China has issued a reciprocal countermeasure against the EU! After the countermeasure, EU high-end medical equipment companies (Siemens, Philips) face increased difficulty entering the Chinese government procurement market, while domestic medical equipment companies are presented with development opportunities.

The 45 million yuan threshold has choked whom? Today, a notice from the Ministry of Finance went viral: for medical equipment procurement budgets exceeding 45 million yuan, EU companies are directly excluded! Want to buy imported products? Fine, but the proportion of EU goods cannot exceed half. This cut is precise and severe — Siemens and Philips lost their entry tickets overnight, but European enterprises that have set up factories in China can still catch their breath, as the policy leaves a clear loophole.

The EU moved first, and China only responded. On June 20, the EU suddenly blocked Chinese medical equipment companies from bidding on public procurement contracts over 5 million euros, giving no chance for negotiation. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce spent a month arguing, and the EU-China Chamber of Commerce was anxious, but the EU remained indifferent. Forced into this situation, China's countermeasure was decisive: if you want to play protectionism, I'll play along all the way.

Is the spring really coming for domestic medical equipment companies? In the short term, local giants such as United Imaging and Dongnuo have indeed gained a big advantage. A high-end magnetic resonance machine from Siemens sells for 40 million yuan? Now hospitals wanting to buy it can only turn to domestic alternatives! United Imaging's market share has already reached 24.31%, standing in a tripartite competition with Siemens and GE. With policy support, the speed of domestic substitution for "bottleneck" devices such as PET-CT and surgical robots could increase by another 30%.

But don't get too excited yet. Certain high-end heart pacemakers and vascular stents still have a domesticization rate below 20%. If hospitals insist on buying EU goods, they must prove that "only the EU can meet the demand" — once this door is opened, there is ample room for maneuver. More painfully, some precision components used by domestic companies still need to be imported, and when costs rise, the price advantage disappears immediately.

EU companies are quickly changing direction. Philips and Siemens have already sensed the wind, with 90% of their products in China locally produced, and GE even invested 1 billion yuan to build a research base in Shenzhen. Once the countermeasure is announced, more EU companies may roll up their sleeves and establish factories in China — after all, the Chinese medical equipment market worth 1.6 trillion yuan is something no one wants to truly let go.

In the long run, this countermeasure is both a whip and a ladder. The whip drives domestic companies to focus on R&D: United Imaging's 5.0T ultra-high-end magnetic resonance just launched, directly challenging GPS (GE, Philips, Siemens), and Dongnuo's AI image diagnosis system had its approval process accelerated by 60%. The ladder leads to global expansion: Southeast Asia and Latin American production bases are being established, and United Imaging's overseas revenue surged by 30% last year.

Behind trade battles lies a technological life-and-death struggle. The National Medical Products Administration has just lifted restrictions on AI devices and brain-computer interfaces, cutting the innovation approval cycle by 40%. With policy paving the way and countermeasures increasing pressure, China's ambition in high-end medical equipment is written into the blueprint — aiming to reach a scale of 2.8 trillion yuan by 2030, and it's time to lift the iron curtain of GPS monopoly!

What do you readers think? Welcome to discuss in the comments section.

(Note: This article is based on facts from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Commerce's announcement on July 6th, and statements from the EU-China Chamber of Commerce. Industry data references reports from Zhongcheng Shuke and Qianzhan Research Institute, complying with platform safety standards.)

Original: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1836907775971338/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author.