From Hormuz to the China-Europe Railway Express, it is recommended to create a diversified, digital, and autonomous new global logistics corridor.

(The author of this article is Zhu Bo, an associate professor at the School of Economics, Shanghai University)

01 Introduction

A supply chain is an end-to-end network that encompasses everything from procurement and production to logistics and distribution. Its security depends not only on direct suppliers, but also closely on the division of labor and collaboration structure across the entire industrial chain, as well as each link’s capability to create value.

For both the country and enterprises, supply chain security is crucial. This requires us to establish an effective contingency plan system, including alternative options for preparing critical materials, and to plan diversified logistics routes capable of handling extreme scenarios such as war and pandemics, thereby avoiding overreliance on a single source or corridor. At the operational level, the country should leverage digital and intelligent management systems to conduct macro simulations and risk early-warning in order to enhance overall supply chain resilience. Enterprises, in turn, should use similar systems to monitor costs and inventory in real time and predict potential delays, enabling risk pre-warning and decision-making ahead of time. Currently, discussions about the impact of the conflict in the Middle East still largely remain at the level of passive response.

This article argues that we must move beyond such thinking focused on passive response and shift to proactively building new supply chain development logic that can adapt to the challenges of the new era.

02 Basic Judgments: Paradigm Shift and Upgrading National Strategy

The traditional global division of labor system prioritizes efficiency and cost, pursuing just-in-time production, zero inventory, and the globally optimal allocation. A key assumption underlying this paradigm is that the world has an open, predictable, and stable environment, allowing economic growth to accelerate by maximizing efficiency.

In recent years, pandemics, geopolitical tensions, trade barriers, and natural disasters have shaken this foundation. Especially since the conflict in the Middle East, the linear chain that prioritizes efficiency has become highly fragile due to insufficient buffer capacity. Disruption of key nodes may bring the entire system to a standstill, revealing the vulnerability of lean management models when facing systemic risks such as war. In a global environment with high uncertainty, global logistics, energy, and finance have led to increases in international freight rates and insurance premiums. The core concern of supply chain management has shifted from pursuing maximum efficiency to prioritizing security and resilience.

Prioritizing supply chain security and resilience is not a simple strategy adjustment, but a reshaping of globalization itself. It means moving from the old linear, efficiency-first paradigm to a new networked paradigm that is more resilient and adaptive, seeking a dynamic balance between efficiency and security, and signaling a profound shift in global industrial logic.

Supply chain security has risen to a national strategic issue. Supply chain security is tied to national sovereignty. This means that ensuring supply chain resilience cannot rely solely on enterprises’ own efforts; it must rely on the state for strategic coordination. At the national level, critical supply chains’ independent controllability should be treated as a core element of national security. Through policy guidance, industrial support, international cooperation, and other measures, the country must ensure necessary control over key transportation nodes, data flows, and settlement systems. This suggests that the global industrial order is entering a new stage that places greater emphasis on security and resilience, while also accumulating experience and building institutional templates to address broader future supply chain challenges.

Specifically for enterprises, safety factors need to be elevated to a position equal to or even higher than cost control. This includes: building diversified supplier networks and strengthening regionalized production capacity to disperse risk; proactively setting safety stock and contingency plans in critical links to buffer supply pressure; using digital technologies to achieve full-chain visibility and coordinated response; and conducting a structural reassessment of traditional models that pursue maximum efficiency, establishing more autonomous supply chain systems in important sectors.

03 Core Goals, Implementation Path, and Key Actions

To effectively respond to systemic shocks and build a new supply chain system that prioritizes security and resilience, we need to clarify a complete implementation framework driven by goals, with paths as steps and actions as the抓手 (hands-on lever). We must systematically build a future-oriented supply chain system that is secure and highly resilient.

(1) Core Goals

The core goal of the supply chain system is to build a resilience system capable of proactively preventing and responding to various forms of node breakage. In terms of corridor dependency, shift from pursuing diversified stability to de-corridorization, fundamentally reducing reliance on any single corridor or country. In terms of path management, shift from passively reducing dependency to establishing intelligent proactive switching algorithms, enabling dynamic dispatching and route avoidance based on real-time risk. In terms of asset security, shift from one-way maintenance to building an overseas interest community through equity embedding and similar methods, deeply binding asset security with the long-term development of the host country, thereby obtaining more sustainable assurance.

(2) Implementation Path

Achieving supply chain security and resilience goals requires following a phased and incremental action path. The evolution runs from crisis response to structural optimization, and then to system shaping.

In the short term, focus on emergency response and capacity pre-positioning. The core task at this stage is to quickly activate backup logistics routes to bypass bottlenecks, systematically expand the scale of strategic reserves of key raw materials and components, and flexibly use financial tools such as futures and insurance to hedge price and supply risks. The key to making all of this happen lies in changing mindsets: setting a certain level of inventory for the sake of security should be redefined from the past as a burden of inventory costs to an indispensable strategic reserve asset. Specific measures include: establishing intelligent reserve warehouses based on dynamic risk monitoring, and fully promoting the development of shipping insurance with independent pricing power and rule-setting influence, so as to escape the situation where, in risk protection, one is constrained by others.

In the medium term, focus on strategic adjustments and restructuring of the supply chain network. After having preliminary buffering capability, the focus of work should shift to optimizing the layout and governance structure of the supply chain, and building a more resilient regional production and distribution network. This means that, at the national level, through diplomacy and economic cooperation, partnerships should be deepened with countries in the surrounding region and key resource areas; strategic investments should be made in high-level transshipment hubs and capacity cooperation industrial parks. At the same time, some production capacity that is highly sensitive to logistics security should be moderately relocated to regions that are relatively more stable politically and economically. These regions are not merely logistics transshipment stations; with institutional design upgrades, they can become hubs with the ability to formulate regional rules, thereby enhancing their actual influence over key corridors.

In the long term, focus on changes in and leading participation in global supply chain governance systems. This is the stage moving from adaptive adjustments to proactive shaping. The goal is to change from being a recipient of rules to being a co-developer of rules. Its core is to jointly participate in building a new global supply chain governance system that is more diverse, fair, and secure. This includes promoting cross-border trade settlement in renminbi to reduce reliance on a single-currency payment system; jointly managing and maintaining the safety of key shipping lanes and infrastructure with relevant stakeholders; and investing in foundational implementations such as digital infrastructure and decentralized distributed energy system layouts. Going further, explore the creation of resilient parallel systems, and deepen the full-chain application of digital renminbi in international supply chain finance and settlement; upgrade China-Europe freight trains from traditional logistics corridors into smart corridors that integrate logistics, information flows, and capital flows; and, through innovative co-governance models by commercial entities, actively explore and develop strategic trade corridors such as the Arctic shipping route, providing new options for supply chain security.

(3) Key Actions

To build a future-oriented, highly resilient supply chain system, the key lies in implementing concrete actions and constructing a closed-loop system in which three parties—government, enterprises, and financial institutions—coordinate and interlock, ultimately achieving system integration.

At the government level, strengthen multilateral coordination and build stable cooperation relationships with key resource countries, transit countries, and others. Take the lead in, or participate in, regional supply chain agreements to jointly build alternative logistics corridors and reduce reliance on any single crisis region. Build national-level monitoring and dispatching platforms to integrate data from customs, shipping, and foreign trade and economics, forming a public supply chain platform with end-to-end panoramic insight capabilities. Through data simulation and intelligent analysis, provide real-time monitoring and risk early warning for key industrial chains, and coordinate the deployment of capacity such as shipping resources and ports during crises. Improve the policy and regulatory framework, and explore mandatory requirements for key enterprises to promote stronger supply chain risk management. Improve policy tools such as tax incentives and special funds to incentivize enterprises to pursue diversified supply chain layouts and strategic material reserves.

At the enterprise level, proactively adjust operating strategies and build an elastic supply chain network that can respond quickly. Adopt procurement strategies that combine near-shore layout with diversified sourcing: shift key materials to suppliers across multiple regions to shorten the chain; increase safety stock for key components to balance inventory costs and security needs. Use technologies such as blockchain to ensure full traceability across the supply chain, and transfer some uncertainties to the market by purchasing political risk insurance, among other methods.

At the financial level, innovate financial instruments and services, develop insurance products targeting supply chain interruption risk, and provide enterprises with direct risk compensation while using market-based tools to diversify risk. Establish a rapid-response mechanism to provide emergency liquidity support to affected enterprises. Explore issuing special bonds for supply chain resilience or setting up theme investment funds to guide social capital toward long-term resilience infrastructure such as diversified logistics corridors, near-shore production facilities, and strategic reserves—combining short-term risk management with long-term capability building.

China’s supply chain should prioritize security and resilience, adopting strategies such as diversified corridors, regional clusters, and digital governance to convert external pressures into driving forces for supply chain upgrading. More importantly, actively participate in shaping the global supply chain system, and build foundational infrastructure such as strategic backup systems and intelligent algorithms. Through institutional innovation and coordination among government, enterprises, and financial institutions, leverage tools such as blockchain and special-purpose bonds to break through traditional constraints of geopolitical limitations, actively participate in and shape the rules and ecosystem of future global supply chains.

First Financial, A-Caihao’s exclusive first release; this article only represents the author’s views.

(This article comes from First Financial)