On China’s ＂Machine＂ Flow, Brave Progress and Good Recovery —— Looking at China’s Economic Resilience from the Workshop.
Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, July 12th Title: "Machine" flows bravely and recovery is improving — — Viewing China’s Economic Resilience from the Workshop.
Xinhua news agency reporter
Poster production: Wu Hao
On the big screen of No.18 Workshop of Sany Heavy Industry, the operation data of more than 500,000 excavators, mixing stations, cranes and other construction machinery all over the country are scrolled in real time, and an index map reflecting China’s economic vitality comes to the fore.
This is the "Construction Machinery Index" founded by Sany Heavy Industry based on the Internet platform of Roots Interconnection Industry, which can truly reflect the operating rate of infrastructure construction in various places and is a microscopic indicator for observing economic changes such as investment in fixed assets.
From the "big excavation" of bridging roads, to the "middle excavation" of building greening, to the "small excavation" of farmland renovation and 5G base station construction, the "construction machinery index" gathered from various infrastructure scenes shows that China’s infrastructure investment has accelerated its recovery in the first half year of the 14 th Five-Year Plan.
The sudden COVID-19 epidemic hit the global economy hard. Since the second quarter of last year, China’s economic growth rate has turned positive quarterly, and finally it took the lead in realizing the annual economic growth from negative to positive among the major economies in the world.
Contrary to the economic recovery curve of China, since the second half of last year, the cumulative operating time of excavators in various places has shown a high growth. In the first half of this year, the cumulative operating time of cranes increased by 46% year-on-year, and all provinces showed positive growth. The fiery construction on the construction site confirmed the trend of further economic recovery.
"The rapid progress of infrastructure construction in the first half of this year is also related to the fact that most project builders responded to the call to celebrate the New Year on the spot." Daniel He, co-founder of Shugen Internet, said that it is worth mentioning that the cumulative operation time of all equipment in Hubei Province has shown a positive growth, outperforming the national average, with the crane start-up time increasing by more than 75% year-on-year.
"Fixed asset investment has maintained a recovery growth." Luo Yifei, chief statistician of the Investment Department of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that from January to May, infrastructure investment increased by 11.8% year-on-year; The average growth rate in two years is 2.6%.
The heat on the construction site has not diminished, and the workshop is in full swing.
In the first half of the year, the monthly electricity consumption in the State Grid operating area increased rapidly year-on-year. The accumulated electricity consumption of the whole society in six months increased by 15.83% compared with the same period in 2020 and 14.97% compared with the same period in 2019.
From the electricity consumption of the three major industries, the proportion of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in the first half of the year was 1.26%, 78.66% and 20.08% respectively, increasing by 20.13%, 16.39% and 25.21% respectively compared with the same period in 2020, and both increased by more than 14 percentage points compared with the same period in 2019.
In addition, in terms of industries, the year-on-year growth rate of electricity consumption in accommodation and catering, wholesale and retail industries in the first half of the year exceeded 30 percentage points; In the first half of the year, the electricity consumption of transportation industries such as railway transportation, air transportation and urban public transportation increased by 21.12% year-on-year.
The steady growth of electricity consumption reflects the vitality of economic recovery in the first half of the year. Statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in the first five months, industrial enterprises above designated size achieved a total profit of 3,424.74 billion yuan, an increase of 83.4% year-on-year; It increased by 48% compared with the same period in 2019, with an average increase of 21.7% in two years.
Although the leading indicators show that China’s macro-economy is continuing the recovery trend since the second half of last year, the rise of upstream commodity prices this year has also brought no small challenge to the recovery and recovery of related enterprises in the construction site and workshop.
Take the most widely used steel as an example. According to the data of China Steel Association, the price of steel rushed to an all-time high in the first half of the year, and began to decline in late May, but it still showed a high fluctuation trend. At the end of June, the prices of rebar and medium plate rose by more than 500 yuan/ton and 700 yuan/ton respectively compared with the beginning of January, and by more than 1000 yuan/ton compared with the same period last year.
The cost pressure of downstream manufacturing enterprises has increased, and the home appliance industry has the greatest impact. A person in charge of a leading domestic appliance enterprise pointed out that the cost of raw materials for household appliances accounts for more than 60% of the total cost, and there is a great demand for bulk raw materials such as copper, aluminum, steel and plastics.
Since the end of last year, the home appliance industry has collectively announced price increases. The person in charge said that the air conditioners of major brands in the industry generally increased by about 10% during the same period, and the prices of household appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines all increased by about 15%.
Car companies are also deeply affected industries. Sichuan Jiayi Co., Ltd. is mainly engaged in the research and development, production and export of electromechanical products such as motorcycles and parts, solar photovoltaic and so on.
"Export orders have increased, but the profits are very thin." Yuan Zhiyou, the chairman of the company, said frankly that many factors, such as high raw material prices, RMB exchange rate fluctuations and rising logistics costs, have a great impact on business operations. "The prices of materials needed for steel, copper, rubber and spare parts are all high."
There is pressure and motivation. "In the second half of the year, a high-end locomotive will be listed in China, and at the same time, it is planned to enter the European and American markets." Yuan Zhiyou said that the company’s products were all export-oriented before, and now they are turning to both domestic and foreign markets.
Motivation is more powerful, and the price increase of raw materials also forces enterprises to resolve the crisis through supply chain coordination and digital transformation. According to the data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, from January to May, China’s information technology service revenue reached 2,131.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24%. Among them, the process of "going to the cloud" accelerated, and the revenue from cloud computing and big data services was 291.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 24.1%.
Meng Wei, spokesman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said that in the future, depending on market changes, we will launch a number of batches of national reserves of bulk commodities in a timely manner, increase market supply in a timely manner, ease the cost pressure of enterprises, and promote the return of prices to the normal range. (Reporter Dai Xiaohe, Liu Yangyu, Zhang Xinxin, Xie Xiyao)