Global supply chain continues to restructure in recovery
Affected by factors such as trade protectionism and intensified geopolitical games, the global industrial and supply chain landscape continues to be restructured, shifting from a focus on cost, efficiency, and technology to a focus on security, stability, and politics. It presents evolving characteristics such as diversification and regionalization, and there is a trend towards further fragmentation.
In 2023, global supply chain activities will gradually get rid of the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic. However, constrained by factors such as trade protectionism and geopolitical conflicts, the global supply chain is undergoing deep restructuring, with increasingly prominent characteristics of regionalization, diversification, and fragmentation, and will face many new challenges in the future.
Significant recovery
Towards the end of the year, a new hotspot has emerged in the relatively stable shipping market since the beginning of this year. The escalation of the Israeli Palestinian conflict has caused concerns about transportation safety in the Red Sea and nearby waters. In order to avoid danger, more and more shipping companies have announced the suspension of container ships sailing in the Red Sea and nearby waters, or to avoid the Red Sea and detour around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa.
Despite this interlude, the overall operation of the global logistics supply system is still significantly improving in 2023. The problems of insufficient shipping capacity and high shipping prices that severely constrained the global supply chain during the epidemic no longer exist, and the smoothness of the supply chain has greatly improved. Most indicators from manufacturing managers, shipping, and corporate inventory have also returned to pre pandemic levels. Reports issued by international organizations such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO) point out that in 2023, the shortage and delivery delay of non essential consumer goods will be greatly improved, indicating that the global supply chain will gradually recover from the interference of the COVID-19. The New York Federal Reserve Bank's Global Supply Chain Stress Index, aimed at reflecting the level of overall supply chain tightness, fell to its lowest record since 1997 in October this year, reflecting a significant reduction in supply chain pressure.
However, the recovery of logistics supply does not necessarily mean that the level of supply chain globalization in the broad sense will also recover synchronously. Affected by factors such as trade protectionism and intensified geopolitical games, the global industrial and supply chain landscape continues to be restructured, shifting from a focus on cost, efficiency, and technology to a focus on security, stability, and politics. It presents evolving characteristics such as diversification and regionalization, and there is a trend towards further fragmentation.
The current global supply chain development presents four major trends: regionalization, diversification, digitization, and greenization. In terms of supply chain digitization, with the rapid development and widespread application of digital technology, the global supply chain digitization trend is significant. Among them, the communication industry has the highest degree of digitalization in the supply chain, followed by the information technology and information services industry. The digitalization of the financial industry's supply chain varies greatly among countries; In terms of supply chain greening, to address global challenges such as climate change, global supply chain greening has become a trend, but the progress of supply chain greening varies among major economies; In terms of supply chain regionalization, Europe, East Asia, and North America have the most significant regional characteristics of supply chain regionalization, with Germany, China, and the United States serving as regional supply chain centers; In terms of supply chain diversification, multinational corporations are accelerating the pace of supply chain diversification.