Imported bearings still monopolize China's high-end bearing market

At present, China's imports of high-end bearings are mainly from the United States, Japan, Sweden, Germany, Romania and other Western countries. Nearly 80% of the world's bearings are produced by multinational companies in these countries. Their bearings rely on reliable steel materials, exquisite workmanship and excellent quality to almost monopolize China's domestic high-end bearing market. Although there are about 6,000 bearing enterprises in China, the total sales of the top ten bearing companies only account for nearly 40% of the total industry.

According to incomplete statistics, in 2009, China's bearing industry output reached 10 billion sets, and the total output value has reached 90 billion yuan, ranking third in the world. Among them, there are 1,750 enterprises above designated size, and only 5 companies with annual sales of over 3 billion yuan, but the import and export deficit exceeds 800 million U.S. dollars. Wang Quanqing said that this situation has improved in 2010, but the annual deficit is still high between 500 and 600 million U.S. dollars, and imported bearings still monopolize China's high-end bearing market.

According to the person in charge, China’s equipment manufacturing industry has developed rapidly in recent years. However, the core components such as bearings that are used as major equipment machinery have become the soft underbelly of the country’s major equipment development. “Taking domestic high-speed railways as an example, although our country has a high-speed EMU technology with independent intellectual property rights, the localized application of supporting bearings is still blank. At present, most high-speed bearings in China can only meet the EMUs with a speed of 150-180 km per hour. National high-speed rail bearings can meet the requirements of speeds of 350-400 km/h, so at present, almost all of the high-speed rail bearings for EMUs with a domestic speed of 160 km per hour are imported.In addition, large-scale wind turbine bearings, high-end automotive hub bearings, and deep-hole drilling rigs Bearings, offshore drilling platform series bearings and other high-end energy equipment bearings are also the soft underbelly of industry development.

In recent years, the domestic market for wind power, high-speed railways, automobiles, ships, and construction machinery has opened up a huge market for equipment, but bearings as the key basic accessories have become a weakness in its development. “The issue of independent production capability, high-end dependence on imports, and technology hollowness have become issues that China’s bearing industry needs to solve urgently. If these issues are not solved for a long time, the difficulty in R&D and production of many important equipment products in China will increase. Greatly affect the development of related industries.

China's bearing industry has serious problems with many companies, small scales, single products, and poor industry concentration; the product structure is irrational, the proportion of low-end products is too large, the most critical self-innovation capability is insufficient, the investment in technology research and development is insufficient, and the industry average R&D Investment in sales is low. Precision bearings, high-speed train bearings, and civil aviation bearings are monopolized by foreign bearing companies. Has been committed to independent innovation, research and development of high-precision precision bearings, has achieved major breakthroughs, not only complete types, but also excellent quality, low prices, in a leading position in technology, 70% of its products are fully capable of replacing imported products Greatly advanced the pace of domestic bearings.

Lu Bingheng, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, believes that key developments must be made in industrial development policies and technological development plans to solve the problem of the lag in the development of high-end bearings in the equipment manufacturing industry. According to Wang Quanqing, Secretary General of the China Bearing Industry Association, during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period, the key words of the domestic bearing industry will focus on independent innovation and tackle key technologies to achieve industrial upgrading and strive to replace imports.