How to become "world-class", [Shanghai Week] Shanghai Enterprises

Last week, Shanghai Municipal Party Secretary Chen Jining visited Guotai Junan Securities Co., Ltd. for investigation.

The role of state-owned enterprises as the "main force" in serving Shanghai's economic and social development and strengthening the city's core functions has been emphasized again. In the context of building a strong financial country and the construction of the "five centers", financial state-owned enterprises also have a special mission.

Guotai Junan is expected to serve as a "direct financing 'service provider', a 'gatekeeper' of the capital market, and a 'manager' of social wealth" and to accelerate its progress towards becoming an investment bank with international competitiveness and market influence.

Benchmarking against "world-class" is a clear requirement for enterprises. This means fully aligning with international standards in terms of business layout, technology empowerment, corporate governance, etc., and striving to lead the industry. Chen Jining said that enterprises should "aim high, pursue excellence, and be courageous to act", forge advantages in the fierce market competition, and continuously improve their core competitiveness. Improve management, services, and products, and develop in the direction of specialization, differentiation, and intensiveness.

For state-owned financial enterprises, the increasingly complex market competition environment and rapidly iterating technologies are new situations and challenges that must be faced and responded to effectively. If they are grasped well, they can also find new opportunities and build new advantages.

When conducting a special investigation on blockchain innovation and development, Chen Jining mentioned that Shanghai should maintain sufficient "strategic agility" in related fields. At Guotai Junan, he once again emphasized that more attention should be paid to strategic investment and long-term value investment, especially to seize the opportunities of digitalization, intelligence and green development, strengthen forward-looking layout, and enhance "strategic agility"; and to cultivate innovative genes, actively embrace digital transformation, closely follow the progress of blockchain, artificial intelligence and other technologies and their impact on the industry, enhance the agility of technological change iteration, and establish a more effective trial and error mechanism.

City leaders pointed out that Guotai Junan should take the lead in practicing the ESG concept of "environment, society and corporate governance", promote the construction of an ESG standard system and rule guidelines with Chinese characteristics, strengthen the innovation of ESG financial products and services, and help companies improve their ESG capabilities and compliance levels - under the wave of green transformation, this will be an important position that Shanghai companies cannot ignore in improving their core competitiveness.

"Underlying logic" was also emphasized during the survey. Chen Jining pointed out that Guotai Junan should strengthen the professionalism of its services, deeply understand the underlying logic of technological innovation, deepen its understanding of the laws of technological innovation and industrial development, be familiar with the business models and growth paths of scientific and technological innovation enterprises, build unique advantages in serving technological innovation, and seize the initiative in future development.

For major companies in Shanghai, being well versed in underlying logic and maintaining strategic agility in cutting-edge fields are both important propositions that complement each other. Forging core competitiveness in the new environment is, to a large extent, a test of strategic thinking and professional ability.

Over the past week, Chen Jining also conducted intensive research on a number of private enterprises in Shanghai and also expressed related expectations.

The city leaders hosted a symposium with Huaqin Technology Co., Ltd., a leading company in the domestic smart terminal ODM field, and Zongmu Technology Co., Ltd., which has been deeply engaged in the field of autonomous driving for many years, to listen to the opinions and suggestions of the companies and promote development and service docking on the spot.

At the beginning of this week, he visited Shanghai Shizhuang Information Technology Co., Ltd., a well-known platform technology company, and Weijing Energy Storage Technology Co., Ltd., which focuses on liquid flow battery research and development and large-scale intelligent manufacturing, to listen to the companies' opinions and suggestions and conduct on-site office work.

A year ago, Shanghai held a conference to promote high-quality development of the private economy, emphasizing the need to vigorously boost the confidence of private enterprises and optimize the development environment for private enterprises. At the meeting, it was made clear that private enterprises will be supported to accelerate their development towards "specialization, precision, innovation and high-end" and "high-tech" to enhance their core competitiveness; accelerate the cultivation of world-class enterprises, establish a "policy service package" system, and improve special cultivation plans and gradient cultivation systems for good seedlings that are anchored in future industries, committed to innovation and breakthroughs, and facing the global market.

During this investigation, city leaders emphasized that private enterprises are an indispensable and important part of Shanghai's economy and an important force in promoting high-quality development. They will support enterprises to better integrate their own development strategies with the city's industrial positioning, lead in technological innovation, continuously improve their core businesses, strengthen their brands, expand their markets, and build first-class enterprises with core competitiveness and industry leadership.

All aspects of Shanghai will continue to create a first-class business environment with marketization, law-based and internationalization, further strengthen the leading role of high-end industries, and fully support private enterprises in seizing development opportunities, deepening development positioning, accelerating transformation and upgrading, and continuously improving core competitiveness.

Among them, the cultivation and development of new quality productivity is undoubtedly the focus of supporting private enterprises. "To promote scientific and technological innovation, develop new quality productivity, and play a leading role, we must further strengthen the leading function of high-end industries and accelerate the promotion of new industrialization. In the final analysis, we must cultivate and expand a group of competitive and excellent enterprises." Chen Jining said.

Private enterprises have natural market competition genes, and excellent enterprises also have their own "strategic agility" in tracking and judging cutting-edge trends. During the investigation, the city leaders repeatedly expressed their hope to relevant enterprises, saying that they should seize the opportunities of the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, maintain strategic agility, and accelerate the optimization of R&D and production layout in Shanghai; enterprises are welcome to make good use of Shanghai's industrial foundation and resource advantages, and do a good job in technology research and development, product adaptation and cooperation docking in advance according to the development and changes of software and hardware, jointly build a more competitive innovation ecology and industrial ecology, and accelerate the improvement of leading advantages in subdivided fields.

Among these, it is particularly important that relevant enterprises can further deepen their development positioning, maintain strategic determination, clarify development paths, better combine their own development with the main direction of Shanghai's industries, strengthen cooperation and docking with industry enterprises, accelerate breakthroughs in key core technologies, and actively participate in related pilot applications, thereby driving the formation of industrial clusters and building comparative advantages.

During the meeting, city leaders frequently mentioned new technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence big models, and green energy transformation. This is a major opportunity that Shanghai needs to seize in its economic transformation and upgrading, and it is also a major topic to focus on in cultivating first-class enterprises. Shanghai needs to provide service support for enterprises' exploration in related fields, and also expects related enterprises to achieve leading and transformative breakthroughs in the above fields. This not only tests the development capabilities of enterprises themselves, but also tests the government's service capabilities.

Chen Jining emphasized that Shanghai will continue to strengthen enterprise services, strengthen efficient work docking, provide precise professional services and convenient measures, support enterprises in seizing opportunities for digital, intelligent and green development, make good use of blockchain and other technologies, and accelerate the construction of a green and low-carbon supply chain system for the industry, so as to better guide upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain and supply chain to go global.

Relevant departments and districts should take a step forward to coordinate and support enterprises to continuously strengthen scientific and technological innovation, optimize industrial layout, build production bases, increase market development, better play the role of application scenarios in driving industrial development, seize industrial commanding heights, and build new development advantages.

The "service package" system for key enterprises undoubtedly needs to be further implemented. The process of constantly solving practical problems for enterprises and creating a good environment is also a process in which government departments are forced to deepen reforms and improve efficiency.

To cultivate first-class enterprises, we must have a first-class business environment, which means we must have first-class government management services. The three "first-class" complement each other and are indispensable.