Competitive advantage of machinery industry in Sichuan Province

Sichuan machinery industry has long paid attention to technical innovation and technical improvement, and taken full advantage of scientific research institutions, colleges and universities in boosting technical innovation, which has promoted the progress in industrial restructuring and overall manufacturing level.

Sichuan enjoys solid scientific research foundation, where the key scientific research institutions have outstanding strengths. By 2004, Sichuan has had 14 national key laboratories, 55 provincial key laboratories, 7 national engineering technology centers and 24 provincial engineering technology centers. Chengdu Branch, Chinese Academy of Sciences was established in Sichuan. In addition, in Sichuan, there are 54 academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) and more than 1.1 million professional personnel above the title of engineer. In the field of machinery industry, there are 29 technical centers above provincial level, e.g. well-known Chengdu Tool Research Institute, Chengdu Electric Welding Machine Research Institute, Sichuan Machinery Design & Research Institute, China Academy of Engineering Physics, Southwest Automation Research Institute and Southwest Jiaotong University, etc. in Sichuan. Such scientific research institutions, colleges and universities rank the top in China in terms of the manufacture of locomotive and rolling stock, numerical control technology and equipment, metallurgical equipment and engineering machinery, etc..

According to the statistics of Sichuan Province Economic & Trade Commission, the rate of commodity output value in Sichuan machinery industry was 23.72% in 2004, 4.1 percent higher than that in China’s machinery industry. What’s more, the rate of commodity output value of 30 key enterprises and enterprises of “1+8” Project reached 47.6% and 46.3%, respectively. The application of such state-of-the-art technologies and new processes has greatly improved the competition of Sichuan machinery products at home and abroad and enhanced the speed and grade of enterprise’s development.