In the 1990s, Dongguan's economy grew rapidly and became a world-famous "factory" for processing trade, relying on its geographical advantages close to Hong Kong and Shenzhen and low labor prices. After the global financial crisis in 2008, there was a negative trend, with a large reduction in external demand, together with rising raw material prices and labor costs, the number of foreign trade orders in Dongguan fell sharply. A large number of factories choose to move to central and Western China or Southeast Asia. The processing manufacturing industry, which is the pillar industry for Dongguan's survival and development, is facing a serious test. According to the statistical bulletin of Dongguan's national economic and social development, from 2009 to 2014, Dongguan's GDP growth rate did not meet expectations for four years.
Continuing to follow the old way of small workshop processing is equivalent to "sitting and waiting for death". Faced with a series of strikes, Dongguan began to seek transformation and defend its status as a "world factory" by various means.
Rising labor price is the most important problem affecting the long-term development of Dongguan's processing trade. With China's vigorous promotion of "Made in China 2025", Dongguan also began early to upgrade its manufacturing industry with "machine replacement" as the main direction.
In Dongguan Jinsheng Precision Components Co., Ltd. mobile phone metal parts processing demonstration workshop, reporters see that 81 robots on 10 production lines are working in an orderly manner, once needed 204 people workshop, currently only 33 people. Huanghe, vice president of company administration, told reporters that a production line needs to invest about 2.5 million yuan (RMB, the same below), and the labor cost saved can completely cover the investment of transformation and upgrading.
It is understood that, in addition to Jinsheng, from September 2014 to January 2016, Dongguan declared a total of 1319 special fund projects for "machine replacement", with a total investment of 10.868 billion yuan. At present, the market application of industrial robots in Dongguan City is about 10,000 units. It is expected that the next three years will grow at an average annual rate of 30%. And "machine replacement" is also one of the explorations of Dongguan to build a new open economic system.
In addition to the transformation and upgrading of the traditional manufacturing industry, Dongguan also keeps a close eye on the tide of cross-border e-commerce development and actively promotes the development of cross-border e-commerce logistics.
In the Express Center of Qiying International Investment Co., Ltd., Customs and quarantine departments are stationed in it. Customs surveillance cameras are installed in the B2C product warehouse, which can greatly shorten the customs clearance time and improve the logistics efficiency of personal consumer goods. In the first half of 2016, under the influence of uncertainties such as changes in new policies for cross-border e-commerce, Qiying still achieved more than 3.15 million imports in the whole year of 2015.
