The world's tunneling companies have been reduced to just one German company, which has set up manufacturing in China, needing to rely on China's supply chain and workers, or else they will be eliminated.

I have a question for you, have you noticed that the only tunneling machine giants that can be named in the world seem to be just China and 'others'? Recently, when I had some free time, I looked up data and found a rather interesting phenomenon. The German company Herrenknecht, which used to lead the tunneling machine field, has now become a deep user of Chinese manufacturing. This giant that once dominated globally has not only built its factory in Guangzhou but has also changed its lifestyle, needing to use Chinese special steel, Chinese chips, and even hire Chinese engineers, or else it simply cannot survive in the market. To be honest, I felt quite emotional seeing this.

Rewind twenty years, we didn't even dare to breathe in front of these foreigners. I checked some data from back then, and when we were building the Qinling Tunnel for the Xikang Railway in 1997, we had to spend 700 million RMB just to buy two German hard rock tunneling machines. What does 700 million mean back then? It was even higher than the cost of building a subway station at that time. Spending that money was one thing, but the key was that we also had to endure the humiliation. When the machines broke down, German engineers flew over with their toolboxes, and the first thing they did was set up a warning line on site, while our Chinese technicians could only watch from outside the circle, unable to approach even a step. At that time, they guarded against us as if we were thieves; the hourly service fee was equivalent to the wages of an ordinary worker for half a year, and we had to watch their faces.

This feeling of being choked was indeed uncomfortable; the core parameters were all black boxes. When encountering China's complex geology, when the machines broke down, any parameter changes required emailing Germany for approval, which delayed the entire project. This frustrating situation lasted until 2008. When China Railway No. 1 was launched, it finally broke through that layer of glass. But after carefully reviewing the subsequent development process, I found that what truly allowed Chinese tunneling machines to establish a foothold in the industry was not that we manufactured the machines, but that we showed an almost stubborn tenacity for details. There is one data point that particularly illustrates the issue. Early domestic cutter heads wore out quickly when chewing through hard rock, needing a replacement after just hundreds of meters. The subsequent research and development team continuously tackled alloy materials, and they indeed increased the cutter's lifespan to over a thousand meters.

Taking the Yawan High-Speed Railway No. 1 tunnel as an example, the strata there are almost entirely gravel cemented by volcanic ash, which softens when wet; the geological conditions are neither solid nor stable, and many foreign companies shook their heads and dared not undertake such a project. As a result, the customized tunneling machine from China Communications Tianhe, equipped with real-time monitoring sensors on the cutter head, tunneled 730 meters without changing the cutter, which was unimaginable before. You can see now from Herrenknecht's reaction that as a former leader, it used to be quite defensive about the Chinese market, keeping core technologies tightly guarded. But now? The busiest group in Herrenknecht's Guangzhou factory are the engineers responsible for adapting to the Chinese supply chain.

I saw reports indicating that Herrenknecht found that if parts were shipped from Germany, just the sea freight would take two months, which completely couldn't keep up with the pace of Chinese projects. Looking at Guangzhou, local steel mills could deliver special steel to the workshop on the same day, and the motors were right next door in the industrial park. Sealing components that had to be imported before are now replaced with products from Ningbo, and the chips for the control systems are directly sourced from industrial-grade chips produced in Shenzhen. What is the result? There is no difference in performance, and production costs have been reduced by 30%. The most ironic part is that even the tunneling machines that Herrenknecht manufactured for the Indian high-speed rail project were actually produced in China. I saw in the news that due to unpaid balances from India, these devices are still stuck at Taicang Port.

Herrenknecht has to communicate with the Indians over and over again, but the initiative is no longer in their hands; it is now at our Chinese port. The current situation is that the advantages of Chinese tunneling machines are no longer just cheap, but also the confidence of the entire industrial chain. Recently, the 15.4-meter diameter pilot machine officially began tunneling operations in the Chongtai Yangtze River Tunnel, and this large equipment was equipped with an intelligent tunneling system that can automatically adjust tunneling posture according to real-time geological data. Records show that it once set the highest record of tunneling 718 meters in a single month, fully realizing unmanned operations driven by algorithms, with such advanced technical strength.

Now even the internationally leading construction machinery company, Herrenknecht, has to come to visit and learn, actively drawing on its advanced experiences. I even feel that Herrenknecht's current survival strategy is actually to become a part of the Chinese industrial chain. Its Guangzhou factory supplies high-end bearings to China Railway Equipment and, in turn, procures hydraulic systems from China. This is no longer a life-and-death competition; it is clearly a 'if you can't beat them, join them' situation.

The Chinese manufacturing industry has actually undergone a logical transformation here. We are no longer solely focused on defeating our opponents but relying on industry capabilities that are too powerful to be ignored, forcing our opponents to actively integrate into our system. From being isolated by warning lines while building the Qinling Tunnel to now having global giants actively coming to China to 'hold onto our legs,' all of this has happened too quickly, so fast that many people haven't even realized it yet. This is not just the collaboration of thousands of supporting enterprises; it is not just the years of sleepless nights from engineers, but also because we have the confidence to define industry standards.