China Truck Manufacturing Writ Large As Global Trade Microcosm.
china truck Manufacturing Writ Large As Global Trade Microcosm.

This is my long-winded way of saying that though I am NOT an expert on worldwide truck manufacturing, I probably know that business better than any other.

And so, of course, I was very intrigued by a recent Financial Times article, entitled, “Chinese truck makers take on global groups,” on how “International truck makers are facing increasingly tough competition from Chinese commercial vehicle companies, which have already cornered the domestic market and are now aggressively moving on to the export market – especially south-east Asia and Africa.”

Chinese truck manufacturers are going to be puring profits from their sales in emerging markets into R&D that will allow them to up their quality to be able to go into North America and Europe.
Western truck manufacturers are moving into China to lower their costs to be able to compete in China and in emerging market countries, which in turn will expose their technology to Chinese companies, which in turn, will better enable Chinese companies to compete on a global scale.
I am seeing something else in China Truck manufacturing business that was not mentioned in the FT article: Chinese companies licensing American technology. No doubt, my firm’s background with trucks has caused us to see a disproportionate number of such licensing deals, but seeing them we are and they all have a common thread. A Chinese truck manufacturer has told its Chinese part supplier that it has x number of months to start giving the Chinese truck manufacturer a “world class” part and if the Chinese part supplier does not do that, the Chinese truck manufacturer will start buying that part overseas.

In response to this edict, the Chinese part supplier hunts down an American or European company that manufacturers the same part for a licensing or joint venture deal. I talked generally about this phenomenon in “Fear The China Joint Venture And Front-Load Your China Licensing Agreements.“

This same dynamic has already taken place and been completed in a whole slew of industries and I suspect it is ongoing in a whole slew of other industries. What are you seeing out there? http://www.cummins-china.net/