The most recent DVN Workshop and the Shanghai auto show clearly showed China’s big progress lately in automotive lighting. The IFAL event taking place as this week’s news goes live will surely further demonstrate the same. Meanwhile, this week’s interview with Wang Shunxing gives a more detailed look at the state of things in the Chinese sector of our community. It is interesting to see how Chinese industry efficiently uses the help of worldwide companies, often through joint ventures, to quickly gain mountains of knowledge from worldwide companies who themselves needed decades to accumulate it.
Big improvements in Chinese industry came through training of Chinese engineers who went to work and learn at the JV parent company in Europe. I remember a lot of Chinese engineers at Valeo in Bobigny, Angers and Spain learning lighting during weeks and months. With their great will and drive to learn, day and night, these engineers are now reaching the proficiency and expertise levels of their European counterparts. Still, says Wang, domestic Chinese companies’ technology is generally not yet mature or developing fast enough. So they rely to a large degree on Chinese engineers who have learnt from mainly Western European lighting companies.
We can’t—and shouldn’t try to—avoid this trend which benefits the Chinese industry. Our job in the first world, in Europe, America, Japan, and Korea, is to develop our long term program, finding new innovations. In lighting, we have the choice with the great creativity. Our future depends on our innovations. A prime example comes from Germany, able to maintain high production volume by dint of the success of their vehicles in general, especially at the cutting-edge high end with endless innovations.
The risk, of course, is to have a repeat of what’s happened in France: a cumulative production drop by more than half from the mid-2000s. In any event, the growing knowledge and facility in China will surely enrich us all—at first with new ideas and philosophies and questions and answers, and increasingly with new techniques, and eventually with new innovations.
Sincerely yours
DVN Editor in Chief