Harbin Power Equipment Company and the Battle for the Chinese Market: Sub-Contractor to the Multinationals or Integrated, Globally Competitive Firm?

The manufacture of power generating equipment is characterised by high technology, rapid technical progress and powerful economies of scale and scope. Only a few firms dominate the industry globally. Rapid growth of demand for power generating equipment in China provides a big opportunity for its indigenous power equipment suppliers. However, the Chinese market has become a battleground for the multinationals. Despite large progress, China's leading power equipment manufacturer, Harbin, still is far behind the leading multinationals in terms of both scale and technology. If China's major power equipment manufacturers are to establish internationally competitive firms, they need to make the transition from autonomous plants within a national ‘quasi-firm’, to a true, large-scale, multi-plant firm benefiting from economies of scale and scope. To achieve this requires extensive assistance from state industrial policy, especially to ensure technology transfer from the multinationals, and to orchestrate a merger of leading domestic companies. Powerful forces, both domestic and international, are working against this outcome, wishing instead to transform China's leading firms into sub-branches of the multinationals. The industry is in the middle of a tense battle, of great significance for China's industrial evolution in the epoch of high globalisation.