According to the German newspaper Die Welt, the latest survey by VDMA shows that in 2020, China overtook Germany for the first time and became the world’s champion of machinery and equipment exports.

The total volume of global machinery trade in 2020 is estimated to be 1.05 trillion euros, which is nearly 10 percent less than a year ago due to the pandemic. Of this, China’s machinery and equipment exports amounted to about 165 billion euros, accounting for about 15.8 percent of the global market share. Germany’s exports of machinery and equipment are about 162 billion euros, with a corresponding market share of 15.5 percent. This means that for the first time, China’s exports of machinery and equipment are ahead of Germany’s. By contrast, in 2019, German exports were still about 1.4 percentage points higher than China’s.

 

In addition, compared with China, the share of other major machinery exporters in the global machinery trade has been on a downward trend, although the ranking has not changed. The United States, for example, continues to rank third with a 9.1 percent market share, followed by Japan with less than 8.6 percent, and Italy with about 6.7 percent.

 

In fact, China’s total machinery sales of 924bn euros in 2020 are almost equal to the combined sales of the U.S., Germany, Japan and Italy.

 

The VDMA also analyzed the reasons for this change. Because of the short duration of the outbreak in China, the impact was short, in contrast to the European sales market suffered severe setbacks due to the outbreak.

 

In addition, Chinese machinery exports are no longer confined to emerging markets in Africa and Asia, the VDMA said. Even in Germany, China is now its biggest foreign supplier. Moreover, China has made significant progress in many fields and has become a strong competitor to Germany. In addition, it is becoming the maker of international standardization.

 

On the other hand, however, the VDMA study also argues that China still lags behind international competitors such as Germany in some areas. Intelligent production, or Industry 4.0, is still a big advantage for European and especially German machinery manufacturers, so Germany has good export opportunities in the future.