General

The general office of the State Council recently issued the opinions on promoting the stability and quality improvement of foreign trade to help foreign trade enterprises cope with difficulties and challenges, achieve the goal of maintaining the stability and quality improvement of import and export, and help stabilize the economy and stabilize the industrial chain supply chain. This is a follow-up to the implementation of the measures to stabilize foreign trade discussed at the executive meeting of the State Council on May 5 and the national teleconference on promoting the steady development of foreign trade and foreign investment on May 9. Relevant policies and measures have also been further refined.

At present, China's foreign trade development environment is grim and complex. While foreign demand is weakening, it is also facing fierce competition from Southeast Asian countries. It really needs some hard work to achieve the stability and quality improvement of foreign trade. From the perspective of the government, with the implementation of a new round of stable foreign trade policies and the continuous consolidation of epidemic prevention and control achievements, it will relieve some pressure on foreign trade enterprises. For enterprises, while making good use of these policies, they also need to increase their own oil, see the general trend, and participate in international competition in time, so as to get out of the dilemma.

The first step for enterprises to keep their orders is to establish confidence in overcoming difficulties, and the source of confidence is to understand the underlying logic of China's economic development, especially the development of foreign trade. China not only has complete industry categories and industrial chains, but also Chinese enterprises are gradually climbing to both ends of the smile curve. Talent dividends are still being released, management concepts are also being updated, and the global influence of Chinese brands has also been improved. Especially under the tide of vigorous development of digital economy, it not only provides new ideas for foreign trade enterprises to tide over difficulties, but also brings them the possibility of leaping over the dragon's gate.

There is a term "Teng" in Chinese chess, which means that in chess playing, sometimes a certain chess piece occupies a position that prevents other chess pieces from playing a role. Discard or remove this chess piece to make room, and then you can move on to the next step. That is to say, when solving a difficult problem, it is not effective to just stick to it, but sometimes it is put on hold for a while. In the follow-up development, there may be a turning point and a solution. In other words, we should look at problems from the perspective of development and solve problems in the course of development. Therefore, foreign trade enterprises are now facing problems such as loss of orders and difficulty in obtaining a box. If they take advantage of the trend, they will be able to solve them easily.

Now that the digital economy era has arrived, we might as well comply with the new trend and look at these issues with the method of the digital economy era. The greatest feature of the digital economy era is to change zero sum game into link symbiosis, mutual competition into cooperative competition, and separation and closure into open cooperation.

Take the guarantee order as an example. Just as in war, the gains and losses of one city and one place are not important, only the preservation of effective forces can make a turnaround possible. The essence of guarantee order is not to recover every lost order, but to increase the viscosity of customers. Under the background of repeated epidemics, it is difficult for enterprises to complete orders by themselves. Once the factory is sealed, not only orders cannot be completed, but customers may also be lost. If the company adheres to the concept of open cooperation and links itself to a production cooperation platform, it will transfer orders to other enterprises on the production platform in time to ensure timely delivery when the epidemic situation is sealed and controlled. In this way, although the order production was transferred to other enterprises, the commitment to customers was still fulfilled, which increased the viscosity of customers.

This is not nonsense, but there are real cases. YUANTUO building materials group is such an enterprise. It shares its 15 years of international market operation experience with factories without international trade experience; It has also independently developed an information system to realize the interconnection of information, data and resources among its business divisions, joint ventures and partners within the group; They also share their customers' purchasing needs with the factory. On this basis, they innovated the foreign trade mode and implemented the mode of "foreign trade + factory + Internet + big data + channel (customer) sharing". This model played a role during the outbreak. In 2020, the factory owned by YUANTUO building materials group, Tianjin factory, could not start work normally because many workers could not return from other places. The company handed over the orders received to the cooperative factory, stabilizing the customers. Later, the company returned to work for a week with a total amount of more than $4.5 million.

This shows that the concept of open cooperation is a magic weapon for enterprises to deal with the crisis. For another example, in the process of applying for loans and containers, an enterprise is weak and has no right to speak. If the enterprises keep warm together, it will provide a stable expectation for financial institutions and freight enterprises, so as to improve the probability of applying for loans and getting containers. Further, at present, many financial institutions and freight enterprises are building their own digital platforms. What they need most is a large amount of data. If enterprises can open the data of a cycle of funds, freight and other data to relevant institutions, it will not only help relevant institutions arrange funds and transport capacity, but also greatly alleviate the difficulties of financing, one box and so on.

In a word, the adjustment of global supply chains and industrial chains is accelerating, but there is also an increasingly obvious trend: the era when any enterprise can achieve development and growth by fighting alone has passed. In the digital era, the emphasis is on link symbiosis, cooperation and competition, and open cooperation. Whether an enterprise can develop and grow depends more on whether its ecosystem has enough toughness and inclusiveness, and has a broader vision of development Longer term.