The latest data released by the China Small and Medium Enterprises Association shows that China's Small and Medium Enterprises Development Index was 89.5 in May, up 0.3 points from April. Since the beginning of this year, small and medium-sized enterprises have seen a clear recovery and positive trend, and innovative vitality has continued to be released.
In the view of Zhu Yu, a relevant person in charge of the China Small and Medium Enterprises Association, this aspect is due to the continuous optimization of the development environment. Documents such as "Guiding Opinions on Promoting the Healthy Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises" and "Opinions on Solving the Issues of Deadline Enterprise Accounts" have been issued one after another, and the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Promotion of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises" and "Regulations on Guaranteeing the Payment of Funds for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises" have been revised and implemented. In addition, the country continues to increase support for small and medium-sized enterprises and introduces packages of policies such as tax and fee reduction, financing, and market expansion. As of the end of May, the country's new inclusive small and micro loans exceeded 1.2 trillion yuan, an increase of 18% year-on-year, effectively alleviating the financial pressure of enterprises. The reform of the commercial system has been deepened, and the time for starting a business has been further shortened.
On the other hand, emerging markets have increased demand for my country's goods, driving the growth of enterprise production. Customs statistics show that in the first five months, the total trade value between my country and ASEAN was 3.02 trillion yuan, an increase of 9.1% year-on-year, accounting for 16.8% of China's total foreign trade value. During the same period, my country's total imports and exports to countries jointly built the "Belt and Road" were 9.24 trillion yuan, an increase of 4.2% year-on-year.
Zhu Yu believes that the special action to boost consumption supports the expansion of the "two new" policies in various regions, and also drives the rapid growth of related industries and products. In May, driven by factors such as equipment update policies, the added value of industries such as motor manufacturing, ship and related device manufacturing, boiler and prime equipment manufacturing increased by 23.3%, 12.8%, and 11.8% year-on-year respectively; in terms of old-for-new, driven by policies such as car scrap replacement and renewal subsidies, automobile production increased by 11.3%, and related charging pile production increased by 26%. Thanks to the support of policy support for consumer goods exchange and purchase subsidies, tablet computers, electric bicycles and other products achieved rapid growth, with growth rates of 30.9% and 20.5% respectively.
"The results of scientific and technological innovation and digital transformation have become key factors that support the high-quality development of small and medium-sized enterprises." Zhu Yu said that in the first five months, the national R&D investment in small and medium-sized enterprises increased by 12.8% year-on-year, higher than the national average of enterprises; specialized and new "little giants" enterprises performed well, and continued to break through key technologies in high-end equipment, new materials, biomedicine and other fields; about 45% of small and medium-sized enterprises have applied information technologies such as industrial Internet and artificial intelligence, greatly improving production efficiency.
Zhou Yuxiang, CEO of Shanghai Heihu Network Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters that previously, key processes such as CAD drawing disassembly relied on senior engineers, mainly relying on manual transmission and guidance to teach experience, and there is a risk of technological intermission. Heihu Technology has developed an AI analysis module that can automatically identify structural information such as size and tolerances. Combined with the knowledge base to generate process paths, the original skill of "relying on people's education" has become "relying on machine learning".
It should also be noted that shortcomings such as high transformation costs, insufficient talent reserves, and lack of customized products still restrict the pace of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises to a certain extent. Zhu Yu suggested that small and medium-sized enterprises can make efforts from the two aspects of "reducing expenditure" and "opening source", focus limited funds on the main pain points, first carry out digital transformation of core businesses, and seek breakthroughs on key issues that need to be solved urgently.
For non-core businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises can adopt outsourcing methods to reduce resource investment. The competent departments should guide leading enterprises, industry associations, etc. to build a public service platform for supply and demand matching for small and medium-sized enterprises, integrate upstream and downstream information of the industrial chain and supply chain; support the creation of a group of excellent digital transformation service providers for small and medium-sized enterprises, provide low-cost and highly applicable digital tools and services, and reduce the cost of transformation.
Zhu Yu believes that the digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises needs to be embedded in the digital ecosystem. However, digital transformation is a complex systematic project. It is difficult for small and medium-sized enterprises to succeed by fighting alone. We must accelerate the improvement of the digital industry and digital ecology, and rely on ecological power to enhance the resilience of digital transformation of small and medium-sized enterprises.
