Policy dividend+industrial upgrading: Turkiye saves the market to alleviate the "new anxiety" of Chinese casting foundries going to sea!

In the current context of escalating global trade frictions, the layout of high-level diplomacy may become the key to breaking through. The recent intensive visits of China's top leadership to Vietnam, Malaysia, and Cambodia have sent a clear signal of deepening the cultivation of surrounding markets. Financial expert Liu Xiaobo analyzed that by strengthening the "peripheral strategy", promoting the construction of the European Customs Union, and expanding into African and South American markets, China can not only stabilize its foreign trade base, but also have the potential to achieve counter trend growth. For Chinese entrepreneurs, this is a strategic opportunity period to move from "local operation" to "globalization native". Taking the recent high-level interaction between China and Türkiye as an example, as early as 2017, the two countries signed more than 80 bilateral cooperation documents under the framework of the "the Belt and Road" initiative, building a "strategic highway" for Chinese casting enterprises to deeply integrate into Turkey's industrial ecology.

As important achievements in the more than 50 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Turkey, these documents cover 12 core areas, including the transfer of intelligent casting technology, upgrading of free trade zone policies, expansion of China Europe freight train capacity, cooperation in the new energy vehicle industry chain, green transformation of steel production capacity, and construction of cross-border e-commerce logistics hubs. Among them, there are 18 collaborations related to the foundry industry alone, including:

1. Technology exchange, jointly build three intelligent casting joint laboratories, and Türkiye will introduce China's digital sand casting production line technology;

2. Capacity docking plan: A high-end casting industrial park with an annual production capacity of 500000 tons will be built in the Mersin Free Trade Zone, enjoying a 10-year tax exemption policy;

3. Logistics collaboration connects the "Xi'an Istanbul" railway sea intermodal special line, reducing the transportation time of precision castings by 40% compared to traditional sea transportation and lowering costs by 25%.

These "customized cooperation packages" not only consolidate the "strategic partnership of cooperation" between China and Turkey, but also directly open up a dual channel for Chinese casting enterprises to the local market in Türkiye and radiate to Europe and the Middle East, which can be called the "key to breaking the situation" in response to the global trade crisis. According to official data, the bilateral trade volume of goods between China and Turkey is expected to reach 43.4 billion US dollars in 2023 alone. From January to August 2024, the bilateral trade volume was 28.56 billion US dollars.

In general, for Chinese enterprises, Türkiye is not only a springboard for "going to sea", but also a strategic place to connect with the global market, and its value is self-evident.