In the corridor of the European Machinery Exhibition, German engineers and Chinese purchasing representatives were discussing new orders and technical parameters.
Who would have thought that behind such a scene is a historic reshuffle of the global machine tool trade pattern.
In 2025, China’s machine tool export data will surpass Germany for the first time, accounting for 21.6% of global export business.
This change is not accidental, but the result of the joint promotion of industrial structure adjustment, technological iteration and market expansion in the past decade or so.
Back in 2010, the scale of China’s machinery industry reached the top of the world for the first time, starting a competition with established industrial powers such as Germany and Japan.
By 2020, China’s total machinery and equipment exports will be far ahead.
In the field of machine tools, Germany has long been the industry benchmark, but preliminary statistics in 2025 show that China’s machine tool exports will increase by 18% year-on-year, while Germany will decline by 10%, making China the world’s largest machine tool exporter.
This leap is not only reflected in numbers, but also represents an improvement in the basic capabilities of the manufacturing industry.
Machine tools are known as “industrial mother machines”. Without them, complex products such as automobiles, wind turbines, and precision medical equipment cannot be manufactured.
In 2023, China’s machine tool output value will account for 32.1% of the global total, and consumption will also reach 32.5%.
Domestic machine tool companies in China have emerged one after another, and some local industrial clusters have performed particularly well.
For example, in the workshop of Shandong Jinan Second Machine Tool Group, new presses are shipped overseas every day; workers at Shenyang Machine Tool Company work overtime to rush to produce export orders.
At the same time, the Indian machine tool industry has also made significant progress in the past five years, with an export growth rate of 12%, but it has not yet formed a comprehensive industrial ecosystem like China.
In the eastern Zhejiang region, industrial clusters in Taizhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Jiaxing and other places have been promoted to national advanced manufacturing clusters in recent years.
In 2023, the eastern Zhejiang cluster will achieve an output value of nearly 280 billion yuan, accounting for one-fifth of the country’s total.
It gathers 35 listed companies, 13 individual champions, 118 “little giants” specializing in new companies, as well as global leaders such as DMG Mori Seiki and Tsugami Precision Machine Tools.
One out of every three metal cutting machine tools is produced in eastern Zhejiang, accounting for more than one-fifth of the country’s exports.
In contrast, the machinery manufacturing base in the Midwest of the United States once led the world. However, since 2017, affected by talent gaps and capital diversion, its international competitiveness has declined significantly.
China’s machine tool technology level is rising rapidly.
Zhejiang Changer Intelligent Equipment independently developed a CNC side broaching machine, which solved the problem of localization of aero-engine tongue and groove processing; Shanghai Tuopu developed a dual five-axis mirror milling machine tool, breaking the foreign technology blockade and providing key equipment for the manufacturing of domestic large aircraft.
At present, domestic mainframe products have expanded from ordinary machine tools to high-end five-axis machining centers and super-heavy precision equipment. The overall technical level has entered the forefront of the second echelon in the world, effectively supporting national strategic needs.
In contrast, the Russian machine tool industry has been relying on imported core components for a long time. Although it has unique designs, it has never been able to break through the technical bottleneck, and its international market share continues to shrink.
Policy support has injected new impetus into China’s industrial mother machine industry.
In 2024, Zhejiang established a “chain leader + chain owner” system to promote in-depth cooperation between local governments and leading enterprises to create a collaborative innovation network.
Industrial funds have invested tens of billions to specialize in neck-stuck technology.
Jiaxing relies on the Sino-German Small and Medium Enterprises Cooperation Zone to introduce high-end foreign-funded enterprises and build an open cooperation platform.
Hangzhou focuses on additive manufacturing equipment and intelligent machine tools to form a growth pole for emerging industries.
At the same time, the Indian Machine Tool Association tried to promote cooperation in southern cities with a similar cluster model, but the results were limited due to insufficient infrastructure and industrial chain support.
Looking to the future, the “15th Five-Year Plan” proposes to improve the national system and tackle key areas such as integrated circuits and industrial motherboards throughout the chain.
In the next five years, China’s machine tool industry will be demand-oriented, technological adaptability will continue to improve, the layout of the international industrial chain will be dynamically adjusted, digital intelligence and hardware advanced will be deeply integrated, and industrial concentration will increase.
Make all-round breakthroughs in technology, market, and industry, and strive to advance into the first echelon in the world in terms of overall level.
Against the background of increasingly fierce competition in the global manufacturing industry, the steady development of China’s industrial machine industry has not only reshaped the export pattern, but also provided a solid foundation for the modern industrial system.
