By 2010 China wants to have a highly competitive machine manufacturing sector, according a June 28 Xinhua report. The goal is for these companies to be "capable of manufacturing major machine items with their own intellectual property rights and meeting the country's needs in the energy, transportation, raw material and defense sectors," according to a government report.
The plan is to set up a technological innovation system based around a group of enterprises, and gradually form an industry of major machinery, new and high-tech equipment, basic and general machinery. These centers will have "many features and well-known brand names."
Machinery for clean and efficient power-generation, large and complete sets of petro-chemical equipment, major coal mining machinery, large shipping vessels, high-speed trains, large precision high-speed numerically-controlled machine tools and key equipment for integrated circuitry are the targeted key categories.
The Chinese government plans to provide a package of support measures including research programs for these companies with the ultimate goal of making China "self-sufficient in machine design, manufacturing and operation."
The Ministry of Finance and the National Development and Reform Commission will work out preferential import tariff policies for domestic machine manufacturers that need to import spare parts and raw materials to build the key products. At the same time, the duty-free policy for the import of whole and complete machine packages will be abolished.
