Hong Jie, Deputy to the National People's Congress,

 Vice Chairman of Fujian Federation of Industry and Commerce, and Chairman of SKSHU Paint Co., Ltd.

(Source: www.cnr.cn) "This year's government work report once again proposed to build a more favorable development environment for the private economy, ensure the equal access of private businesses to production factors and policy support, promote the healthy development of the non-public sector of the economy, and introduce a host of support measures. This policy statement has given private entrepreneurs greater confidence to build our business in China," said Hong Jie, Deputy to the National People's Congress, Vice Chairman of Fujian Federation of Industry and Commerce, and Chairman of SKSHU Paint Co., Ltd.

Hong Jie said that with the deepening of reform and opening up, the private economy had also embraced a period of opportunities; but private enterprises were still struggling with the problems of rising labor costs, financing difficulties and high financing costs, limited market access, lack of global vision and weak corporate management; what was worse, the COVID-19 pandemic had caused a huge impact on small- medium- and micro-sized private enterprises.

Hong Jie said frankly, "3TREES’s business has been hit hard by the pandemic in the first quarter of this year." He also said that the impact was going to be temporary, because the demand for renovation and building construction had not disappeared, just postponed. He added that the country’s “two new, one major” construction strategy, i.e. new infrastructure, new urbanization and major infrastructure projects in transportation, water conservancy and other fields, had created a huge market; therefore, 3TREES would set a clear development direction, speed up the research and development of high-end high-tech products, vigorously develop online office, training, meetings, marketing and investment attraction capabilities, provide anti-epidemic materials to support the production resumption of upstream and downstream enterprises, accelerate the building of an integrated 6-in-1 industrial system encompassing coatings, waterproofing products, insulation materials, floor coatings, base and auxiliary materials, and high-tech materials. He said that with accelerated resumption of work and production, the company's production had also quickly returned to a relatively normal state.

Hong Jie said, "To overcome the business difficulties of private enterprises with regular containment measures in place requires both the enterprise's own efforts and the support of the government." He argued that for a company, the first thing was to develop a risk awareness and bottom-line thinking, and keep the business going; second, the company should think out of the box, see the bigger picture, look for the new continent, set the right strategic position and make a good development blueprint; third, the company must step up innovation to build core competitiveness, and, in the meantime, foster an excellent corporate culture and enhance the performance of corporate management.

Talking about the government's encouragement, guidance and support for private enterprises, Hong Jie suggested speeding up the implementation of the national vocational education reform plan to provide the modern service industry and modern manufacturing industry with highly skilled and high-quality modern artisans; encouraging private enterprises to use modern information and communication as well as Internet and Internet of Things technologies to improve management, raise efficiency and transition toward high-quality production; strengthening the banks’ ability to conduct credit investigation and analysis using big data, connecting the data systems of various departments in the credit investigation process of the banks, and improving the efficiency of lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises to reduce their financing costs.

"China has a huge market. As long as we are confident and seize the opportunity to transform and upgrade, we can always turn crisis into opportunities," Hong Jie said.