Central SOEs team up to sustain smooth trade flows

While many countries are acting urgently to contain the spread of COVID-19, China's centrally-administrated State-owned enterprises involved in energy, infrastructure development and manufacturing have been teaming up with local partners and governments across the world to sustain trade flows.

To ensure trading partners have sufficient power amid their battle against the pandemic, central SOEs from energy sectors including China Huadian Corp, China Huaneng Group and China Energy Investment Corp have all sent staff and shipped materials for contagion prevention to power stations under the build-operate-transfer model in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Pakistan and South Africa since March.

By the end of March 2020, Canada's Dufferin Wind Farm, operated by a subsidiary of Beijing-based China Energy Investment Corp, had generated 1.4 gigawatt-hours of renewable energy for the local community in the country's Ontario province since Dec 1, 2014, according to the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council, China's Cabinet.

Sufficient power supply and medical goods, international cooperation, stable trade flows and timely production of daily necessities and other living materials are key for China's trading partners to overcome the pandemic, said Mei Xinyu, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation in Beijing.

Because China's trade volume and outbound direct investment have notably surged in economies related to the Belt and Road Initiative in recent years, Mei urged the central authorities to keep a close eye on pandemic control work in certain global trade and logistics hubs and channels such as the Strait of Malacca and the Suez and Panama canals.

"It will severely limit global trade and investment activities if the outbreak situation worsens in these regions," he said.

As Sri Lanka's Hambantota port is only 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometers) away from the Indian Ocean's main east-west route－and more than 50 percent of the world 's container freight, 30 percent of bulk shipping and 70 percent of oil transportation all ply this route－the fuel supply unit of China Petrochemical Corp and China Merchant Group completed pumping fuel from their oil tankers into the onshore oil storage facilities at the port earlier this month.

Hambantota is now able to provide fuel to Chinese firms developing various projects in Sri Lanka, as well as commercial and ocean fishing vessels passing by, to support global trade.

Apart from facilitating energy and transportation projects overseas, Peng Huagang, secretary-general of SASAC, said central SOEs from the manufacturing sector have also relied on China's advantage of having the world's most complete industrial system with the most diversified sectors to boost the nation's foreign trade and deliver products on time to foreign customers.

Shanghai Zhenhua Port Machinery Co, the world's largest port machinery manufacturer by sales revenue, delivered two intelligent straddle carriers to Stockholm, Sweden, last month. This is the first time for a Chinese company to export goods of this kind to an overseas market.

Under the contract signed in 2019, ZPMC will deliver another six intelligent straddle carriers to Stockholm. The products can be operated in both unmanned and manual mode, with diesel and battery hybrid power, said Hu Zhongwang, head of the intelligent straddle carrier project at ZPMC.

Despite the impact caused by the outbreak, the company has delivered 35 port-related products including ship-to-shore container cranes, rail-mounted container cranes and fixed cranes for container adjustment to clients in the United Arab Emirates, France, the Netherlands, the United States and the Dominican Republic so far this year.

Inner Mongolia North Hauler Joint Stock Co inked a 1 billion yuan ($142 million) contract last month to supply electric mining trucks to Australia's Warkworth Mining Ltd. The giant trucks will be used at coal mines in New South Wales, Australia.