Through 50 years' development, especially the sustained, rapid and stable development after the reform and opening up policy, China Bearing Industry has formed a large scale of production. After 1990, economic sectors of China Bearing Industry had undergone profound changes. Many state-owned enterprises made considerable progresses. They are still the backbone of the bearing industry. Due to the flexible systems, the fair market competition, the country's reform and opening up policy and the favorable locations, many private enterprises in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces develop rather quickly and expand their business in a short period of time. They take up most of the general bearing market and some of them try their best to enter the market for high-end products.
Meanwhile, world's major bearing companies have entered China to form the joint ventures. Besides, the private companies get much progress. As a result, the proportion of state-owned enterprises is decreased year by year. With the deepening of the reform of property rights system, the proportion of state-owned enterprises will be further reduced, while the proportion of private enterprises will be further improved.
It is no doubt that demands are the key elements which will promote the continuous growth in the domestic bearing industry. Economic globalization and the transfer of manufacturing to China has become a trend. Particularly, in 2009, Chinese auto market had rather quick development. Thus, the automotive bearing market is also a large "cake" for many bearing companies.
According to the data from China Bearing Association, there are about 4000 to 5000 bearing manufacturers over the country. Among them, about 1750 manufactures have a certain scale (sales of 5 million Yuan or more). Because requirements for the automobile bearings are quite high, there are only 30 companies which can provide the required bearings for the automobile industry.
Liu Enshi, one leader of Bearing Association, said that although the current automobile bearing industry had an overall development, there was still a large gap between China bearing industry and those in many other countries in the world. For example, Chinese bearing industries lack of high-tech and high value-added products.
It is said that local bearing brands have a high market share in the market for business cars. About 1 / 3 of these products are highly sophisticated products. Although some of China's bearing industries can produce high-end bearings, most of them can only produce bearings used in automobile market at medium and low levels. The local bearings are mainly used in the low-grade cars, while foreign bearings are used in the high-end vehicles. Thus, China Bearing Industry should improve the technology so as to develop high-quality bearing products to meet different market requirements.
