1、 外文翻译 原文 Internationalization strategy of Chinese companies in Europe Material Source:The netherlands / Delft University Author:Ying Zhang (2) Partners have control over the alliances and share in the generated advantages; (3) Partners continuously contribute to one or more strategic areas of the al
2、liance. Scholars followed these three conditions and there has been an agreement that strategic alliances are used to denote a variety of inter-firm relationships (Osborn and Hagedoorn, 1997); or intensive cooperative arrangements between two legally independent entities, aimed at realising competit
3、ive advantage for both partners (De Man et al, 2001); or temporary cooperative agreements in which two or more firms share reciprocal inputs to realise improved competitive positions for the partners involved while maintaining their own corporate identities (Heimeriks, 2004). In summary, strategic a
4、lliances can be defined as agreements between two or more partners as a cooperative form towards a common goal by sharing necessary resources as well as coordinating activities. Strategic alliances are considered as the most flexible mode of collaboration. They can be patterned in terms of collabora
5、tion with suppliers, customers, competitors, organisations that offer similar products in different markets, organisations that offer different products in similar markets, non-profit organisations, governments,universities, and others. Based on the degree of integration, strategic alliances vary fr
6、om service agreements and licensing and franchising to technology exchange agreements to outsourcing and collective research organisations and to highly structured joint ventures. Any firms especially the technology- and knowledge-based ones face a series of difficult decisions, such as whether to d
7、evelop certain product independently or to collaborate with partners. Collaboration enables firms to achieve the goal at faster rate and at less cost or risk, compare to what can be achieved alone. It is widely acknowledged in the strategic alliance studies that firms preferring independent developm
8、ent have to pay for much more cost and higher risk than that in the collaborating manner. Firstly, opportunities can be offered by inter-firm strategic alliances to obtain the complementary competence, skills or technology in the fastest way because fewer companies are able to develop all the necess
9、ary skills in-house and expand cycle time to develop complementary capability internally. Secondly,strategic alliances provide companies with dramatic flexibility and help them reduce the commitment in their assets. This is rather important in todays technology-oriented markets where innovation is t
10、he primary determinant of success. Companies that are committed to the fixed asset will be ultimately washed out. Thirdly, strategic alliances are accompanied by knowledge exchanges between collaborating partners and it offers companies an important chance to execute organisation learning. Close con
11、tacts with other firms can facilitate the transfer of knowledge especially the tacit knowledge between firms and the creation of new knowledge that individual firms could not have created alone (Mowery et al, 1998). Fourth, since technology development is characteristic of expensiveness and uncertai
12、nty, R (b) accelerate the return on investment; (c) access resources such as complementary technology; (d) create efficiencies through economies of scale and scope or through rationalisation; (e) open up otherwise unattainable investment options; (h) co-opt competition. The significance of strategic
13、 alliances is explained by the fact that alliances promote the capability growth not only by leveraging existing skills, but more also by quickly and flexibly accessing the capabilities of others. 3. Analytical Framework of Chinese Companies Entry into Europe Combination of two types of Europeanisat
14、ion (Western Europe and Eastern Europe) and three different types of internationalisation (greenfield investment, acquisition and strategic alliances) yield six potential scenarios of Chinese companies access to Europe: greenfield investment in Western Europe greenfield investment in Eastern Europe
15、acquisition of a domestic company in Western Europe acquisition of a domestic company in Eastern Europe formation of a strategic alliance with a company in Western Europe formation of a strategic alliance with a company in Eastern Europe 4. Overview of Chinese Companies Entry into Europe Traditional
16、ly, western companies have sought partnership with their Chinese counterparts. By establishing such strategic alliances, western companies get an opportunity to tap into the enormous 1.3 billion consumers market. Since recently, however, a reverse trend is increasingly taking shape. This is labeled
17、as“Chinese outward alliances” strategic alliances initiated by Chinese firms as a goal to access overseas markets, technology, managerial know-how and so on. For our analysis, we chose Thomson SDC as a source of strategic alliances and M (2) half of the alliances reported in SDC are accounted for re
18、search and technology alliances that play a prominent role in both industry and research; it provides information over a wide range including global new issues, securities trading, mergers and acquisitions, and a very wide range of agreement types such as joint ventures, research and development (R
19、(3) The SDC database covers the widest range of sectors. It reports at least one alliance for each of 1,059 four-digit Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes between 1985 till now. The agreements between industrial partners and universities (4) SDC database has extensive searching ability. T
20、hrough SDC, researchers could easily search for 200 data elements associated with the name, SIC code, nationality of participants, the terms of the deal, and deal synopsis for each alliance agreement. The data searched in SDC can easily exported in a user-defined format such as Excel spreadsheet. Al
21、so, it provides users with a reference to the data sources, enabling the users to verify information offered by the database. 4.1. Chinese outward alliances Despite the absolute numbers provided by Thompson Reuters SDC database should be treated with caution,we may have confidence in relative number
22、s and in the general trends. As Figure 1 indicates, this phenomenon of Chinese outward alliances has its roots back in the mid-1980s.Comparing to the total number of strategic alliances formed worldwide annually (around nine thousand), the number of Chinese outward alliances is quite small. Neverthe
23、less the data clearly indicate that the outward strategic alliances by Chinese companies are a fact and reality, deserving its full theoretical and empirical investigation. Regarding global alliance activity with regard to China, inward alliances (by foreign firms to China) account for the main part
24、, however outward alliances from China are attracting much more attention. In the traditional understanding, outward alliances are defined as the alliances initiated by Chinese firms with foreign companies either located in China or overseas. In order to clearly look at the trend of outward alliance
25、s that Chinese firms conducted with foreign side and overcome the drawbacks of SDC database, in this study we purposively define outward alliances as alliances established between Chinese and foreign side but happened outside of China. The advantage of this definition is that it implicates the locat
26、ion in which alliances happened, and on the other hand indicates the extent of initiation of Chinese firms to participate overseas alliances. Moreover, it implicitly underwrites that the firms that have this chance to conduct outward alliances must be the ones that have sufficient technology capabil
27、ity or international experience. According to our definition, the trend of Chinese outward alliance since 1985 (Figure 1) is overviewed. The trend is unstable, but since 2003 it follows the up way. This is caused by the increased competition in Chinas home market as well as strong government encoura
28、gement to Chinese firms going abroad, and Chinese firms desire to learn from abroad. Some drastic changes in the trend are associated with changed in Chinas macroeconomic environment. For example, the sharp increase from 1992 with its peak in 1994 was caused by the strong government support. At that
29、 time, the companies that having outward alliances were mainly the ones that had government as a major stakeholder. The wholly or partially state-owned companies became the first group of firms going abroad. 4.2. Sino-European strategic alliances The Figure 1 provided a global view on the outward Ch
30、inese alliances. A sizeable part of these alliances are taking place in Europe. We use the database Thompson SDC database to study the pattern of formation of strategic alliances between Chinese companies and European partners. We select four five-year time periods to show the magnitude of the Sino-
31、European alliances. These time periods are 1989-1993, 1994-1998, 1999-2003 and 2004-2008. The results are presented in Table 3. The first column of each period represents the number of strategic alliances, established in a specific country, in which a Chinese firm is part of. The second column is th
32、e number of strategic alliances, established in a specific country, in which a Chinese firm is a part and another partner is local firm. The difference between the columns is that the last column includes alliances only between Chinese and local partners (i.e. a firm registered in the respective cou
33、ntry). While the number in the second column provides a total number, including alliances concluded between a Chinese firm and any other firm, might well be, it is itself a foreigner on the target market. As the data shows, the majority of Chinese firms prefer to establish alliances for specific mar
34、kets with domestic firms. Note: EU 15 is defined as a total number for Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece,Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and UK. EU12 is defined as a total number for Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, La
35、tvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Romania,Slovakia and Slovenia. EU27 is the sum of EU15 and EU12. EFTA (European Free Trade Area) is defined as a total number for Iceland, Norway and Switzerland. This is the present regional grouping; for consistency of analysis we use the same groups throughout the
36、four time periods since 1989 till 2008. “Developed economies” is the aggregated number for EU27, EFTA, US, Japan, Canada and Australia. The outward Chinese alliances in Europe reflect the general trend: slight increase in the first period, growth in the second period (the mid- / late 1990s), and muc
37、h smaller number in the third and fourth period (up until the year of 2008). Chinese firms form alliances with partners in different locations, dominated by the South- East Asian region due to geographical and cultural proximity. Overall, over the period of 1989-2008,developing economies attracted 5
38、9% of Chinese outward alliances, while the developed economies 41%. 4.3. Selected Chinese investment projects and acquisitions in Europe Chinese investment in Europe is on the rise, and not only in the advanced European economies, but in the East too. For example, according to CzechInvest Czech inve
39、stment promotion agency, it negotiated 213 greenfield investment projects in 2008, out of which 3 belong to Chinese investors, with a total investment of 5.14 million USD, and creation of 239 jobs (incl. 37 for university graduates)2. While Chinese companies invest in greenfield, they more actively
40、engage in acquisition of European firms. Figure 4 present an overview of the amount of acquisitions, where Chinese companies were the acquiring side. We look at the number of deals since the value of the deal is not available for all cases. Analysis of the Figure 4 shows that the acquisition activit
41、y of Chinese firms intensified roughly after the year 2003. This is due to the impact of Chinas access to WTO in 2001 (time lag of two years) and the corresponding Chinese government policy to encourage domestic firms going abroad. From the data it can be seen that the majority of Chinese investment
42、s was located in Western Europe (and particularly in UK,Germany, France and Italy). This is not only because these countries are technological leading ones in the Europe but also due to the nature of M&A, i.e. direct acquisition of foreign assets. It is, on one hand,consistent with the result that w
43、e found from alliances distribution, and on the other hand additionally confirms that in terms of M&A, Western Europe is more attractive for Chinese firms than Eastern Europe. 5. Chery Catching-up model Cherys development was accompanied by frustration, setbacks and failures. In the initial stage of
44、 company development, Chery had virtually no competitive advantages (no government support, sufficient funding source, technology, or skilled and educated workforce). Chery was established by a small panel of young people and was a latecomer automotive manufacturer in a small town that had never bee
45、n paid as much attention by government as other industrialoriented cities such as Beijing, Changchun, Shanghai and Wuhan. Cherys success was attributed to three major transitions, which were accompanied by persistent international cooperation. To sum up, Cherys internationalisation comes from many s
46、ignificant factors as indicated in Figure 3. However, the most important element is its persistence in international strategic cooperation. Chery could therefore obtain the basic technological knowledge and access the foreign market. With collaborating with leading players in the automotive market,
47、Chery successfully increased their marketing skills and technological capability. With strategically accessing Eastern European market primarily through collaborating with local logistic and marketing partners, Chery successfully avoided high-risk and grasped the chances to nurture market and improv
48、e the product quality. Cherys catching-up path is significance in a way that it provides the evidence that Chinese start-ups may have a strong initiative and decisiveness to improve their technological capabilities. It represents a departure from a traditional growth pattern whereby capability impro
49、vement of small- and mid-sized companies must depend solely on FDI. Chery Caching up Model Our analysis above is consistent with the business principles stated by Cherys management6.Chery underlines export and serving the foreign markets as a clear strategic priority. Chery follows five fundamental principles in the international activity. Developing country first, then the developed country CKD (Complete Knock Down) exports prior to vehicle exports Reasonable arrangement and regional radiation Cooperation first, then joint venture Establish wholl
