In today's industrial modernization, carbon fiber known as "black gold" is widely used in various industries because of its high temperature resistance, friction resistance, corrosion resistance, and low quality.

Looking at the global carbon fiber market, the main players are still industry giants in Japan, the United States and Germany.

In terms of production capacity, Japan’s Toray is the undoubted leader; on the technical level, Japan and the United States monopolize 76% of the high-end market. In my opinion, the reason why Japan and the United States can form a monopoly advantage is mainly because of their early start.

Japan and the United States monopolize the high-end market

Take Japan, the world's largest producer of carbon fiber, as an example. As early as 1959, the R&D and exploration of carbon fiber began, with 62 years of technological precipitation.

Let’s look at Japan’s Toray Group, which was founded in 1926 and is the world’s largest carbon fiber company. It has won orders from the US for broadcasting for 50 years.

On the other hand, my country, affected by overseas technical blockades and weak foundations, although the research on carbon fiber has been launched since the early 1960s, it was in the 1970s that it was really made from scratch.

Because of the chain reaction, the domestic carbon fiber technology as a whole lags behind Japan, the United States and Germany, and is highly dependent on imports. Data show that in 2008, my country's import dependence on carbon fiber was as high as 98%.

Even in 2019, domestic carbon fiber accounted for only 32% of the domestic market. Moreover, the sales of domestic carbon fiber accounted for only 25%, and the unit price lags far behind imported products.

However, in recent years, domestic carbon fiber technology has advanced by leaps and bounds, and the gap with Japan and the United States has gradually narrowed.

The Shanxi Institute of Coal and Chemical Industry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences successfully produced polyacrylonitrile-based hollow carbon fibers in the first half of 2020, allowing China to formally become the third country alongside Japan and Germany in the technology mastered by only two countries in the world.