General

"2022 is a year full of challenges, with repeated global epidemics, political turmoil, impact on financial markets, soaring energy prices, and changing supply and demand relationships... These factors make it difficult to predict the development prospects of my country's foreign trade. Even so, China's foreign trade is stable. The basic general trend for the better has not changed, and the overall competitiveness of my country's foreign trade is still improving." Liu Qingyun, director of strategic investment of JD.com Group, said at the 2nd Forum on Accelerating the Improvement of Chinese Enterprises' International Soft Power held recently, in addition to traditional trade in goods In addition, the influence of Chinese brands overseas is also increasing, and the trend of Chinese manufacturing going overseas to the internationalization of Chinese brands is irreversible.

This shows that Chinese enterprises are still full of confidence in the future international development.

In recent years, the foreign trade and investment activities of Chinese enterprises have become increasingly active, especially when the epidemic has not yet dissipated, the pace of Chinese enterprises going overseas has not stopped, and the rhythm has not been disrupted, continuing to inject new vitality into the development of the world economy and trade. Data show that in the first five months of this year, the total value of my country's foreign trade import and export was 16.04 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 8.3%, of which exports were 8.94 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 11.4%; my country's foreign non-financial direct investment was 287.06 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase. An increase of 2.3%.

Taking JD.com as an example, Liu Qingyun said that JD.com has expanded its presence in Southeast Asia in recent years. While continuously tapping local needs, it also fits into the local market and brings new formats of digital trade and service trade to the local area. In addition, JD.com also promotes the high-quality development of overseas warehouses and promotes the scale, intelligence, functional diversification and openness of overseas warehouses to better help Chinese companies go overseas.

Against this background, Chinese enterprises have ushered in new opportunities to enhance their international soft power. Entrepreneurs and experts participating in the conference mentioned two important aspects for enterprises to improve their soft power—cross-border communication literacy and cross-border legal literacy.

From the perspective of cross-border communication, according to data from PR Newswire in 2021, the number of press releases issued by Chinese brands overseas has increased by as much as 46%, which not only reflects the continuous increase in the demand of Chinese enterprises to go overseas, but also reflects the importance of overseas enterprises. More and more attention is paid to telling good stories and developing brands. But on the other side of the coin, according to Brunswick's "Chinese Enterprises in an International Perspective: The Two Perceptions of the Developed and Emerging Markets that are drifting apart", the polarization of international audiences' views on Chinese enterprises has intensified, especially Developed countries have low trust in Chinese companies.

In this regard, Li Wei, Vice President of PR Newswire China, believes that due to the constraints of space, geography and culture, Chinese companies going overseas to enhance their international soft power are faced with a lack of international communication talents, overseas communication resources, and lack of emphasis on overseas communication. These three common problems.

"In the process of Chinese companies going overseas, the participation and voice of the communication department in the early stage is still not enough. Compared with Chinese companies, managers of European and American companies attach great importance to the opinions and suggestions of the communication department when making major decisions." Li Wei suggested that Chinese enterprises can improve their international soft power by focusing on the construction of overseas official websites, monitoring public opinion in target markets, and covering all media channels, so as to enhance the local people's trust, understanding and reputation of Chinese enterprises.

In addition, strengthening good interaction with stakeholders and fulfilling social responsibilities are also important means for enterprises to do a good job in external communication. In this regard, Xu Peng, President of MEBO Group, introduced the relevant practices of MEBO Group. In 2020, MEBO Group will cooperate with more than 70,000 hospitals and medical units in 110 countries around the world to establish a global disaster and rescue network to better The global link of far-reaching and extensive health resources can meet the rising challenges in the field of international health security and further improve the global ability to respond to public health emergencies; More scientists, educators, sociologists, widely disseminate scientific values, and build a more suitable scientific environment.

"These measures not only enhance the world brand image of MEBO Group, but also deepen the international influence of traditional Chinese medicine technology." Xu Peng said.

From the perspective of cross-border law, the global interaction of legal civilizations in various countries in the world continues to strengthen, and countries continue to absorb legal civilizations and wisdom that are useful to their own countries from other countries, and also continue to export to other countries. experience and rules. According to Yang Rongkuan, senior partner of Kangda Law Firm and director of the Hong Kong branch, cross-border legal literacy is a key addition to an enterprise's international soft power. Cross-border law covers investment, trade, labor, environmental protection, intellectual property and other legal systems, and involves all aspects of business operations such as the legal system of the host country, foreign exchange management, financing, land, company establishment and dissolution, mergers and acquisitions competition, and taxation. Therefore, cross-border legal literacy is the key and foundation of an enterprise's international soft power.

"There are two trends in legal events around the world: one is to extract relatively certain rules from various concrete cases in reality, which is case law; the other is that relevant departments formulate normative documents based on abstract legal principles, which is statutory law. Case-law thinking is a key issue that enterprises must face when going global." Yang Rongkuan said that enterprises need to think cross-border when going global. Statements, Organization of Evidence and Use of Expert Witnesses, etc.