| Modern network information technology has moved forward by leaps and bounds, and brought the international trade into an information age. E-commerce has become the first growth point in economic development in the 21st century. The development has greatly changed means of production, transaction and competition, and challenged the operation and management modes and international competitiveness of foreign trade enterprises. To speed up the development of electronic commerce is the inevitable choice to respond to the challenges of economic globalization, to seize the initiative of development, and to improve the international competitiveness. Since 1990s when the concept of e-commerce was introduced into China, it developed rapidly with its unique advantages despite a late starting. As a new business model, it has broken the time and space limit, changed trade patterns, altered the system of logistics, facilitated capital and information circulation, accelerated the circulation of commodity for the whole society, reduced production costs effectively and improved competitiveness of enterprises. As a new business model in technological development fields, development of e-commerce has a bright future. E-commerce is the mainstream of business models in 21st century, and to conform to this trend, Chinese government has always been supporting the development of e-commerce in the past two decades, developed a series of laws related to e-commerce successively, strengthening the information base facilities constantly, and implementing a number of "golden" projects. It is hoped that this way can promote the rapid development of e-commerce and narrow the gap in the level of e-commerce development between China and the developed nations. The 16th National Congress explicitly put forward the information technology development strategy, and the Third Plenary Session of the Sixteenth Central Committee Plenary Session raised the requirements of accelerating the development of e-commerce. In order to actively, comprehensively, and steadily promote e-commerce, China governments at all levels have also developed the overall framework of e-business development (including overall strategy, development planning, development measures, technical regulations and related laws and regulations), so that e-commerce can be a more orderly and regulative business environment of application and development.Both in developed and developing countries, SMEs are playing an important role in their economic activities. Its position is so important, not because they have advantage that can not be overtaken in the number, but because it provides more than half of the employment opportunities, creating a considerable part of the national wealth. SMEs have become an important force in economic and social development. SMEs contribute to 60%of the GDP; 50%of tax revenue and nearly 70%of exports, and solve employment of 90% of China's labor force. Currently, with China's foreign trade system reform, more and more SMEs have import and export right. Especially in the overwhelming tide of e-commerce development, as an important force in exports and the most dynamic and promising part of the national economy, SMEs has also been actively involved in the Chinese e-commerce environment.In the industrial economy, compared with large enterprises, SMEs obviously have many disadvantages, such as the narrow market, slow information communication, talent scarcity, and lack of funds and so on. However, with the development of electronic commerce, these shortcomings can be offset to a large extent. Therefore, economists believe that the Internet enables SMEs to compete equally with large enterprises at the same starting line. E-commerce is based on the Internet, and the Internet's largest feature is timeless and spaceless, that is, the market can expand where the Internet extends. So the Internet has enlarged market of foreign trade for SMEs, and provided new business opportunities. And because the Internet can ensure information sharing, SMEs are able to collect market information that can not be acquired in the usual way, such as the development trend of the industry, and can better understand the dynamic global business, which is useful for SME in conducting foreign trade. Lack of funding is an important factor restricting the development of SMEs, however, if the small and medium enterprises take advantage of Internet communication tools, they can effectively reduce costs and improve capital utilization. Cost reductions mainly lie in two aspects:one is marketing costs and procurement costs reduction; the other is inventory costs deduction. Improvement in the efficiency mainly specifies in:in e-commerce environment, SMEs can contact with customers and enquire and discuss the deal via the Internet, so that expenses like travel costs, fax charges, postage fees can be greatly reduced; many intermediate links are omitted, which enables enterprises to procure raw materials from providers and to deliver goods to the users directly, thereby greatly enhancing the efficiency of transaction. And because of their competitive advantages of business flexibility, strong market adaptability, and fast and flexible decision-making, they can adopt new technologies more easily and develop personalized marketing more appropriately.But e-commerce context can not solve all the problems of SMEs, and their congenital deficiency can only be offset to some extent, such as improvement in access to market information, information and communication links in trade negotiations with customers, etc. But lack of funds, scarce human resources, outdate equipment can not be made up, which still hindered SME in conducting international trade in e-business environment. Because of these congenital deficiencies, SMEs have no enough financial support for technical improvements and equipment updates, and have no professional personnel engaged in e-commerce technology development and research and professional website design. And because of no experience in the use of e-commerce, SMEs face more threats and challenges. Furthermore, China still has no mature e-commerce development, and e-commerce context itself also has a lot of insecurity and instability factors:computer hardware failures, system software errors, network failures, invasion of various computer viruses, data transmission failure, etc. If any one of these links has a problem, the process of e-commerce can not be completed successfully. With higher charges, third-party e-commerce platform is not comprehensive and professional, and also lack of authenticity of the information. Relevant laws are not perfect, and problems such as the security of online transactions, legal issues of electronic contracts, and online credit problems can not be resolved well. Many internal and external factors make SMEs in the coexistence of opportunities and challenges.Given the plight of SMEs in conducting international trade in e-commerce context, this article aims to make a systematic study on Chinese SMEs foreign trade in making use of E-commerce, and to explore the possibilities of strengthening their competitiveness. The paper attempts to raise several recommendations and strategies for SMEs, to this regard.This paper is divided into five parts:The first part is the introduction, which briefly describes the background, purpose and significance of the topic, the organization and structure of the paper, and its limitations and contributions.The second part is the analysis of e-business and its impact on international trade. First, it is the development process and current status of e-commerce analysis, which gives a clearer explanation of e-commerce context through the introduction of basic features and concepts of e-business. Second, it introduces three stages of e-commerce development. Finally, it is the introduction of status of e-commerce development in China. Another focus of this section is the impact of electronic commerce on international trade, which is introduced in six aspects such as the operating environment changes, international traders changes, innovation of international trade modes of marketing, and so on.The third part is the status of SMEs in e-business context in China. First, it is the definition of SMEs and feature analysis, with the focus on their advantages and disadvantages. Second, it analyzes the importance of SMEs in the status of the national economy. Third, it is the analysis of development advantage of foreign trade enterprises in Chinese e-commerce environment, which is mainly explained in three aspects:e-business context makes it easier for SMEs to enter the international market; congenital deficiencies of SMEs can be compensated in e-commerce context; SMEs exert competitive advantages more easily in e-commerce context. Finally, it focuses on the challenges of SMEs in e-commerce context, which mainly analyzes in four major aspects like the incomplete third-party platforms, security issues, intellectual property issues and logistics. In the last section, the main problems of the third-party platform are weak expertise, incomplete functions, lack of information authenticity, and higher charges; security issues are mainly in information security, transaction security and property safety; intellectual property issue is mainly domain name infringement analysis; logistics and distribution aspect focuses on the major disconnection between logistics and e-commerce, that is, the logistics industry can not keep up with the pace of e-commerce development and lags behind for potential reasons.The fourth part is the analysis on the problems of Chinese small and medium sized foreign trade enterprises in conducting e-commerce. It mainly describes from inside and outside perspectives, the support of the external environment and self-improvement of SMEs, which is the contribution of this article. As far as the support of external environment, the paper recommends that government and policy makers should give full supports in technology and legality. In the meantime, the relevant industries like logistics and distribution should coordinate with SMEs. While for Chinese SMEs themselves, they should improve themselves in four aspects, namely, consciousness conversion, conduction of online marketing, customer relationship management, and self-built website. With the joint efforts from both inside and outside, SMEs in China will be able to compete with foreign companies in international markets more healthily and effectively.Finally, the paper gives a simple summary. E-commerce is the direction of future trade development, and its application will bring the majority of enterprises, especially SMEs new opportunities and challenges. SMEs should take the opportunity, and seek to better improve e-commerce context for international trade, with the courage to meet the challenges.All in all, if SMEs in China enhance their competitiveness in international trade in this e-commerce era, they have to make full use of the facilities provided by the context in order to develop sustainably. |
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