Skip to main content

China’s Electromechanical Champions

From the series Major industrial groups in China

Analysing the WTO data for 2023, it emerges that China exported goods worth $3,379 billion, surpassing the European Union and the United States. Industrial machinery accounted for over 7% of exports and electrical machinery 9%. In the same sectors, Chinese imports did not reach 40% of the value of exports, indicating that these are among the pillars of Beijing’s export economy.

Sany Heavy Industry

In this newspaper we have already examined the Chinese mechanical engineering giant Sinomach. But in the field of machine construction, Sany Heavy Industry also holds a prominent position, particularly in excavators, cranes, industrial elevators, and cement machinery. The company, based in Changsha (Hunan) since 1991, was founded by Liang Wengen, who had previously been an executive at a State-owned arms factory, and is its main shareholder. Sany had a 2023 turnover of over $10 billion; it has 90,000 employees and is highly internationalised, with production facilities not only in China but also in India, Indonesia, Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Brazil, Canada, and the United States. Only 40% of its turnover comes from the Chinese market.

Sany became the world’s leading company for cement-processing machinery thanks to the 2012 acquisition of the German company Putzmeister, which manufactures pumps and other equipment for cement processing and transport. Like all large groups, Sany also operates in other sectors, for example, in renewable energy, highlighted by the installation in October 2024 of a 15-megawatt (MW) wind turbine, which at the time was the largest onshore wind turbine in the world.

Dongfang Electric

In the electromechanical industry, however, China has not yet produced a business capable of competing on equal terms with global giants such as Siemens, General Electric, Mitsubishi Electric, or ABB. Nevertheless, some companies stand out as they seek their own path to compete in the international market.

Dongfang Electric Corporation is a State-owned enterprise founded in 1958, with headquarters in Chengdu, Sichuan province. Its products include industrial automation equipment, boilers, electric motors, and particularly steam and wind turbines. In addition to Sichuan, the company’s sites in China span Guangdong, Tianjin, Zhejiang, and Hubei, and abroad it is present in India and Indonesia. Its financial report for 2022 shows a turnover of €7.3 billion, with profits of €380 million. Dongfang Electric has been active in the electrical energy sector for over 60 years, supplying about a third of the equipment in the sector; with over 17,000 employees, it is one of the largest groups in the sector worldwide.

The company has sold electricity generation plants in Vietnam, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Ethiopia. Moreover, it has entered the nuclear sector, with the construction and commissioning of a 1.75-gigawatt (GW) reactor. Last October, it installed a 26-MW wind turbine, the largest offshore wind turbine in the world: the hub of the nacelle is 185 metres above sea level, equivalent to the height of a 63-storey building, and the turbine can power 55,000 homes.

Harbin Electric

In the North-East, in Heilongjiang, Harbin Electric Corporation developed during China’s first Five-Year Plan, starting off by participating in six key industrial construction projects, with the help of the USSR. The 1953-1957 plan aimed to focus the industrialisation efforts of the young People’s Republic of China on 694 large and medium projects, of which 156 were developed with the help of the USSR. To achieve the objectives of the six projects, three factories in Harbin, the provincial capital, were merged: Harbin Boiler, Harbin Electric Machinery, and Harbin Turbine thus formed China’s first base for the research, development, and construction of power-generation equipment.

Today Harbin Electric describes itself as a State-owned enterprise, the backbone of national security and one of the vital arteries of the economy. With a 2023 turnover of €3.7 billion and over 11,000 employees, the group manufactures steam turbines, boilers, generators for power plants, and the main components for nuclear power plants. Harbin Electric highlights its capacity for research and collaboration with the academic world. The number of employees has more than halved over the past ten years, and turnover is also declining, but this is not the case for the company’s contributions to the development of new technologies. On December 13th, 2024, it announced the successful completion of full-load tests at the Binzhou power plant in Shandong, equipped with the world’s first 660-MW ultra-supercritical circulating fluidised bed (USC-CFB) generation unit. This is an advanced technology for high-efficiency coal combustion with low emission standards. Once fully operational, it will be able to utilise up to 2 million tonnes of low-calorific coal and other lower-quality fuels. Harbin Electric Corporation supplied the plant’s three main components: the boiler, the turbine, and the generator.

At the international level, the company cooperates with US’s General Electric in the field of gas turbines and wind power generation. In 2024, it also supplied equipment for power generation to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Indonesia, Uzbekistan, Turkey, Abu Dhabi, and Mexico.

Shanghai Electric

Shanghai Electric is the Chinese group with the highest turnover. With 75,000 employees, it closed the 2023 financial year with sales of nearly €15 billion and a net profit of €280 million. The company’s origins date back to 1902 with the founding of the Shanghai Dalong Machinery Factory, which came under the control of the Shanghai municipality in 1954.

Shanghai Dalong, founded by Chinese entrepreneur Yan Yutang with seven employees, used to carry out small repairs on foreign merchant ships arriving in Shanghai Bay, eventually employing 50 workers on the eve of World War I. At the end of hostilities, Yan began to cooperate with the Chinese domestic industry in the construction of textile manufacturing machines and employed 1,300 workers by 1937. At the time, it was considered the only Chinese company capable of building machines for the textile industry on a large scale (Shanghai Electric, bimonthly, 2022).

After World War II and the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the company became involved in the repair of electric generators; in early 1953, it started to handle generators built by General Electric, which were parachuted in during the war of resistance against Japan, and had become the local power source. With the first Five-Year Plan, it was decided to develop a 6-MW steam turbine, which became operational in 1954, the year the company came under the control of the Shanghai municipality. It remained so in various forms until 2004, when it became a joint-stock company, named Shanghai Electric.

Today the group operates in the electromechanical sector, specialising in the generation and distribution of electric energy, manufacturing, and automation systems. The business is structured into various divisions: the main one, with over 12,000 employees, deals with power generation, with sales exceeding €7 billion. A subsidiary of this division is Shanghai Electric Gas Turbine, a joint venture established in November 2014 between Shanghai Electric and Ansaldo Energia (Italy), and operating in the field of gas turbines, in the Chinese market and in the countries along the New Silk Road. In parallel, Shanghai Electric had acquired 40% of Ansaldo Energia’s shares. Today, following a capital increase of the Genoa-based company in 2022, in which the Chinese company did not participate, its stake has fallen to 12%. The joint venture sold 80 gas turbines, including 40 in the last four years, according to Xinhua and Ansaldo company sources. Finally, last year, the first combined-cycle power plant equipped with an Ansaldo Energia GT36 gas turbine began operations in the Minhang Industrial Zone in Shanghai.

Agreements and competition

The agreement with Ansaldo is not an isolated case. The Shanghai Electric Power Transmission and Distribution Engineering Division, with over €1 billion in revenue, has companies cooperating with Siemens, Schneider, and Hitachi Energy. The elevator division, Shanghai Mitsubishi Elevator, is a joint venture with Japan’s Mitsubishi, has 12,000 employees and is managed by the Chinese company. In the robotics field, Shanghai Electric collaborates with Japan’s Fanuc; in the automation division, with 4,500 employees, it is worth noting the 2016 acquisition of Germany’s Broetje-Automation GmbH, with 450 technicians, specialising in aircraft assembly systems.

In the industrial electromechanics sector, the Dragon has not yet taken flight to reach the heights of global competition. However, an April report by KfW, the German development bank, provides an indication of the state of competition between Chinese and German businesses in the European machinery market, which is considered mature and difficult to conquer. Germany’s share of machinery imports in EU countries has fallen from 30% in 2012 to 28% today, while China’s has risen from 7% to 10%. Every year, leveraging its vast domestic market, China captures a few percentage points of global market share, jostling with the major industrial groups of the old powers while also striking deals with them.

Lotta Comunista, January 2026

Labels:

Popular posts in the last week

Reckless Bets on Migrants in California

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 11 From the series Chronicles of the new American nationalism The tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump on allies, partners and opponents of the United States have opened a phase of negotiations with the affected countries and caused reactions from some key States. The legal opposition from almost all areas of the US poses a test: whether States, courts, and Congress can influence trade policy and constrain the expansion of executive powers. Amid conflicting rulings, the tariffs have been reinstated – an outcome that, The New York Times remarks, has “left Washington, Wall Street, and much of the world trying to discern the future of US trade policy”. California’s dispute with the federal government has expanded to immigration policy and the domestic use of military force. The political, economic, and power struggles overlap with the electoral dimension. The establishment remains critical of or ...
Read more

The EU Commission Plans for Rearmament and a Clean Industrial Deal

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series European news Following the European elections which took place on June 6th - 9th, the leaders of the Member States met on June 27th at the European Council. Ursula von der Leyen was nominated as president of the next European Commission, after she was chosen as the European People’s Party’s (EPP) Spitzenkandidat (“leading candidate”). The agreement also included the election of former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa as president of the European Council, and the appointment of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Subsequently, on July 18th, Parliament elected von der Leyen as president of the Commission by an absolute majority, with 401 votes out of 719 MEPs. On September 17th, von der Leyen presented her team of commissioners to the European Parliament and, two days later, the Council adopted this list of...
Read more

THE UNITARY IMPERIALISM ISSUE

Chapter Six   In 1951 Europe, and the world, was shrouded in mist. The ‘Cold War’ ideology ruled, and the war in Korea made a world conflict between the USA and the USSR seem a real possibility. In France, Great Britain, Germany and Italy, the talk was of rearmament. Europe, at that time urged by the USA, was planning the EDC (European Defence Community) to keep step with German rearmament. The concept of a ‘ unitary imperialism ’ was the strategic choice that helped the small GAAP group remain politically independent. But translating this into an ‘Internationalist Third Front’ slogan was unfortunate. It facilitated a link with French libertarian communists, but could also cause confusion with its suggestion of a ‘Third Force’ between the USA and the USSR, which in Europe was supported by important bourgeois currents. Although opposition to unitary imperialism consolidated the internationalist struggle, the theory required to be developed and per...
Read more

Show Warfare?

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 16 After show politics and show diplomacy , have we sunk to the obscenity of show warfare ? On the surface, this is true. The Pentagon’s video game-style communications, where airstrikes, missile launches, and deadly explosions are set to music for social media clips, certainly suggest so. It matters little that a hundred schoolgirls were also blown to bits as artificial intelligence took centre stage on the battlefield. In reality, war propaganda has always showcased destruction and mocked the enemy; today in Washington, in the era of the high-tech groups of television and social media democracy , the only thing that has changed is the style and the means used to inflame fanaticisms and stuff people’s brains. In Tehran, dominated by a parasitic bourgeoisie that feeds on oil revenues and is intertwined with the militias and hierarchies of t...
Read more

LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM

Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM   An examination of the debate within the groups that were to create GAAP (Anarchist Groups of Proletarian Action) gives a vivid picture of the problems that between 1948 and 1951 had to be slowly and painfully faced. Three major confrontations, progressively more serious, took place between Cervetto and Masini in the autumn of 1949 and again in the spring and autumn of 1950. As preparations were being made for the National Conference at Pontedecimo – from which GAAP would be born – debate on the nature of the organisation and on theories of the State and imperialism began to define the characteristics of the new political group, but also revealed the differences. The first step had been to look for ‘a different kind’ of communism in anarchism. Along this road Cervetto , with an ever-surer grasp, would raise the issue that had been first posed by Marx and Lenin : our militant...
Read more

Lotta Comunista: The Origins 1943-1952

Guido La Barbera Contents 9. Preface to the English Edition 13. Preface 19. Useful dates 21. Chapter One «ONE OUGHT TO KNOW WITH WHOM ONE IS DEALING» 25. The balance-of-power theory 27. Theory and the ‘strategy-party’ 29. Chapter Two THE FOUNDRY AND THE PARTISAN STRUGGLE 31. The Savona group 39. Passion disciplined by reason 40. Never again a tool in the hands of others 41. The Genoa group 46. The Sestri Ponente group 48. The groups in Rome and Tuscany 52. The strength of GAAP: ‘only a handful’ 55. Chapter Three LIBERTARIAN COMMUNISM: A DIFFERENT KIND OF COMMUNISM 58. Reckoning with Bordiga...
Read more

American Unknowns in the Crisis in the World Order

Plurality of Powers and the Atlantic Crisis Internationalism No. 80, October 2025 Pages 1 and 2 In general terms, the United States is [the model of] society we will arrive at in a few years . It was 1962 and Arrigo Cervetto was addressing the conference of the Movement of the Communist Left, pointing to the American script as the direction in which Italian society was developing: the accelerated disintegration of the peasant world, the growth of a vast industrial proletariat, the emergence of white-collar workers , and the wage-earning strata of the service sector. The Americanisation of Italian and European society was driven primarily by the laws of capitalist development and class change, but, to some extent, it also influenced political forms through the transformation of social psychologies. I thought Marx’s observation that the most advanced capitalist country shows the way forward to the most backward was valid , Cervetto commented twenty year...
Read more

Forward Deterrence for European Imperialism

Internationalism No. 86, April 2026 Page 3 From the series European news The next half-century will be the age of nuclear weapons . This was the grim prediction with which Emmanuel Macron concluded his speech on nuclear deterrence, delivered on March 2 nd at the Île Longue submarine base. Standing before Le Téméraire , the nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine that carries a strike force equivalent to the sum of all the bombs dropped on Europe during the Second World War , the president announced a significant evolution in French nuclear doctrine. The emergence of new threats and the realignment of American priorities make it necessary, according to Macron, not only to strengthen deterrence by increasing the number of nuclear warheads, but also to rethink the deterrence strategy deep inside the European continent . His proposal is the gradual implementation o...
Read more

The National Gamble of Poland

Internationalism No. 33, November 2021 Page 3 From the series European News In a lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, the Constitutional Tribunal, which is composed of judges chosen by the government, ruled that fundamental parts of the EU Treaty are incompatible with the Constitution of the Republic of Poland. This ruling thus denies the primacy of European law over national law, undermining both the political assumption of continental integration and the supranational character of the EU . Vectors of Polish history We can shed light on this event if we consider the four field vectors that cross Poland: its traditional ethnic-religious nationalism, its marked Atlantic tropism, the objective attraction exerted by the European force field, and the looming threat of Russia. The general picture is global collisions: China’s irruption and the crisis in the world order have put pressure on Warsaw to define its st...
Read more

The Works of Marx and Engels and the Bolshevik Model

Internationalism Pages 12–13 In the autumn of 1895 Lenin commented on the death of Friedrich Engels: "After his friend Karl Marx (who died in 1883), Engels was the finest scholar and teacher of the modern proletariat in the whole civilised world. […] In their scientific works, Marx and Engels were the first to explain that socialism is not the invention of dreamers, but the final aim and necessary result of the development of the productive forces in modern society. All recorded history hitherto has been a history of class struggle, of the succession of the rule and victory of certain social classes over others. And this will continue until the foundations of class struggle and of class domination – private property and anarchic social production – disappear. The interests of the proletariat demand the destruction of these foundations, and therefore the conscious class struggle of the organised workers must be directed against them. And every class strugg...
Read more