China has stepped into the ranking of world major machine tool manufacturing, consuming and importing countries. According to the survey of the secretary general of the International Mold & Plastic Hardware Industry Suppliers Association (IMPSA for short), there are totally 2,023 enterprises in China’s machine tool & tool industry, among which, there are 959 state-owned enterprises, accounting for 47.4% of the total number, 758 private enterprises, accounting for 37.5% and 306 enterprises belonging to the Sino-foreign joint-ventured, Sino-foreign cooperation and wholly foreign-owned enterprises, accounting for 15.1%. The total asset of the industry reaches CNY 117.5 billion with 520,000 employees.

In 2012, the development of China’s machine tool & tool industry year-on-year showed the steady warming trend, the total industrial output value reaching CNY 721.05 billion, year-on-year growth of 12.3%. According to statistics, in 2012, the growth of sales output value in China’s machine tool & tool industry declined obviously, among which, the growth declining magnitude of the cutting tool manufacturing industry and metal cutting machine tool manufacturing industry is large, declining respectively by 31.18% and 15.28% compared with 2011 over the same time.

The macroeconomics is sluggish and the profit of machine tool enterprises is being continuously shrunk, especially the labor-oriented enterprises facing the unprecedented pressure. Strengthening the equipment automation transformation, improving the degree of production automation, reducing the labor strength and improving the operation environment have become the general consensus of the manufacturing industry.

Seen from the international environment, the world economic and social development pattern is going through the continuous reforms with huge opportunities and severe challenges, which brings in profound influences to the transformation and upgrading of China’s machine tool industry. Seen from the Chinese domestic environment, the basic conditions, internal motivation and the long-term positive trend of China’s machine tool industry development do not change radically, but the traditional development model faces lots of challenges. So the structure optimization, transformation and upgrading of the machine tool industry is imperative.

In the future five years, the automation will usher in the great development. With the prosperous development of automation industry in the machine tool industry, China’s industrial structure upgrading and technical progress will have more abundant motivation and more diversified choices, which can accelerate the transfer from the traditional industrialization path mainly depending on the scale growth to the new industrialization path mainly depending on the technical progress and sustainable development.

During the 12th-Five-Year Plan, China’s economy will keep the steady and rapid development, and the domestic demand will rise steadily. It is predicted that the output value of China’s machine tool & tool will grow steadily by the annual average growth rate of about 10% in the future few years. By 2017, the total industrial output value of the machine tool & tool industry will achieved CNY 1,110 billion.