The equipment manufacturing industry, from the production of general equipment, such as agricultural machinery and construction machinery, to the production of basic equipment, such as machine tools and tooling, to the production of complete sets of equipment, such as petroleum, chemical, coal chemical and salt chemical equipment, and even more advanced production safety equipment and high-tech key equipment, such as military and aerospace equipment, has huge expenditures such as factory building costs, equipment costs, material costs, research and development costs and labor costs. Therefore, the equipment manufacturing industry is a solid capital-intensive industry.
International capital's investment in China's equipment manufacturing industry is increasing. In 2006, the investment in China's equipment manufacturing industry was nearly 3 trillion yuan, of which foreign direct investment reached 40.08 billion US dollars, accounting for about 12% of the total investment, with a year-on-year increase of 29.4%. In China, there are thousands of foreign-funded enterprises with an output value exceeding 100 million yuan in the equipment manufacturing industry. Technology-intensive means that the production process of equipment manufacturing industry is much more dependent on technology and intellectual factors than other industries.
For example, the production of CNC machine tools and large-scale integrated circuits; Microelectronics and power electronic devices, instruments and meters, automatic control systems; Equipment for well mining and open-pit mining of mineral resources; Large thermal power, hydropower and nuclear power complete sets of equipment; Advanced transportation equipment such as civil aircraft, high-speed railways, subways and urban rail vehicles, automobiles and ships; Large scientific instruments and medical equipment; Advanced large-scale military equipment, communications, air traffic control and aerospace equipment. These products have high technical content, sophisticated production technology, complex organizational processes, and high requirements for R&D level, technical strength and intellectual property investment, so the equipment manufacturing industry can be described as a technology-intensive industry. Labor-intensive means that the equipment manufacturing industry needs a lot of manpower to participate in the manufacturing process of finished products.
Generally speaking, the dependence of production process on technical factors is inversely proportional to the dependence on labor factors, that is, only with low technical level will more labor be accommodated, but the equipment manufacturing industry is different, and technology-intensive and labor-intensive coexist. The reason is that the production organization process of products produced by the equipment manufacturing industry, such as well-mining and open-pit mining equipment of mineral resources, petrochemical equipment, power equipment, ships, subways, aerospace, military equipment, etc., is very complicated, mainly through the modes of making to order, non-standard manufacturing, project manufacturing, etc., which is very different from the final consumer goods manufacturing industry. In the end, the products of consumer goods manufacturing industry can be produced in batches and assembly lines, while there is almost no situation in equipment manufacturing industry where several workers can manage several production lines to make the production process go smoothly. In the process of order manufacturing, non-standard manufacturing and project manufacturing, there are a lot of customized procurement, customized design, customized production organization and customized assembly work, as well as technical process changes and production plan adjustments, which need manual intervention to solve, and there is no fixed "fool-like" button control production process.
Therefore, the equipment manufacturing industry is not only capital-intensive, technology-intensive, but also labor-intensive, and it is a rare industry with strong demand for capital, technology and manpower. It is precisely because of this that the equipment manufacturing industry has a very obvious pulling effect on investment, technological progress and employment, and it is indeed a pillar industry of the national economy. Obviously, the equipment manufacturing industry belongs to the core of the manufacturing industry and is also a key industry of the national economy.