Sailing 2024 New flowers are in full bloom

Visual China.

Text |Quadrant quadrant, author |Jin Qi.

In the 2024 opening drama "Flowers", foreign trade brought countless opportunities and hopes to the Chinese in the 90s. Exploring the international market and seeking a path to wealth is the "business password" of that generation of foreign traders.

"The world has changed, but the flowers are still the same." More than 30 years later, foreign traders are once again facing countless opportunities and hopes, like the protagonist of "Flowers", stepping on the tide of the great era and facing the current changeable international market.

On January 12, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on the import and export situation in 2023. According to customs statistics, the total value of China's imports and exports last year was 4176 trillion yuan. Of these, exports 2377 trillion yuan, an increase of 06%, an increase of 142.6 billion yuan.

Behind the figure of 142.6 billion is the hard work layout of new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, energy storage and other industries, the running around of traditional foreign traders, Internet practitioners, factory owners and other subjects, and the turbulence in the story of Chinese enterprises going overseas in 2023.

The fate of the times hidden in "Flowers" is also playing out in the present. The Quadrant Think Tank has observed that in the current overseas market, new flowers are blooming. And these blooming flowers are the opportunities and hopes of a new round of surging in China's foreign trade reform.

Stills from "Flowers".

Before 2021, China's automobile exports were around 1 million units per year. In 2021 and 2022, China's automobile exports will continue to reach the level of 2 million and 3 million units. In 2023, it will cross two million steps and export 52210,000 units, an increase of 57 year-on-year4%, the number and value of exports have reached the first place in the world.

Data**: Easy car.

In addition to automobiles, China's photovoltaics, energy storage, coffee, milk tea, and short dramas are all flocking overseas in 2023 and quickly occupying the world market.

"I think 'China'Global' is still the trendIn 2023, he traveled to nearly ten countries including South Africa, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, "The degree of development of China's manufacturing industry is far ahead of most countries in the world." ”

Judging from the markets visited by Abu, many countries are almost non-existent, and they lack industrial management capabilities, technology and environment for industrial development.

This lack of capacity at the industrial level, first, the infrastructure construction is not perfect, "South Africa has a power outage at 6 o'clock every night, how can it be produced?" "On the other hand, the industrial application of scientific and technological achievements is relatively backward, "for example, raising chickens, Rwanda is a country that has done better in scientific and technological innovation in Africa, and it takes 70 days for a chicken to be eaten from hatching, while China only needs 25-30 days." ”

In today's international market, Chinese enterprises are based on industrial advantages, on the one hand, they produce their own products and export them to various countries; On the other hand, there are higher-order abilities:Directly go out to "feed" and provide empowerment to other countries in terms of technology or industry.

Energy storage is the embodiment of the higher-level capabilities of Chinese enterprises to go overseas.

In the past year, Chinese energy storage companies have rapidly seized the market in Europe and the United States. "Almost all of them are Chinese enterprises", Mr. Lu has worked in the UK for more than ten years, and last year he joined a Chinese energy storage company from the grid to energy storage to help it explore the European market, "Chinese companies have obvious advantages in the technology research and development and upgrading of energy storage products, and the European market also needs this kind of mature products." ”

The layout is very rapid", is his deepest impression of the development of Chinese energy storage companies in Europe in 2023.

On the one hand, China's energy storage companies have relatively mature products, and on the other hand, the best products are relatively low, which leads to some European companies quickly losing in the competition"European companies can't catch up with some domestic companies."

In addition, the service of domestic enterprises is also more perfect, "the attitude of the person in charge of Chinese enterprises is very good, the Chinese are more hard-working, conscientious, and the after-sales service is very good." ”

Based on the advantages of products and services, Chinese energy storage companies will rapidly promote the market layout in Europe in 2023 and have also received commercial feedback.

For example, SolaX Energy, a recently successfully listed provider of photovoltaic energy storage systems and products, mentioned in its prospectus that the company's revenue from Europe continued to grow from 2020 to 2022, accounting for 94 in 2022About 5%, 43$5.8 billion in sales revenue.

Behind the smooth expansion of China's energy storage to the sea is China's strong first-chain advantage and manufacturing capacity. From upstream raw materials, to midstream energy storage converters (PCS), battery systems (BMS), energy management systems (EMS), etc., to downstream integration links, there is a relatively complete industrial chain system in China, and the leading development of new energy vehicles and photovoltaics has laid a good foundation, which makes domestic energy storage products competitive in the world.

This is also the reason why Abu is optimistic about Chinese enterprises going overseas to open up the market"My optimism comes from the fact that China's manufacturing sector is still globally competitive. ”

New energy vehicles, which represent the level of China's manufacturing industry, are typical examples of Chinese enterprises "rolling" the global market. Brother Zheng, who has more than ten years of strategic consulting experience in the automotive industry, described, "In 2023, China's new energy vehicle companies are almost fighting the best battle at any cost, but at the same time, they are also occupying the global market at double speed." ”

Although they have won a comparative advantage in the international market, Chinese companies are more anxious in the process of going overseas with more and more "volume". For example, the sales model alone has undergone earth-shaking changes.

In "Flowers", the uncle said that "foreign trade is to borrow other people's chickens and lay your own eggs", the set of business scriptures has long become a thing of the past in the current development of the international market.

As long as you find a source of goods, you can sell them, and this operation path will not work after 2015. Now the core is to find consumers and rely on consumers, so we must build our own brands overseas, and we must build a localized team to serve local consumers in depth", Abu is ready to stay in one or two countries in 2024 to deepen the local market.

The old answer falls apart, and the new one has not yet been found. "Confused, chaotic, and uncertain, the whole system of going to sea is undergoing a reconstruction, and this reconstruction is a change in concept and cycle mode.

Under the guidance of this kind of reconstruction, the introduction of talents and industrial upgrading in the direction of globalization have become the layout and transformation direction of Chinese enterprises.

Since the beginning of the past few years, manufacturers in Pingdu, Shandong, the "hometown of false eyelashes", have begun to lay out cross-border e-commerce. With the rise of overseas short **, TikTok has become the key marketing direction of various manufacturers. To this end, Ah Gan will incubate dozens of TikTok accounts in Beijing in 2023 to promote the company's false eyelash products overseas through ** shooting and live streaming.

Abu's feed additives are concentrated in Tai'an, Linyi, Weifang and other cities in Shandong, and his most obvious feeling in the past two years is that many traditional manufacturers want to go to sea, "but many times are limited by the idea of the enterprise itself, or the resources of the enterprise itself, have not been able to carry out."

As a result, "foreign traders go to the grassroots level" and "talent sinking" are becoming a phenomenon. Driven by the diversified demand for Chinese products in overseas markets, foreign trade personnel who understand overseas markets go to fourth- and fifth-tier cities to find low-cost merchants. On the other hand, after seeing the prospects of overseas markets, manufacturers also tend to recruit more foreign trade talents and open up overseas markets.

The vast potential demand and growth vitality of the global market are calling on more Chinese enterprises to go global, and at the same time, they are also putting forward higher requirements for the innovation, management and adaptability of domestic enterprises.

Domestic new energy vehicle brands are better in terms of product experience, which is why they are popular with foreigners. "The success of new energy vehicles going overseas, in addition to advanced technology and cheap, Brother Zheng believes that continuous product innovation and iteration is also a very important reason," domestic car companies will do a lot of localized functions according to the usage habits of various regions. ”

The demand in the European market has always seen that some new products or technology applications of energy storage will explode in 2024. "Many companies will bid for some projects in Europe in 2023, and most of these projects will be running in 2024 or 2025, and to carry out actual functional commissioning, it will put forward some new requirements for energy storage technology. ”

Abu also believes that the way to play in the overseas market has changed, "more refined operations are needed, and a complete set of playing methods is needed, and the original rough model will be eliminated." ”

From the perspective of globalization, this is actually the increasing requirements for China's manufacturing chain. If Chinese companies want to achieve long-term sustainable innovation and development, obtain sustained high profits, and avoid the dilemma of "rolling at home and going abroad", they need to consider how to provide more valuable and technological industrialized products, rather than cheap labor and raw materials.

The Quadrant Think Tank once went to Europe for an investigation, and mentioned it in "2023 European Internet of Things Trip: Change and Unchanged in Our Eyes".From the point of view of European partners: China is especially deepZhen has become what they call an "intelligent manufacturing base and hardware distribution center".

In other words, China has become a representative of the "mid-end manufacturing chain" in the intelligent manufacturing industry, focusing on the integration of industrial solutions with certain technical content and application innovation, rather than the basic cheap OEM assembly in the past. This is reflected in the fact that a considerable number of first-class companies in the science and technology industry chain can only be found in China, and overseas hot "first-chain substitutes" such as India and Vietnam still do not have the corresponding core substitution capabilities.

For domestic enterprises aiming to go overseas, if they want to occupy more shares in the competition in the international market in the future, they must complete the reshaping of the entire internal innovation system, focus on building and coordinating the management capabilities of the global first-class chain system, and continuously promote technological innovation and industrial upgrading, so as to obtain a new stage of competitive advantage.

When it is blocked in one place, it may reappear in another and may become more powerful, even with unintended consequences. "Where there are people, there are commercial rivers and lakes, and where there are **, there are wealth opportunities. For the overseas market in 2024, will **re-emerge in** and become strong in**? The Quadrant Think Tank communicated with the interviewees in the article.

Quadrant Think Tank: Looking forward to 2024, which tracks do you think still have more opportunities in the overseas market?

Abu:Auto parts, monitoring and security, small household appliances and other products with a certain level of manufacturing will have more opportunities. At the regional level, the opportunities in the Belt and Road countries, Africa, and the Middle East are relatively large, especially in the Middle East and Africa, and I think the opportunities are very, very large.

Mr. Lu:There is still room for overseas energy storage markets, and we have recently looked forward to the overseas energy storage demand in the next few years, and there is still a large market demand in Europe and the United States, because after a large number of new energy units are put into use, more energy storage is needed to balance the source and load demand of the power grid. the other is wind power, such as manufacturers of wind turbines; Others are service-oriented, such as providing energy consulting and providing design solutions for energy development and construction in overseas countries.

Brother Zheng:China's new energy vehicle industry has just emerged, and there is still great potential for development compared to the fuel vehicle industry. There are some segmented and specialized needs for third-party services and consulting around new energy vehicle companies, such as automobile overseas market selection, localized first-chain strategy, compliance, ESG, etc.

Quadrant Think Tank: Do you have anything to say to entrepreneurs who are ready to develop overseas markets?

Abu:I'm optimistic about the overseas market as a whole, but I still think 2024 won't be particularly good. The most I want to say is that "the trend is not equal to the outlet", overseas market development is a long-term process, much longer than the development of the domestic market, the cost is much higher, "low threshold, high elimination". Globalization is a big trend, but it doesn't mean that it can be achieved by catching up with the trend, for example, the core of the reason why Mixue Bingcheng is very successful in going to sea is because it has accumulated for many years. Stepping on the stroke depends on luck, stepping on the trend depends on the brain, entrepreneurs need to be calm and cautious to consider going to sea.

Mr. Lu:Localization is definitely a trend. Overseas enterprises need a lot of time and cost to build local teams, so that they can have more advantages in response speed and service quality.

Brother Zheng:For the new energy vehicle industry, the theme of 2023 is "volume", and the theme of 2024 is "knockout", a large number of second- and third-tier brands will be eliminated, leading enterprises will occupy more markets, and the relevant overseas of the industrial chain needs to follow the leading enterprises.

"When you see the future, you will have the future".In 2024, more changes are taking place in the overseas market, and the old order of the past is dying, but more blue ocean opportunities and new industry development opportunities are also emerging to accompany the optimists.