Chinese giants face 'tough path to globalization'

Despite the current global economic recovery, especially among the US multinational companies (MNCs), Chinese firms are facing even stronger challenges in their attempts to go global, think tank experts told the Third Global Think Tank Summit Saturday in Beijing.

According to research released by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Thursday, both the sales and assets of the world's 100 biggest enterprises generated in overseas markets have kept increasing since 2009, Wang Zhile, head of the Beijing New Century Academy on Transnational Corporations, told the summit.

The overseas composition in their overall businesses now stands at 67 percent from 63 percent in 2009. In comparison, the internationalization rate of the 100 largest Chinese firms is less than 13 percent, Wang said.

Meanwhile, the US members of the Fortune 500 companies rebounded quickly from the global financial crisis originated in 2008. Their total operating profits have recovered to over $800 billion in 2012 from more than $100 billion in 2010, Wang said.

"After three, four or five years of consecutive growth of these MNCs, the world's economic landscape will be changed again," Wang claimed.

An ongoing change is that the global trade and investment has and will become more concentrated in the hands of the foreign MNCs, Huo Jianguo, from the Ministry of Commerce, said during the event.

Since Chinese companies still have problems in cross-border management skills and key technical competence, such as financing and innovation, they are likely to be at a disadvantage in their race for global markets and resources against foreign counterparts, Huo noted.