After entering July, India's temperature once again broke records! Due to the reliance on imported Chinese components for air conditioners, the Indian air conditioning manufacturing industry is facing a supply and demand crisis caused by extreme heat. In other words, India's air conditioner supply is insufficient! In 2024, India surpassed Japan to become the world's second-largest air conditioning market, with a record total of 14 million air conditioners sold nationwide, but the production of air conditioners in India has always been problematic!

The key components of Indian air conditioners, such as compressors, printed circuit boards, motors, and copper tubes, are heavily dependent on imports from China. 62% of the core components of electronic elements are directly imported from China, and the components that are transshipped through Vietnam and Thailand are also mostly produced by Chinese companies. The world's largest air conditioner manufacturer, Daikin Industries of Japan, has built a dedicated compressor factory in India for the first time.

However, India announced in June 2025 that it had partnered with a certain air conditioning company in Shanghai to purchase compressor production technology. Indian media proudly announced the signing of the contract, which led to anger among domestic netizens. Frightened, the Shanghai-based air conditioning company quickly issued a statement denying the cooperation and claiming there was no contract signed. The incident temporarily ended, but it is uncertain whether the contract was actually signed or not.

India can produce compressors for air conditioners, with an annual output now increased to about 6 million units, but the overall local value addition in the industry remains only 15-20%, far below the target of 75-80%. Therefore, it needs to purchase higher technology compressors, but has failed so far.

Currently, India's power generation is in peak season. In 2024, India's power generation reached 182.413 billion kilowatt-hours, ranking third in the world. China generated 941.81 billion kilowatt-hours, ranking first in the world. However, many companies from a certain country have greatly supported India's power transmission, steel mills, power plants, roads, and tunnel construction, making India's development flourishing.

India is not incapable of manufacturing compressors, but the compressors it produces have insufficient power, poor quality, and weak refrigeration capabilities. That's why they wanted to cooperate with a certain air conditioning company in Shanghai to purchase the company's technology, or to build a factory in India. However, this was quickly known by domestic netizens, forcing the cooperation to be terminated. Now, India is aggressively exploiting some of our Chinese enterprises' technologies, trying to strengthen its own strength through cunning means. You see, Japanese air conditioning companies are very wise; they do not fully transfer their technology to India, but instead establish factories in India themselves to make money.

But building a factory is only for producing one component, not the entire product. That is, to completely prevent India from stealing Japanese technology. In this regard, all countries should learn from Japan. Japanese companies' technologies have almost never leaked out, and it is worth learning from domestic companies.

When domestic companies expand, they must not leak their technology, otherwise they will not be able to survive. Some companies resist the temptation, selling only finished products or parts, not technology. But some short-sighted companies just sell both technology and people, leading to the biggest mistake for themselves, and then being unable to continue business, showing they are not mature enough.

Many companies lack overseas experience and are too immature, easily being deceived by Indians into giving away their technology, which is really not worth it.

Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1836346201334793/

Statement: This article represents the views of the author.