China's Medical Equipment Industry Is Structurally Deficient
According to statistics, the market size of China's medical equipment reached 800 billion yuan in 2019, and there were 41 listed companies with a total revenue of 89.083 billion yuan., There were 21 companies with a revenue of more than 1 billion yuan. Globally, the market size of medical equipment exceeds US$400 billion. Among the top 10 medical equipment companies in the world, five are headquartered in the United States, 2 in Germany, 1 in the Netherlands and 1 in Ireland, accounting for nearly 45% of the global sales revenue. By contrast, China shows a considerable market size, but the global weight of related companies is obviously insignificant. Relevant data also show that the structure of the international medical equipment market is high-end products accounting for 55% and low-end products for 45%. In China, the proportion of medium and low-end products accounts for nearly 70%, and the competitive pattern is that enterprises are numerous and scattered. In addition to domestic sales, it can also export a large number of medical consumables, dressings and low-end and medium-end medical equipment. However, in high-end market, due to factors such as high technology content and added value of related products, difficulties in research, development and manufacture of related products, limited technical level, and resource monopoly by developed countries, China accounts for only about 30% of the production scale. This has also led to the domestic high-end medical equipment market being mainly occupied by a few large companies from the United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Japan. In particular, some high-end medical equipment is almost entirely supplies by a few international leading enterprises. With the outbreak of the epidemic at the beginning of this year, there was an extreme shortage of relevant medical equipment in China, such as high-end medical equipment like ECMO and invasive ventilators. Some equipment cannot be produced domestically, and some can be produced but performance needs to be improved. The weaknesses in China’s medical equipment industry have been significantly magnified.