The Chinese motorcycle industry

Résumé du document

The motorcycle industry in China was born in the 1950's, with the foundation of the Beijing Motorcycle Factory. Today, China is the largest producer in the world, accounting for nearly half of the world's total production.

The first Chinese motorcycle was developed in 1951 to meet the country's military needs during the Korean War.

The country's exports, for the 10-month period between January and October 2005, amounted to $1.4 billion, an impressive 47 percent increase from international shipments in the same period of the previous year. The growth in export volume closely mirrors that value, slightly exceeding 46 percent in the 10 months to October 2005.

The massive entry of private enterprises, which began in the early 1990's, changed the industrial organization dramatically. They mushroomed and formeda motorcycle cluster in several cities. The flood of their low-quality products caused a drastic decline in the market price of motorcycles.

Extraits

[...] This incident have changed attitude of Japanese manufacturers. Consequently they have decided to react by fighting against illegal imitation to maintain their share of Southeast Asian markets. Elimination of illegal imitation of Japanese motorcycle is not only for profit of Japanese manufacturers but also for basic foundation of global free trade in East and Southeast Asia. Free trade led by WTO (world trade organization) allows participants to compete freely in global market. China and countries in Southeast Asia have advantage in global competition because of cheap labor and abundance of natural resources. [...]

[...] The imports of motorcycles from China increased dramatically. Since Vietnamese authorities prohibited import of completely assembled motorcycles from 1998 the Chinese motorcycle parts had to be assembled by Vietnamese companies, giving rise to more than 50 local motorcycle assembling companies around the year 2001. Since 2002, some of these local motorcycle assembling companies shifted from simple assembly of Chinese parts to in-house production of parts. For these newly emerging companies, China has been perceived as a partner. Many of them relied on technology transfer from Chinese companies for in-house production of some engine parts, and sourced other key parts from Chinese companies based in Vietnam as well as parts imported from China. [...]

[...] China now has a relatively small base of motorcycle makers. About 70 percent of these 200 or so makers are locally owned companies. About 28 percent are foreign-invested while the rest are state-owned enterprises. For the year 2006 we can notice 57 new suppliers profiles. Three of the biggest suppliers are China Jialing Industrial Co. Ltd (Group) and Zongshen, which are based in Chongqing and Lifan which employ more than five thousand employees and which has a production capability of 2.03 millions of engines and (eight hundred twenty six thousand) motor cycle in 2005. [...]

[...] However, scale of the flood is getting bigger as time goes by. Hence, it cannot deny that deforestation that is caused by exhaust gas is intensifying the flood. Solution Therefore, Honda has made strategic alliance with Chinese manufacturers producing copies instead of fighting at the court. By this strategic alliance, Honda has developed new model "Wave" in 2002. This model has become so popular in China and Vietnam because of its reasonable price and high quality. This happened because it is using Japanese technology and cheap Chinese parts. [...]

[...] Moreover, original brands by manufacturers in China or countries in Southeast Asia are not going to be born if they keep imitating Japanese brands. The struggle (lutte) by Japanese motorcycle manufacturer to eliminate imitations could be benefit for whole region. However, hence, (désormais) we can see an official hope through the “JAMA-CAAM Motorcycle Industry Intellectual Property Rights Cooperation Project” which began on February 2002 is an agreement between the JAMA Motorcycle Committee and the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM), pledging to raise awareness in both China and Japan to protect the intellectual property rights of the motorcycle industries in both countries. [...]