Steel silos face unprecedented challenges as "Made in China" encounters a new wave of冲击. What lies behind this? With steel silos, a category under Chinese manufacturing and construction, how long can they continue?

To understand how long the steel silo trend can last, it's essential to examine its cost composition, which will readily reveal the answer. In manufacturing costs, raw materials take the lion's share, followed by labor. Now, with raw material prices on the rise and the low-cost advantage of Chinese workers, who have long been relied upon, diminishing, the average hourly wage for manufacturing workers in Europe and the U.S. has been declining year by year since mid-2020, while their productivity surpasses that of Chinese workers. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group, due to rising wages for Chinese workers and a lag in productivity growth behind wage increases, by around 2015, producing in low-cost states in the U.S. will become as cost-effective as producing in China for most products heading to North America. Considering other factors such as increasingly expensive Chinese energy costs, transportation and supply chain risks, and tariff costs, the "China steel silo" advantage is expected to last only about three more years.

However, propelled by the real estate boom, China has surpassed the United States to become the world's leading construction powerhouse, and the gap is poised to widen. The former imperial powers have been pushed aside, and it will be many years before China loses its status as a major construction spender, with the driving forces of growth primarily coming from new projects in railway, road, and power infrastructure. During the "12th Five-Year Plan" period, the domestic construction industry experienced a period of higher-level, higher quality, and larger-scale development. From a global economic perspective, it was the post-crisis era. Accurately grasping the development and changes in the construction market, and seeking new drivers of economic growth are urgent tasks for the industry's development in the short and long term.

Time is running out for China. Accelerating the implementation of the "Manufacturing Power" and "Technology Power" strategies, to achieve a comprehensive transformation of China's manufacturing sector, including the steel silo industry, is now a foregone conclusion.