Since entering the new century, China's machine tool industry has experienced rapid development in the past decade, and has made remarkable achievements. In 2009, the industry ranked the first in the world in terms of economic scale. In 2010, the total industrial output value of the whole industry was nearly 550 billion yuan, of which the output value of metal processing machine tools was 20.9 billion US dollars, accounting for about one third of the world's total. With the rapid growth of economic scale, the product structure level of machine tool industry has been continuously improved, the ability of technological innovation has been significantly enhanced, and the comprehensive quality and market competitiveness of enterprises in the industry have been continuously improved. In 2010, the output of CNC machine tools in the whole industry exceeded 220,000, and the domestic market share of CNC machine tools reached 57%. Domestic mid-range CNC machine tools were put into the market in batches. Some high-grade CNC machine tools began to enter the core manufacturing areas of key industries and were initially applied. Important breakthroughs have been made in a few core manufacturing areas.
In the face of tremendous development achievements, we must also be very sober to realize that the rapid development of the past decade has relied more on the following factors: sustained and strong domestic market demand, the development impetus stimulated by the change of enterprise system and mechanism, and the strong support of national industrial policy. Comparatively speaking, technological progress and management upgrading play a relatively limited role.
Objectively speaking, the sustained strong domestic market demand at the middle and low end also slows down the technological progress of the industry to a certain extent. On the whole, we still haven't completely got rid of the development model characterized by scale expansion. Although our industry scale is very large, the level of product structure is low, and it is still at the low end of the global industrial chain.
On the one hand, we have the largest industrial scale in the world, on the other hand, we are still facing the situation that the domestic high-end market, especially the high-end market, still depends on imports, especially the high-end CNC systems and major functional components. Therefore, it can be said that the basic characteristics of the industry at this stage are "big but not strong". The main contradiction of the industry at this stage is the contradiction between the accelerated upgrading of the domestic market demand structure and the incompatibility of the industry's supply capacity.
It is not difficult to judge that the machine tool industry is in a critical turning point to realize a major strategic transformation by comprehensively analyzing the basic characteristics, major contradictions and recent significant changes in the domestic market of the industry at this stage. The industry must start from the "Twelfth Five-Year Plan" and realize the strategic goal of "from big to strong" in stages. This is not only the objective requirement of the change of market and development environment for the industry, but also the realistic need for the sustainable and healthy development of the industry. It is also the historical mission and responsibility entrusted to the machine tool industry by the national strategy. At the same time, we must also see that in recent years, the development of industry enterprises has laid a solid industry foundation for the implementation of the strategic transformation of "from big to strong" in the whole industry.