Economics
Chinese Export Machine Upgraded as Cranes Replace Toys
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From a sprawling manufacturing base deep in China’s southwestern Hunan province, some 100 kilometers from where Mao Zedong was born, construction-machinery maker Sany Group plans to take on the world.
While workers in blue overalls and yellow hard hats crawl over cranes and cement mixer trucks in a gleaming factory, Sany President Tang Xiuguo sits nearby, discussing the opening of factories in Brazil, India, and Alabama and the $475 million acquisition of a German maker of cement pumps, Putzmeister Holding GmbH. Tang, a founder of the 22-year-old company, aims to lift overseas sales, now some 5 percent of its $16 billion revenue, to up to one-fifth of revenues within five years.