The German machine building industry lost 6.4 bn Euros of business in 2009 on the account of product piracy*), reports Die Welt, quoting a VDMA (German Engineering Federation) study today. The numbers are based on a survey among 326 German companies. Most of them name China as a counterfeiting country (79 per cent). The runner-up, maybe more surprisingly, is Germany itself (named by 19 per cent). Then follow India, Turkey, South Korea, and Italy.
One of the factors for the prominent role of German counterfeiters here is probably proximity – in this country, you will happen on a machine-building company more frequently than on a cat. Then there is the high degree of technological absorbability. The further an industry is developed, the easier it should be to make use of competitors’ ideas in one’s own design.
The capability to adopt competitors’ technologies – in addition to the usual “cultural reasons” – may help to explain, too, why China is featuring prominently in the survey. Another study, quoted from by Die Welt on April 12, sees Germany’s technological machine-building leadership – gradually – shifting into the direction of China. It’s no longer only about copying after all, the study says – the first Chinese companies are beginning to take a technological lead in their fields. To counter growing Chinese machine sales volumes especially in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China itself), it reportedly recommends to do more of the production in China, or even cooperation with Chinese companies (but, by way of precaution, leaving the more important fields of research and development at home).
I’m wondering. Has the time come to start stealing technology from China? Maybe – but you better make sure that such technologies are no state secrets.
The Chinese wind energy market’s growth notwithstanding, Enercon, a Northern German builder of windmills (the world’s fourth-largest company in the industry), prefers to stay out of it, writes Die Welt.
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*) a loss of 40,000 jobs is also mentioned in Die Welt‘s coverage, but without a correlative period.
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