A Comparative Research On The International Competitiveness Of Chinese And German Automobile Industry

Since entering the new century with continuous improvement of China’s export-oriented economy, rising income levels of its residents and an increasing consumption, the Chinese automobile industry had remarkable achievements. In 2010 China became the world’s top country in automobile production and sales surpassing the United States followed by Japan and Germany. Data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People’s Republic of China shows the countries automobile production and sales with 2372.29 million and 2349.19 million vehicles, an increase of 7.3% and 6.9% compared to 2013. However, through comprehensive study of different channels, it can be found, that scholars and experts mostly project the Chinese automobile sector as "strong on the outside, but vulnerable inside with joint ventures posing a threat of a possible so-called dead end".To a certain extent, the development of the Chinese automobile industry was enabled through a learning process based on strong and well-established automobile sectors in Germany, the USA and Japan.At present, in many of China’s small and medium-large sized cities, car brands like Volkswagen, BMW, Mercedes Benz and Audi enjoy a large popularity. Especially when purchasing family cars Chinese people often prefer foreign brands. However, Chinese domestic brands like Chery, Lifan and Geely are less attractive to consumers in this sense. The core reason for this can be attributed to a lack of competitiveness, market appeal and brand reputation.With this background the thesis systematically analyses the Chinese and German international competitiveness. Finally, a set of implications and measures will help to make clear how to increase the Chinese international competitiveness based on the German automobile industrial development. In order to provide scientific, systematic and an operational design of measures for the research process of this thesis comprehensive knowledge from different fields such as industrial economics, international trade and mathematical statistics and other related disciplines are integrated. This involves the focus on both theoretical and empirical research, qualitive and quantitive analysis of the organic unit, as well as the problem analysis and the logical design of measures. In conclusion, rational measures to improve the competitiveness of the Chinese automobile industry based on learnings and main comparisons are given.In general, the thesis consists of 6 parts. The first chapter is the introduction as a premise; the second chapter talks about the key concepts and theories as a theoretical foundation; the third chapter is about the structure of the evaluation indicator system for the competitiveness of the automobile industry and serves as the starting point for the practical research; the fourth chapter presents the comparative analysis of the German and the Chinese automobile industry and is the focus of this thesis; the fifth chapter uses the German example providing beneficial reference in order to increase the Chinese competitiveness of the automobile industry. This part reflects results of the thesis. The sixth chapter is the conclusion, which summarizes the research of the thesis.