The Study On The International Competitiveness Of Chinese Flat Glass Industry

Flat glass refers to all the plane form silicate glass. As one of the most important production factors, flat glass is widely used in different areas. The most common application of flat glass is glass windows of buildings. Other traditional areas in which flat glass is used include automobile manufacturing, train manufacturing and so on. In the past 20 years, with more advanced needs in construction and vehicle manufacturing, more new flat glass products such as safety glass, self-cleaning glass, anti-uv glass and low-E glass are developed. What's more, flat glass is also important raw material for many new industries such as solar energy industry and LED industry.Chinese flat glass production has been the top of world since 1989. Take 2010 for example, the production of Chinese flat glass was 660 million weight cases, which took up more than half of the world production. From the aspect of production, China is no doubt a large producing country of flat glass. However to achieve sustainable development of the industry, large production itself is not enough. The key to sustainable development of the Chinese flat glass industry is to increase the international competitiveness of the industry.This thesis assesses and analyzes the international cometitiveness of Chinese flat glass industry based on the study of the history, the current status, and the impediments in the development of the industry. On the basis of the analysis, the thesis puts forward suggestions from the perspective of both enterprises and government on improving the international competitiveness of Chinese flat glass industry.The thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter is introduction, giving definitions of flat glass product and industry as well as other important terms. After introduction, the second chapter introduces the global flat glass industry from the aspect of market, major enterprises and development trend. In the next chapter, the history and current status of Chinese flat glass is analyzed. Based on product life cycle theory, this chapter analyzes the different stages in the development of Chinese flat glass industry. The current characteristics of Chinese flat glass industry are also discussed from the aspect of profit, technology and export. Chapter 4 first assesses the competitiveness of Chinese flat glass industry with different indexes and then analyzes the industry with Porter's Diamond. In the next chapter, the factors that impeding Chinese flat glass to improve international competitiveness are summarized. To study further, in the sixth chapter, this thesis studies the case of Jinjing with SWOT model. At last, this thesis gives suggestions to enterprises and government on improving the industry competitiveness of Chinese flat glass based on Industry Concentration Ratio, Marginal Industry Expansion Theory and other theories.