SME policy and business environment in China Go back »

2022-12-22 | Shenyang

It is well-known that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are the backbone of the global economy. At the same time, due to their limited resources, smaller companies tend to suffer more from economic, trade and investment imbalances, market access issues and lack of level-playing field than their larger counterparts.

On December 22^nd 2022, Ms. Ester Cañada Amela, European Chamber Senior Business Manager in European Affairs and Advocacy Manager at the EU SME Centre shared her views on the key hurdles encountered by European SMEs in China and how the EU SME Centre can help SMEs in the current business environment.

Starting with the current situation between EU’s and China’s SMEs development, Ester analyzed the importance of SMEs and the main barriers for internationalization and introduced the ranking of business environment of 36 cities in China based on data collected by the MIIT.  One of the main sources of pain for SMEs in 2022 was the prevalent Zero Covid policy. However, as the pandemic regulations continue to improve, it is expected that China’s economy would pick up and so does the business environment in 2023.

Next Ester provided an overview of the key concerns and recommendations from EU SMEs in China such access to financing; enhancing coordination between different administrative departments and improving the transparency, clarity and integrity of all relevant regulations for SMEs; reducing financial burden of SMEs; and promoting the value of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection and enforcement mechanisms.

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