Can German brainpower win against Chinese muscle? A feature of the coming decade will be whether Germany’s world-renowned Mittelstand engineering companies can maintain their competitive strengths in the face of the drive by their counterparts in China to expand globally.
A signal of intent was the €525m acquisition in January by Sany, a fast expanding Chinese construction equipment producer, of the German company Putzmeister, until recently the world’s biggest maker of concrete pumps. Sany intends to use its German acquisition to reach new markets in the western world, as well as to accelerate development of its own technology and design.
Bernd Venohr, an expert on the privately controlled industrial groups that form the spine of German industry, says many of these companies face a “serious challenge” over the next few years from Chinese businesses.