase, resulting in smaller profit margins. Since most Chinese products are labor-intensive and resource-consuming products, they have low technical content and low added value, and thus have low price elasticity. Price increases will lose their competitive advantage, which means they will lose the market.
China's manufacturing industry is dominated by products with high energy consumption, high pollution, low added value and low technology content In recent years, China has made great achievements in participating in the international division of labor by relying on its comparative advantages in labor. From the perspective of total trade exports, China is undoubtedly a major trading country, with exports reaching 438.37 billion US dollars in 2003. However, there are also big problems in this: the products exported by China are produced at the cost of a lot of energy and environmental pollution.
In the structure of China’s export commodities, the exports of textiles, clothing, general mechanical and electrical products, footwear, toys, and plastic products accounted for more than 70% of the total exports, while the consumption of daily necessities, food, clothing and other products often satisfies Engel's law, the market space is limited, as a large number of surrounding developing countries start to engage in this industry, this industry is facing the challenge of a price war. In the end, countries with lower labor costs can win.
China's manufacturing products with rapidly growing exports are facing increasing trade barriers
With the rapid development of my country’s economy, the rapid growth of trade, the excessive dependence on foreign trade, and the excessive concentration of the types of export commodities and the geographical distribution of export markets, my country’s share in a certain importing country is too large, and trade friction has been increased. Due to the imperfection of my country’s trade remedy measures, our resistance to trade frictions has been greatly weakened; some standards have not been in line with international standards, which has become another important cause of trade frictions.
All this seriously affects the survival of my country's manufacturing industry. "Made in China" has developed China into a manufacturing workshop for the world, and it has indeed supported hundreds of millions of workers, especially manual workers, and has greatly eased employment and social stability problems, but it is difficult to make Chinese enterprises have achieved real development.
At the same time, most of the profits created by the vast majority of workers in China have been deprived of well-known enterprises in developed countries. In addition, "Made in China" does not mean "Developed in China". Only when products made in China no longer use foreign technology and brands but are produced with independent technology and brand reputation, will the distance from "developed China" be less distant.
The future of Made in China The "market for technology" adopted by many fields of China's manufacturing industry is nothing more than the use of "imitation and catch-up" to achieve self-innovation standing on the shoulders of giants. However, we have to admit that this kind of imitation and catch-up can only narrow the gap with cutting-edge technology but cannot allow us to go abroad and become a "global" enterprise.
The reason is that the ingredients created in China still lack this kind of deficiency to a large extent. Therefore, regarding the development and way out of Made in China, the consensus of the whole society is to accelerate the industrial upgrading of Made in China and gradually realize the change from Made in China to Made in China. However, the Chinese creation here should not only refer to narrow product innovation, but should include innovation in management, mechanism, corporate culture, and business ideas. 1. Make full use of labor resources
In today's China, there are frequent occurrences of doctors from Peking University who go to raise pigs. The fact that a public toilet administrator has a large number of undergraduates to apply for employment reflects the waste of labor resources and the discord in training. Therefore, my country should make full use of a large number of highly educated intellectuals to research and develop advanced technologies, improve relevant laws and regulations on intellectual property protection, encourage companies to independently research and develop, and increase the added value of products.
Adjust the industrial structure, realize industrial upgrading, and support industries with low energy consumption, low pollution and high value-added.
In contemporary China, the leaders of many cities still regard the economy as their top priority, without considering energy consumption and environmental issues. This has resulted in overcapacity in some of our manufacturing industries and environmental pollution. The concept of government leadership should be changed, sustainable development, low carbon, and low pollution should be the first goal, and industrial upgrading should be planned reasonably.
Establish brand awareness and improve product competitiveness. The evaluation of Chinese products in the world is: low quality and cheap. This makes Chinese products less competitive and low added value. Therefore, our country should cultivate some well-known international brands to enhance the image of Chinese products in the international market.
The American Apple company has attracted countless fans vying to buy with its meticulously developed products. The brands of iphone, itouch, and imac are also famous internationally. Apple relies on its brand effect to make a lot of money, even richer than the enemy. The competition in the market, first of all, is the competition of product quality, leading technology can only have leading quality through quality assurance. Quality requires strict quality management to ensure, which requires companies to establish an effective quality assurance system for the entire process of product design, manufacturing to after-sales service, and implement strict monitoring of all employees and the entire process of product production.
As the world's largest developing country, cultivating quality competitive advantages has increasingly become an important measure for my country to participate in global economic cooperation and competition on a larger scale, broader field, and higher level, as well as an important measure to ensure and promote the sustainable development of Made in China.