Recently, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing announced that the logistics business climate index in China reached 54.2% in November, rebounding by 0.7 percentage points compared to October. Experts predict that as the Western Christmas and China's Spring Festival approach, the logistics economy will maintain a stable development trend
R1: The Belt and Road must be translated as the Belt and Road. Not only within the country, but from a broader strategic perspective, logistics enterprises are also thriving in their "going global" development. According to statistics, the total population in regions along the Belt and Road spans approximately 4.4 billion people, with an economic aggregate of around $21 trillion, accounting for roughly 63% and 29% of the global totals respectively. As envisioned by national strategy, the primary focus of Belt and Road construction is to enhance connectivity, making personnel exchanges and cargo flows more frequent.
Experts interviewed by the China Economic Times pointed out that on one hand, the connectivity of roads, smooth trade, currency circulation, and the development of the logistics industry are closely related, which will provide significant opportunities for domestic logistics enterprises to "go global" in clusters. On the other hand, as the strategy continues to advance, China's logistics industry is moving toward channelization and networking, ushering in large-scale construction opportunities for land-sea bidirectional radiating logistics supported by nodes along the routes.
Overall, private logistics enterprises, as an important force in the development of China's logistics industry, have performed well in recent years. Zhao Meng, Chairman of Datang International (Shanghai) Brand Management Consulting Group, recently pointed out in an interview with China Economic Times that in recent years, not only have a number of strong logistics enterprises emerged, such as Yuancheng, Haifeng International, Minsheng Shipping, Baofang Logistics, Shanghai Jiaji, Shandong Rongqing, Fujian Shenghui, Tianjin Datian, Shanghai Huanshi, Fujian Shenghui, etc; And a large number of influential large and medium-sized express delivery companies have also emerged, such as SF Express, Zhaiji Express, Shentong, Yunda, etc.
However, at the same time, there is still a considerable gap between China's logistics industry and European and American countries in terms of market competitiveness and management level. The logistics industry is a composite service industry integrating transportation, warehousing, distribution and other industries. With the acceleration of the construction process of the "the Belt and Road", private logistics enterprises are facing many difficulties and challenges in "going global" development, which are mainly reflected in the following aspects: first, in terms of their own factors, due to their small scale, few outlets, and low degree of informatization, enterprises have a weak sense of "going global"; Secondly, in terms of external factors, such as talent shortage, resource scarcity, financing difficulties, and mismatched policies in cross regional logistics markets.
Zhao Meng believes that currently, logistics enterprises in China should adapt to role transformation as soon as possible, accelerate enterprise upgrading, enhance collaborative capabilities, and innovate business models as their priority direction for development.
Secondly, we need to enhance the service capabilities of the "going global" supply chain logistics. In Zhao Meng's view, especially for private logistics enterprises to meet the demands of the global and regional logistics market, they must develop towards intensification, scale, and informatization. The "the Belt and Road" countries cover a vast area of Asia, Africa and Europe, spanning more than 10000 kilometers from east to west. The topography is very complex. In some of these areas, the development of water transport, railway and highway transportation is greatly affected by the environment. Compared to land and water transportation, air transportation demonstrates significant advantages. However, many private logistics enterprises in China have obvious shortcomings in this field and urgently need to strengthen strategic restructuring, optimize and upgrade, in order to enhance the service capabilities of "going global" supply chain logistics.
In addition, it is necessary to calmly cultivate the internal strength of the enterprise. Zhao Meng admitted that getting involved in international logistics is not an easy task. There are significant differences in culture, law, and environment among countries along the route. Private logistics enterprises lack experience in "going global" and blindly participating in market competition carries great risks. They need to solidly improve their internal strength foundation. Only in terms of human resources issues, the logistics knowledge and operational skills of logistics practitioners directly affect the development of enterprises. The logistics industry in Western countries has a relatively complete logistics system, while China's system construction in logistics and distribution is far from keeping up
Zhao Meng said frankly that if China's private logistics enterprises want to participate in the construction of the "the Belt and Road", they must enhance their sense of competition and realize the overall improvement of service capability, service efficiency and service quality, so as to effectively reduce logistics costs and supply chain costs and improve the competitiveness of enterprises on the international platform.Accelerate the construction of information platforms in the logistics industryThe reporter found that currently, the country is increasingly attaching importance to the application of information technology in the logistics industry.
On September 12th last year, the State Council issued the "Medium - and Long Term Plan for the Development of the Logistics Industry 2014-2020", which clearly proposed to "accelerate the development of public information platforms for transportation and logistics", and put forward 12 key projects including multimodal transport, logistics parks, agricultural product logistics, manufacturing logistics and supply chain management
On March 7th of this year, the State Council issued the "Reply on Agreeing to Establish the Hangzhou Cross border E-commerce Comprehensive Pilot Zone in China", aiming to accelerate the development of cross-border e-commerce platform construction and provide supporting services for cross-border e-commerce.
On August 19, Premier Li Keqiang chaired the executive meeting of the State Council, which deployed the development of modern circulation industry, encouraged circulation enterprises to give play to the advantages of offline physical stores in logistics, services, experience, etc., promote the integrated development of physical and online markets, support enterprises to build overseas marketing, payment settlement and warehousing logistics networks, implement the action plan of "Internet plus circulation", and encourage circulation enterprises and manufacturing enterprises to "go global" in clusters
Nowadays, with the rapid development of cross-border e-commerce, the information management of the logistics industry must be elevated to a new level. Private logistics enterprises should also actively use Internet technology to establish a network platform to connect business outlets, which can not only optimize enterprise resource management, realize resource sharing and information sharing, but also connect with users, manufacturers, suppliers and relevant units to track, effectively control and manage all aspects of logistics orders, procurement, storage, transportation, transactions in real time, shorten operation time and reduce operation costs. Private logistics enterprises should innovate their thinking, technology, and management to effectively stimulate their core competitiveness in talent, technology, and service, "Zhao Meng suggested.
Zhao Meng stressed that at present, the overall scale and level of China's private logistics enterprises are not large. If enterprises want to "go global" and participate in the construction of the "the Belt and Road" successfully, they really need to do a lot of work. He believes that the key is to implement three actions: first, to promote "going global", second, to adhere to "going fast", and third, to ensure "going well"
Zhao Meng specifically said that, first of all, "going global" needs to be driven by policies. We should formulate support policies in finance, finance, insurance, diplomacy, commerce and other aspects at the national level, put "encouraging private enterprises to participate" into the specific implementation level, formulate relevant plans for private enterprises to participate in the "the Belt and Road" construction, revise and improve some policies incompatible with the new situation, and strengthen policy guidance and policy support. We will also reward and support Chinese logistics enterprises with strong driving force, great contribution to development and high level of international cooperation, so as to gradually form a joint force to support private enterprises to participate in the construction of the "the Belt and Road". Zhao Meng believes that solving the problem of difficult, expensive and few financing channels is one of the important policy drivers to support private enterprises to participate in the "the Belt and Road" construction.
Secondly, 'going fast' relies on innovation driven approaches. Zhao Meng introduced that since last year, the Chinese government has implemented a shift from approval based management to record based management for overseas investment. As of June this year, China has signed 13 free trade agreements with 21 countries and regions, and 99 countries have signed agreements to avoid double taxation, which has created great convenience for enterprises to carry out overseas investment. However, at the operational level, the international and domestic legal systems on overseas investment have not been effectively brought into play, and the local legal policy support and legal service guarantee for promoting the development of the "the Belt and Road" have lagged behind. Therefore, to improve and implement the policy, it is necessary to rely on institutional mechanism innovation to encourage private logistics enterprises to "go fast" in the construction of the "the Belt and Road".
Once again, 'walking well' relies on service guarantees. In the context of the construction of the "the Belt and Road", we should examine the trans regional and trans economic extension of logistics and e-commerce in China, and put forward higher requirements for the service system and capabilities of private logistics enterprises. According to research conducted by relevant institutions, private enterprises face many risks and difficulties in overseas investment due to factors such as lack of experience in overseas investment, relative isolation between domestic and foreign markets, cultural differences, and information asymmetry. These risks include policy risks, legal risks, exchange rate and foreign exchange control risks, which have caused setbacks for some private enterprises.