THE RESTRUCTURING AND INTERNATIONALIZAION OF THE CHINESE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY AFTER THE ADOPTION OF OPEN-DOOR POLICY
中国汽车工业——改革开放后的重整与国际化

Restructuring and internationalization have been two major characteristics of the develop- ment of Chinese automobile industry after China's open-door policy of 1978. The authors firstly analyze the industry's features shaped by restructuring in the last two decades in terms of corpo- rate structure , production capacity and structure , scale economy , and spatial organization. They then examine its degree of internationalization and position in the world automobile indus- try with reference to foreign investments and technology transfers. Finally they outline the problems encountered by the Chinese automobile industry. China's first auto assembly plant was imported from the former USSR in 1953. However . the government closed its door to technology import in the 1960s and early 1970s. During these two decades, the automobile assembly plants proliferated disorderly because of the high produc- tion profit resulted from the shortage of automobile supply. This led to an over-diffused spatial pattern of the industry. China re-adopted technology import policy after 1978, and utilized actively technological transfers from developed countries. Now most of China's automobile production technologies are transferred from big automobile countries such as Japan , US , German and France, and almost all its car producers are joint-ventures. However , the Chinese government limits the foreign eq- uity in assembly and engine joint-ventures to not more than 50% . The take-overs by and trans- plants of MNCs do not seem possible in the near future. At the same time , China began to restructure the industry in order to achieve economies of scale. The corporate structure of the industry is now being shaped towards dominance by state and province owned corporation groups. More and more small and medium factories are being taken over by , merging with or making alliance with these corporation groups. Yet , the im- provement of economies of scale is far from satisfactory. The over-diffused locational pattern has not changed much either. Small passenger car (sedan) is still a minor part of automobile production in China , account- ing for only 22. 4 percent of total output in 1995. As the government is cautious in encouraging private cars, the car percentage will not increase quickly as has been expected by the Ministry of Machinery Building, i. e. to reach 50 percent of the total auto production by the year of 2000. ln short , the Chinese automobile industry in the last decade has increased volume of pro- duction , but not overall efficiency , quality and economy. This is because there is neither market force nor the former strong planning drive behind it . lt is now in a critical growth period con- fronted both by pressures from MNCs, entry and competition , and by the still irrational corpo- rate structure and an over-diffused location pattern.