Improving exports key tohealthy growth of foreign trade industry

The COVID-19 outbreak has severely affected people’s lives and production. It has dealt a strong blow to the world economy, resulting in a sharp decline in global economic growth and leaving a profound impact on the normality of foreign trade.

Under the firm leadership of the central government, China has worked to stabilize foreign trade and investment. Joint efforts by commercial authorities and export-oriented businesses are responsible for the turnaround in the country’s foreign trade sector.

During the first three quarters, China’s foreign trade increased 0.7 percent year-on-year. The growth in trade signals positive momentum for the future.

However, multiple adversities in the international market have remained fundamentally unchanged. Protectionism and unilateralism have severely hampered normal market competition, while subtle changes have been made in the industrial chain. Competition in the global market is becoming increasingly fierce while the protraction of the United States quantitative easing policy and weak dollar will make China’s export expansion more uncertain.

We need to pay close attention to these existing factors and their developments and respond to the complicated exchanges in the exterior environment with new development approaches. That way, we will gain the upper hand in international competition.

Companies must put quality and efficiency first, to strike a balance between a company’s drive for transformation and its efforts to increase its profit ">

Transformation and upgrades require more effort in improving products’ quality and added value, continued improvements to products’ features and adding their functions to realize an increase in export prices. If every company could manage to do that, it would lead to a drastic change in China’s exports quality and profit ">

Companies must also adapt their product and market strategies by formulating their product portfolio development plans. Moving up the value chain through innovation and research and development, companies can realize improvements in their products’ added value via stable quality as well as better functionality, technological features and packaging.

A scientific market expansion plan can help improve a business’ operation and marketing capacities. It requires multi-channel market research to learn about the latest market changes and new development in targeted markets. It also requires an awareness of developing a distributor and customer base to form a win-win development pattern. While focusing on its traditional markets, a company also needs to enhance exploration in new markets.

Learning new business competition models is another key. Leveraging e-commerce platforms to promote sales and building official websites, companies must develop and improve personalized and after-sales services, as well as brand awareness.

Last but not the least, companies must increase awareness of risk control and improve their assessment of operational risks. That means learning about changes in the macro-economic environment and in the industry. Financial risks, including foreign currency exchange rates, payment and settlement, should also be taken into consideration.

The progress in China’s opening-up, as well as improvement in market operations, legal services and the international business environment, has put the future of a company in its own hands. The hope of China’s future economy, the high-quality development of the country’s foreign trade and the transformation from a large trading country to a trading powerhouse will mainly be pinned on enterprises’ sustainable and steady growth as well as improvements in their business operations.

The author is vice-chairman of the China Society for World Trade Organization Studies.