Chinese Construction Firms And The International Market

Entering an untapped international market can strengthen a business tremendously—but what if the costs outweigh the benefits for the market itself? China has long been an important player on the global stage, but recent advances in manufacturing, natural resources, and energy production have catapulted the expansive country to the forefront of international trade. Currently the world’s fastest growing major economy, China is set to eclipse the United States as the world’s largest economy by 2016. Among various domestic and international plays, one of China’s most fascinating uses of its

Managers generally consider the rivalry among competitors as a major source for deriving strategy. As explained by the Michael Porter it is a narrow view of competition. A set of other parameters should be evaluated, mentioned in article as five competitive forces, along with industry

China is leading as the largest furniture exporter in the world. The fast development of China’s furniture industry is the implementation of export-led strategy which has been highly promoted. Over the recent two decades China’s furniture industry is winning the world’s attention with its fast development (Cao et al. 2004).

It is this that has sparked China’s vulnerability to external shocks. In 2011, China’s exports amassed almost $2 trillion, however in Feb 2012, China recorded a $31.5 billion trade deficit as a result of the European sovereign debt crisis in which China’s main trading partners plunged into recession. China’s severe BOGS decrease is an attempt to control growth and a sustained level of 7.5%. Investment policies are also critical for China to achieve economic growth and development. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China is being sought primarily in the redesign of State Owned Enterprises (SOE’s) and in the development of interior provinces. Between 75-80% of World Bank loans to China in 2008 were directed to the central and western regions, the most economically disadvantaged. This promotes increased wealth within China, leading to higher levels of development due to a more positive Human Development Index (HDI), which currently sits at 0.687, up from 0.677 in 2010. Thus, trade and investment are critical factors in ensuring that China’s growth remains sustained at 7.5% whilst still encouraging increases in development.

In addition, the internationalisation is the strategy to occupy the foreign market step by step. Also, the porter’s competitive advantages theory is to analysis the strategies of global business. They could divide to three strategies: over cost leading, diversity, and market focus strategy (Passemard& Calantone, 2000). The cost leading strategy focus on establish efficient scale production facility and minimize the research and advertising cost. The diversity strategy focus on introduce some unique product in whole industry. But, this strategy will with a high cost price. The focus strategy is attack of a particular customer group or specialist regional market, its purpose to design the service for a particular target. Consequently, the companies need to consider the internal and external factor condition, such as: factor condition, demand condition, related and supporting industries condition, and firm strategy and rivalry. They are called diamond system. This dynamic system gives the company a standard to measure theirs advantage and disadvantage before they enter foreign market. Moreover, the specific advantage in Internationalisation of Production is give companies a new choose for exhausted market (Strange,S. 1992). In an international environment, the companies will face more uncertain and unequal condition than home market, therefore the companies need keep the attention of more factors:

In construction projects, mostly the firms (in this case the firms become client) do not have the skills or develop skills inside the firms to undertake the projects due to amount of the projects should be conducted or the complexity of the projects (Reve and Levitt, 1984). Therefore, the economic decision to conduct the projects is to procure them to third parties. However, more commonly the client agonize the final quality of the projects will meet standard requirements. Thus, impacts to involvement of complex contracts of construction procurement.

We need to validate if the company rank better relative to its competitor to determine market success and does the company have a net market advantage or disadvantage over its competitors. Industry and competitive analysis reveals the key success factors and competitive capabilities to separate them from its competitors. This is a basis for judging the competitive strength on factors such as cost, key product attributes, customer service, image and reputation, financial strength, technological skills, distribution capability and other

The identification of the probabilities and possibilities of new entrants is important because of intrusion risks made by them on profitability of existing company’s market share. The construction industry of UK has been affected by the differentiation of products, switching of costs, scale economies and government policies. The skill network report of 2006 to 2010 for construction companies in UK has stated that the output of the construction companies in UK is about 3 percent per year. There are about 2.5 million employees who are expected to join construction companies (www.constructionskills.net).

The main advantage of doing business in China is the fact that China has emerged as one of the world’s strongest economic forces, driven by the shear number of

By 1984, they were producing more than $1 million worth of rice and a range of side products, including rice wine. Their residential earning was up to about $200 a year. (Prager 52 ) This meant that they could begin replacing their mud-and-straw hats with solid brick houses. Shanghai today is a vast construction site with more than 20,000 projects, with 27,000 companies building bridges, tunnels, flyovers, ring roads, hotels, villas, golf courses and also public housing. This sparked national growth of about 10% a year.( 53 ) The Chinese now are going home

There however are challenges in the industry occasioned by uncertainty on future spending on construction projects by the government. Moreover, the cost of doing business and the ability to increasingly make revenue have created a challenging environment for the construction firms. Therefore stakeholders in the construction industry are concerned with whether the government would increase its spending and whether the public construction projects will be available in the future since less than 10 percent are currently financing their clients.

Delphi method. The Delphi method gathers a panel of experts from different fields to comment upon the research of others in their own and different disciplines. It is typically used to arrive at high-level predictions. The aim is to account for the complex factors that affect long-range forecasting by generating a wide range of possible future scenarios. The method also claims to safeguard against the tendency of group discussions on these kinds of matters to arrive at a consensus. (Delphi Method)

The latter includes (4) bargaining power of suppliers; and (5) bargaining power of buyers. ‘The strength of each of these competitive forces is determined by a number of key structural variables’ (Grant, 1998 in Mazucatto, 2002). The importance of this framework is emphasised by Porter who argues that ‘Understanding the forces that shape industry competition is the starting point for developing strategy. Every company should already know what the average profitability of its industry is and how that has been changing over time” (Porter, 2012, p.235). In the context of the building materials industry, the application of Five Force analysis indicates that the industry has growth rates that are mostly lower than the GDP growth across regional economies. It is cyclical in nature and fragmented in structure with a large number of small and mid-sized firms that create micro-markets and heterogeneous customer needs in different geographies. This becomes a big deterrent for any member firm that intends to exploit and enjoy economies of scale beyond a limit. What’s more, commoditization and lack of differentiation erode any scope for healthy margins. High weight to value ratio of ‘heavyside’ building products renders global sourcing ineffective. Entry barriers are virtually non-existent owing to the standardised, low technology nature of products that are devoid of patents and produced with non-proprietary technologies, and this particular industry attribute strips

The value of contracts awarded to Chinese state-owned construction firms has increased of late. As at May 2017, CRCC, China National Electric Engineering Company Limited (CNECC) and Sinohydro Limited have a joint portfolio of over $27bn in government contracts, the highest on the African continent. The surge in railroad construction all over the continent has worked in favour of Chinese contractors; China became the world’s biggest overseas contractor in 2010.

The construction industry much like other industries is dependant with the distribution of “scarce resources” (Drake,1994). Many of its resources known as the factors or production i.e. labour, capital, land etc. are limited (Gregory-Mankiw, 2008), however, wants and desires within the industry are infinite (Myers, 2013). Kishtainy notes that this creates two problems; at any given time, there will be a fixed number of resource, against numerous wants. Sloman 2003 adds that in an effort to rectify this, he argues that we must make choices, in terms of choices within the construction industry Myers suggested that firms need to considered their investments made, how they construct and for whom they construct for.