The electronics industry in China grew rapidly after the liberalization of the economy under the national strategic policy of accelerating the " informatization" of its

industrial development Industrialisation ( alternatively spelled industrialization) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive re-organisation of an econom ...

. Subsequently, labour costs have risen and creating wealth for citizens. The industry has been a major contribution to the modernization of China and the development of new job opportunities. There are many instances of labour exploitation and subpar working conditions. In 2005, China's electronic information sector made up 16.6% of the country's

economic growth Economic growth can be defined as the increase or improvement in the inflation-adjusted market value of the goods and services produced by an economy in a financial year. Statisticians conventionally measure such growth as the percent rate o ...

and its added-value output formed 7% of the

GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the market value of all the final goods and services produced and sold (not resold) in a specific time period by countries. Due to its complex and subjective nature this measure is ofte ...

Manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulation. It is the essence of secondary sector of the economy. The term may refer to ...

was the sector that grew the fastest. As of 2011, China is the world's largest market for personal computers. Major Chinese electronics companies include

BOE BOE, BoE or Boe may refer to: Abbreviations, acronyms or initialisms * Bank of England, the central bank of the United Kingdom * Bank of English, a representative subset of the 4.5 billion words COBUILD corpus * Barrel of oil equivalent, a unit ...

Changhong Sichuan Changhong Electric Co., Ltd., doing business as Changhong () domestically and CHiQ internationally, is a Chinese consumer electronics company based in Mianyang, Sichuan, founded in October 1958. It is the second-largest manufacturer of t ...

, DJI,

Haier Haier Group Corporation () is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells products including refrigerators, air conditioners, washin ...

Hisense Hisense Group is a Chinese multinational major appliance and electronics manufacturer headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong Province, China. Televisions are the main products of Hisense, and it is the largest TV manufacturer in China by market ...

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ( ; ) is a Chinese multinational technology corporation headquartered in Shenzhen, Guangdong, China. It designs, develops, produces and sells telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics and various sma ...

, Konka,

Lenovo Lenovo Group Limited, often shortened to Lenovo ( , ), is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in designing, manufacturing, and marketing consumer electronics, personal computers, software, business solutions, and related se ...

(Hong Kong based),

Meizu Meizu Technology Co., Ltd. () is a Chinese consumer electronics manufacturer based in Zhuhai, Guangdong. Founded in 2003 by Jack Wong, Meizu began as a manufacturer of MP3 players and later MP4 players. In 2008, Meizu moved its focus to smar ...

Panda Electronics Panda Electronics is a Chinese manufacturer and brand for electronic products. The products include mobile phones, datacards, TV sets and set top boxes, administrative software, electronic instruments, satellite and mobile communication. History ...

Skyworth Skyworth (), officially Skyworth Group Co., Ltd., is a Chinese holding company. Its subsidiaries design, manufacture and sell televisions and other audio-visual products. They also invest in properties. Headquartered in Nanshan High-tech Park, ...

, SVA, TCL,

Xiaomi Corporation (; ), commonly known as Xiaomi and registered as Xiaomi Inc., is a Chinese designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics and related software, home appliances, and household items. Behind Samsung, it is the second largest ...

, Oppo, and

ZTE ZTE Corporation is a Chinese partially state-owned technology company that specializes in telecommunication. Founded in 1985, ZTE is listed on both the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges. ZTE's core business is wireless, exchange, op ...

. China's production recorded the largest world market share for its electronics exports in 2016. It also recorded high volume outputs across a wide spectrum of consumer electronics; between 2014 and 2015—according to China Daily—286.2 million personal computers (90.6% of the global supply), 1.77 billion phones (70.6% of global supply of smartphones) and 109 million units (80% of global supply of air conditioners) were produced.

Overview

China's electronic information industry has grown three times faster than the national GDP growth rate and has grown faster than the

machinery A machine is a physical system using power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecul ...

manufacturing and

metallurgy Metallurgy is a domain of materials science and engineering that studies the physical and chemical behavior of metallic elements, their inter-metallic compounds, and their mixtures, which are known as alloys. Metallurgy encompasses both the sc ...

industries. In 2005, total sales in the electronic information industry increased by 28.4% from 2004 to (approximately ). The added-value base of the Chinese electronic information industry is about 900 billion yuan (approximately US$112 billion). The

value added ratio In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciation ...

is (amount of value added / total sales x 100%) only 23.4%, compared to the whole national average of 27.1%. This is evidence for China's role as an manufacturing, assembly base that is dependent upon overseas components and parts, intermediary goods, and capital goods. The number of electronic information industry-related companies in China jumped from 7,500 in 2001, to 17,600 in 2003 and 67,000 in 2005, with approximately 56,000 of these being manufacturing companies. The number of employees engaged in the industry grew from 3.01 million in 2001 to 4.08 million in 2003 and 7.61 million in 2005 (out of whom 5.51 million are employed in the manufacturing industry).

Structure

The main areas of China's electronic information industry are

computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

-related goods (including

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...

communication Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inqui ...

equipment, electronic parts and household entertainment equipment. Electronic parts-related

investment Investment is the dedication of money to purchase of an asset to attain an increase in value over a period of time. Investment requires a sacrifice of some present asset, such as time, money, or effort. In finance, the purpose of investing is ...

made up 50% of the total investment in the electronic information industry. Promotion of the electronic parts industry is a part of China's national industrial policy to raise the ratio of value added in the sector. China's

software industry The software industry includes businesses for development, maintenance and publication of software that are using different business models, mainly either "license/maintenance based" (on-premises) or "Cloud based" (such as SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, MBa ...

– 11% of the electronic information industry – (software products, system integration, software services, and others) growth has been rapid as demonstrated by a growth rate of 40% with sales of 390 billion yuan (approximately ) as of 2006. Approved software companies have reached 11,660, increasing by over 1,000 per annum. There are roughly 1 million employees working in China's software industry. China's software exports have reached in 2005, though this was short of the export goal set forth in the Tenth 5-Year Plan, which ended in 2005.

Market

Due to the expansion of the internal and external markets, the ratio of sales to production (sales rate) has remained at over 98%. The vast majority of China's

mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...

notebook computer A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper li ...

s, color displays and other products are exported, making China a global production base. China's total

export An export in international trade is a good produced in one country that is sold into another country or a service provided in one country for a national or resident of another country. The seller of such goods or the service provider is a ...

import An import is the receiving country in an export from the sending country. Importation and exportation are the defining financial transactions of international trade. In international trade, the importation and exportation of goods are limited ...

level of electronic information-related products in 2005 was in exports and in imports, showing growth rates of 29.9% for the former and 21.9% for the latter. The ratio of total exports and total imports in China was 35.2% for exports and 33.4% for imports. Additionally, China's trade surplus was recorded as , with roughly half of the of China's total trade surplus going toward savings. There has been no change in the essence of China's export-oriented industries. 2006 targets for sales and added value in the electronic information industry are 4.6 trillion yuan (approximately , with a growth rate of 21%) and 1.1 trillion yuan (approximately , with a growth rate of 22%), respectively. As a whole, it is expected that large-scale growth will continue as before, though export-import growth has been set at a low rate of approximately 15%, taking into account the effects of the revaluation of the yuan.

Foreign firms

China's electronic information industry, like much of its economy, is both export-oriented and foreign

capital Capital may refer to: Common uses * Capital city, a municipality of primary status ** List of national capital cities * Capital letter, an upper-case letter Economics and social sciences * Capital (economics), the durable produced goods used fo ...

-led. In 2005, the sales, added value, profits, and exports of foreign firms (including 6,480 firms with 100% foreign capital, merged firms and joint firms) reached 2.4 trillion yuan, 503 billion yuan, 82.2 billion yuan, and US$234 billion, respectively, accounting for 77%, 77%, 77% and 87% of China's total electronic information industry for their respective categories. These figures are all considerably higher than 2004. The export surplus of produced by 100% foreign capital firms (2,241 firms) accounted for 94% of China's total. The total ratio of

value added In business, total value added is calculated by tabulating the unit value added (measured by summing unit profit sale price and production cost">Price.html" ;"title="he difference between Price">sale price and production cost], unit depreciation ...

for foreign firms in China is 20.9%, however, which is far behind the 27.6% ratio of local firms. There has been no major change in foreign firms' strategy for using China as an assembly base. Recently, though, there has been increasing activity by foreign firms regarding local

management Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is the art and science of managing resources of the business. Management includes the activitie ...

centers and R&D bases, as well as in investment in the electronic parts industry. Foreign investment and overseas investments in China's manufacturing industry shows that foreign investment has been decreasing year by year, It shows that China's manufacturing industry has become less attractive. In contrast, foreign investment has been increasing year by year that shows China's manufacturing industry is getting closer and closer to foreign countries.

References

External links