SMEs in China urged to accelerate digital transformation

SMEs in China will need to deepen efforts in digital transformation as it will become crucial for smaller firms to adapt quickly to business disruptions amid the pandemic, said Chinese government officials and industry experts. 

“The pandemic has made a number of companies, especially SMEs, aware of the important role of digital transformation and the competitiveness and dividends brought by digital transformation,” said Xu Xiaolan, Vice-Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), reports China Daily. 

“Leveraging digital tools can also help SMEs in predicting market changes in advance so that they can improve intelligent decision-making to cope with market fluctuations and achieve on-demand production,” added Xu. 

“Given that SMEs are more vulnerable to fluctuations in supply and industrial chains, the MIIT is also encouraging digital service providers to reduce SME cloud platform costs, so that they can better leverage digital technologies to boost efficiency amid difficulties,” she added. 

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So far, official data showed that only 25% of companies in China have carried out digital transformation at the start of 2021, while the proportion of SMEs that have done so is even smaller.