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 from this blog

Democratic Defeat in the Urban Vote

Internationalism No. 71, January 2025 Page 2 From the series Elections in the USA A careful analysis of the 2022 mid-term elections revealed the symptoms of a Democratic Party malaise which subsequently fully manifested itself in the latest presidential election, with the heavy loss of support in its traditional strongholds of the metropolitan areas of New York City and Chicago, and the State of California. A defeat foretold Republican votes rose from 51 million in the previous 2018 midterms to 54 million in 2022, a gain of 3 million. The Democrat vote fell from 61 to 51 million, a loss of 10 million. The Republicans gained only three votes for every ten lost by the Democrats, while the other seven became abstentions. In 2022, we analysed the elections in New York City by borough, the governmental districts whose names are well known through movies and TV series. In The Bronx, where the average yearly household income is $35,000, the Democrats lost 52,00...
Read more

In the Depth of Our Class

The pandemic of the century is a storm that does not subside; it returns to its rampage after 40 million infections and more than a million official victims, perhaps two million according to estimates on the excess deaths. In the contention between powers, China stands as the winner: it seems to have tamed the virus, and industry and services are up and running; the USA and Europe, on the other hand, are moving towards a new wave of infections that casts yet more shadows on the economic cycle. Political structures and health systems are at the height of tension. In America, the elections have judged Donald Trump’s rash demagogy on the basis of the opposite reasons for containing the pandemic and the intolerance of small and large producers; in Europe the executives are attempting to steer between the surge in infections, increasingly stringent confinement measures and the threats of fiscal jacquerie in the tourism and catering sectors. Almost everywhere, in the Old Continent, governm...
Read more

The Unstoppable Force: Capital’s Demand for Migrant Labour

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 16 “Before Giorgia Meloni became Italy’s prime minister, she pledged to cut immigration. Since she has been in government the number of non-EU work visas issued by Italy has increased”. This is how The Economist of April 26th summarises the schizophrenia of their politics; and this is not only true in Italy: “Net migration also surged in post-Brexit Britain”. The needs of the economic system do not coincide with the rhetoric of parliamentarism. And vice versa. Schizophrenia and imbalances in their politics Returning to Italy, the Bank of Italy has pointed out that by 2040, in just fifteen years, there will be a shortage of five million people of working age, which could lead to an estimated 11% contraction in GDP. This is why even Italy’s “sovereignist” government is preparing to widen the net of its Immigration Flow Decree. The latest update, approved on June 30th, provides for the entry of almost ...
Read more

India’s Weaknesses in the Global Spotlight

Farmers’ protests around New Delhi have been going on for four months now. A controversial intervention by the Supreme Court has suspended the implementation of the new agticultural laws, but has raised questions about the dynamics between the judiciary and the executive, and has failed to unblock the negotiations between government and peasant organisations. The assault by Sikh farmers on the Red Fort during the Republic Day parade as India was displaying its military might to the outside world — the Chinese Global Times maliciously noted — paradoxically widened the protest in the huge state of Uttar Pradesh. The Modi government has been trying to revive India’s image with the 2021 Union Budget: it announced one hundred privatisations and approved the increase to 75% of the limit on direct foreign investment in insurance companies. For The Indian Express ( IEX ) this is a sign of the commitment to push ahead with reforms despite the backlash from rural India. Also for The Economi...
Read more

Armed Negotiations between the Gulf and the Mediterranean

David Petraeus, Commander of the US forces in Iraq and the Gulf in 2007-2008, then director of the CIA in 2011-12, described the elimination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani on January 3 rd in Baghdad as a defensive action , with which the Trump presidency restored a US deterrence , which was weakened by recent Iranian actions . This is a reference to the attacks conducted indirectly, unclaimed by Tehran, against the Saudi oil infrastructures on September 14 th 2019. In March 2008, when the forces under Petraeus’ command supported the Iraqi Army in the fight against local Shite militias, Soleimani sent a message to the American general: informing him that he was the person in charge for Iranian policies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza therefore the channel through which to define an agreement to resolve the various issues with Tehran. Petraeus holds the advisors of the Quds Force, the spearhead of the Pasdaran asymmetric operations, responsible for the killing of around 600 ...
Read more

Indo-African Opposition at the WTO

Since March 1 st , the Nigerian economist Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala has been the new director general of the World Trade Organization. Like a coach hired by a team languishing at the bottom of its league — writes Larry Elliott of The Guardian — Okonjo finds herself in the happy position of taking over at the WTO when the only way is up , This historic international institution is unlikely to experience extinction or irrelevance. However, the appointment of Okonjo does not in itself remedy WTO’s deep troubles. An alternative in plurilateralism The negotiating function of the WTO has been lacking for twenty years now. The latest ambitious goal of liberalising trade in goods and services, announced in Doha in November 2001, became bogged down by the impossibility of a general compromise between old powers and large emerging economies. In 2015 Michael Froman, President Barack Obama’s Trade Representative (USTR), officially called for the abandonment of the Doha Round. Froman’s alternative p...
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

‘Two Hands’ and ‘Two Roads’

From the series News from the Silk Road The international tensions which China will face on the seas in the next fifteen years could find a buffer in the expansion of China’s influence on land in Central, Southern and Western Asia. Wang Jisi is the dean of the School of International Studies at the University of Beijing and a major figure of the American party in China. His unexpected foray into ‘geopolitics’ has reignited the old clash between different American currents — a phenomenon we analysed more than twenty years ago. At the time, Robert Manning, the author of The Asian Energy Factor and adviser to the State Department in 1991, viewed Asia’s growing dependence on the Persian Gulf for its energy requirements in the light of geoeconomics and geostrategy and foresaw a possible convergence between the USA and China. From a geoeconomic standpoint, both trade and the funding and development of the infrastructure necessary for Asia’s energy needs were more important than terri...
Read more

Chinese Rearmament Projects Itself in Asia

Internationalism No. 78-79, August-September 2025 Page 5 From the series Asian giants Trends in rearmament spending and comparisons of military equipment are increasingly set to dominate coverage of the contention between powers in the crisis in the world order . The military factor has entered the strategic debate, accompanied by a wealth of figures and technical details. The increase in military spending as a percentage of GDP represents a widespread sign of the rearmament cycle at this juncture, but spending alone cannot entirely explain the situation, given the qualitatively different natures of the arsenals being compared. Nor are comparisons between this or that type of weapon useful in themselves, because ultimately all weapons are only ever used in combination with the complex military means available to a power, either in alliance or in conflict with other powers in the system of States. Therefore, while it is difficult to assess the real significa...
Read more

The Defeat in Afghanistan — a Watershed in the Cycle of Atlantic Decline

In crises and wars there are events which leave their mark on history because of how they make a decisive impact on the power contention, or because of how, almost like a chemical precipitate, they suddenly make deep trends that have been at work for some time coalesce. This is the case of the defeat of the United States and NATO in Afghanistan, which is taking the shape of a real watershed in the cycle of Atlantic decline. For the moment, through various comments in the international press, it is possible to consider its consequences on three levels: America’s position as a power and the connection with its internal crisis; the repercussions on Atlantic relations and Europe’s dilemmas regarding its strategic autonomy; and the relationship between the Afghan crisis and power relations in Asia, especially as regards India’s role in the Indo-Pacific strategy. Repercussions in the United States Richard Haass is the president of the CFR, the Council on Foreign Relations; despite having ...
Read more