While Europe’s manufacturing PMI has contracted for 11 consecutive months, hitting a new low of 45.4%, the world’s most dynamic industrial heart has quietly shifted to a small city at the mouth of the Yangtze River.
Europe’s electricity costs are three times that of China, and its natural gas prices are five times that of the United States—this is not a prediction but the reality for European’s industrial sector today. As European steel and chemical plants shut down due to energy prices, and as Germany’s automotive sector sheds over 50,000 jobs in a year, Germans are accelerating a great eastern migration.
When the first German company, Kern-Liebers, set up a factory in Taicang in 1993, no one foresaw that thirty years later, it would be home to over 560 German enterprises with an annual industrial output exceeding 67 billion yuan. Today, this small Jiangnan city has become Germany’s “Eastern Backup Disk.”
Karl
Your Compass to China's Market.
China Opportunity, Mapped for You.
Europe's Manufacturing Sinks:
Germany's Pivot to China
Why are 92% of German firms choosing to deepen their roots in China despite the headwinds? We dive into the data behind Europe's energy crisis, stalled innovation, and the inevitable rise of the "Taicang Model."
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