[Chinese Screw Net] On the morning of the 22nd, Premier Li Keqiang made a government work report. The report mentioned that in the face of changes in the external environment, we must unswervingly expand opening up, stabilize the supply chain of the industrial chain, and promote reform and development through opening up. Focusing on supporting enterprises to increase orders and stabilize job security, increase credit supply, expand coverage of export credit insurance, reduce import and export compliance costs, and support export products for domestic sales.
Under the epidemic situation, promoting the stability of foreign trade enterprises is an urgent and important issue for overall economic and social development. According to customs statistics, the total value of China ’s imports and exports of goods in the first quarter was 6.57 trillion yuan, a decrease of 6.4% from the same period last year. Among them, exports were 3.33 trillion yuan, a decrease of 11.4%, the highest growth rate since 2009. Although the overall foreign trade data is better than expected, it can also be seen that foreign trade enterprises, especially small, medium and micro foreign trade enterprises, are under severe pressure.
Right now, as the domestic epidemic situation continues to consolidate, domestic enterprises have resumed production and production in an orderly manner. However, due to the continuous spread of overseas epidemic situations and the inflection point has been delayed, it is difficult for foreign trade enterprises that focus on overseas markets to see a turnaround. A large number of orders have been cancelled, the product inventory backlog is serious, and the risk of export foreign exchange collection has increased. In this context, this year's government work report proposed "supporting the transfer of exported products to domestic sales", which not only captures the pain points of foreign trade enterprises, but also develops a feasible "prescription".
In terms of supporting foreign trade enterprises to switch to domestic sales, the central and local governments have taken active steps: For example, the Ministry of Commerce proposed four measures including reducing domestic sales costs of enterprises, increasing domestic sales support, making good use of production and marketing docking platforms, and expanding online cooperation channels. Foreign trade enterprises switch to domestic sales; at the local level, Zhejiang, Shanghai and other places have also introduced measures to encourage foreign trade enterprises to start the domestic market and open up domestic sales.
Needless to say, the government plays an important role in helping foreign trade companies bail out. Making good use of fiscal and taxation, finance, export credit guarantee and other policies and measures to help enterprises accurately, and taking the policy tilt as a domestic trade foreign trade enterprise to reduce the burden, this is what it should be. However, foreign trade enterprises cannot rely solely on the government's "blood transfusion", but must also actively realize their "blood production" through business transformation, and e-commerce platforms such as Alibaba play a huge role in this process.
When General Secretary Xi Jinping visited Shaanxi to tackle poverty alleviation work last month, he mentioned that e-commerce, as an emerging format, can not only promote agricultural and sideline products, help the masses get rid of poverty and prosperity, but also promote rural revitalization. This fully affirmed the channel role of e-commerce platforms. To change the context, the e-commerce platform is also "promising" in terms of promoting foreign trade enterprises to switch to domestic sales. Taking advantage of the e-commerce platform's channel advantages can completely open up a broad domestic market for export products.
There are many success stories in this regard. After the outbreak of the overseas epidemic, the Qingdao foreign trade factory Ai Taisi all 200,000 pieces of foreign trade orders were cancelled, and the operation was in trouble. However, after becoming a "Taobao Xinxuan" supplier, the goods originally sent to Wal-Mart and Macy's Department Store were sent to domestic consumers through Taobao. Zhao Wei, the person in charge of the factory working overtime during May Day, lamented: "The factory has overtime to work, which makes people feel at ease."
In fact, many responsive foreign trade companies have already begun to act. Data from the Ministry of Commerce shows that foreign trade enterprises' export to domestic sales has achieved results. In April, domestic sales of export enterprises increased by 17%, indicating that high-quality foreign trade products are also welcomed by domestic consumers.
However, the export of foreign trade enterprises to domestic sales is not a simple move overnight. In the domestic trade market, foreign trade companies are easily reduced to "the most familiar strangers." This is because traditional foreign trade companies usually follow the order production model and organize production and logistics systems in full accordance with foreign order requirements. However, this model is not necessarily suitable for domestic sales.
Consumer demands at home and abroad are completely different, and the lack of domestic "consumer insight" is the biggest challenge facing companies in transferring foreign trade to domestic sales, and it is difficult for companies to bridge this gap on their own. Therefore, cooperation with an e-commerce platform with rich consumer data becomes crucial.
For example, many foreign trade companies in the Pearl River Delta have used Alibaba's C2M (consumer reverse customization) model to transform the domestic market, that is, to accurately guide production through consumption data fed back from e-commerce platforms, thereby avoiding the problem of "out of stock".
In addition, the e-commerce platform has huge traffic and mode advantages. It can not only bear the systematic capabilities of consumer services, promotion, drainage, sales and so on, but also help the development of enterprises through marketing innovations such as live broadcast, social networking, and gamification. If foreign trade enterprises can make good use of these advantages, it will undoubtedly make the domestic sales transformation smoother and more efficient.
In terms of promoting cooperation between local foreign trade companies and e-commerce platforms, local governments are also promising. This is because the local government has the overall information of foreign trade enterprises, and the government will build a cooperation bridge between the enterprise and the e-commerce platform, which will achieve twice the result with half the effort.
This is why more than ten provinces and cities such as Zhejiang, Chongqing, Hubei and Shaanxi have recently become strategic partners of Alibaba's "Spring Thunder Plan", and jointly promote the digital transformation of enterprises through the joint efforts of the government, local enterprises and e-commerce platforms.
This year's government work report pointed out that the "six guarantees" are the focus of this year's "six stability" work. Support foreign trade enterprises to switch to domestic sales, related to insurance employment, basic people's livelihood, insurance market players, and stability of the supply chain of the insurance industry chain. Local governments actively and effectively promote cooperation between foreign trade enterprises and e-commerce platforms, which is essentially an inherent requirement to implement the "six guarantees" task. Such kindness and good deeds also help China weather the epidemic more quickly and inject new energy into high-quality development.