Gear is a key basic component with large quantity and wide range, which is almost used in various fields of national economy. Gear industry is a technology intensive and capital intensive industry in machinery industry. At present, gear industry has become the largest industry in China. Last year, the output value of the national gear industry was about 230 billion yuan, ranking first in the world. In the past 30 years, China’s gear industry has experienced rapid development, with an average growth rate of 18%; however, the output value of the whole industry in the past three years is in a wandering stage, and the deficit is still expanding. It should be said that the past three years have also been a period of hard work in gear industry to promote technological innovation, transformation and upgrading. China’s gear industry has ushered in a new stage of development due to comprehensive breakthroughs in key technologies, improvement of product quality and opportunities provided by national economic transformation and upgrading.
Over the past 30 years, there have been three growth peaks in the development of China’s gear industry, commonly known as the three growth poles.
25 years ago, the development of motorcycle gears changed the output value of China’s gear industry from several billion yuan to more than 20 billion yuan; 16 years ago, China’s accession to the WTO as a turning point, the development of automobile gears made the output value of China’s gear industry leap from tens of billion yuan to about 130 billion yuan, which is the second pole of the development of the gear industry. Ten years ago, the development of wind power and construction machinery gear brought the third pole growth to the gear industry, which increased the output value of the gear industry by nearly 200 billion yuan. In the past five years, China’s gear industry has entered a relatively stable development period, and there is a small callback in 2015.
At present, there are nearly one thousand national gear enterprises, more than 300 backbone gear enterprises, and more than 150 enterprises with more than 100 million yuan. The annual sales of a group of enterprises have exceeded 2 billion yuan, and that of two enterprises has exceeded 10 billion yuan. Several large state-owned enterprises are the backbone of the gear industry, and private enterprises have become the main force of the market.
Now, China has become a large gear manufacturing country, and China’s gear enterprises have fully integrated into the world’s supporting system. More importantly, China’s gear industry has formed the most complete industrial system in the world, which can be said to cover the whole field of gear products. In terms of products, China’s gear products have historically realized the transformation from low-end to middle end, and some high-end products have emerged.