Amid the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, some European companies are facing tremendous challenges in their operations in China - ranging from difficulty in returning production to a disruption in the global supply chain that weighs on their output.
Some European firms questioned certain coordination issues from different levels of Chinese local governments, which they said are "unnecessary" and repetitive, having led to a halt in the movement of goods across China while foreign companies are trying to resume operation in a safe manner.
Some European companies are hit the hardest as they are suffering from plummeting commodity prices and contracted sales due to COVID-19.
The far-reaching fallout of the virus is on the supply chain, which has forced many European companies to reconsider their reliance on China's supply chain in their long-term planning, industry insiders said.
China, dubbed as the world's factory, plays a pivotal and indispensable role in the global supply chain of almost everything from electronic products, manufacturing goods to daily necessities.
In the auto industry, while auto component companies managed to get their factories running, other critical suppliers from China are lagging, which may ripple upstream producers and cause a "bottleneck" in global production.
The boiling China-US trade war has caused many to think about shifting some production lines out of China, and the COVID-19 outbreak has reinforced such a problem, according to the spokesperson.
Despite the daunting challenges, European investors' interests and confidence in the Chinese market will not be changed or shaken because of the new epidemic, observers said.
Amid the outbreak of COVID-19 in China, some European companies are facing tremendous challenges in their operations in China - ranging from difficulty in returning production to a disruption in the global supply chain that weighs on their output.
In the auto industry, while auto component companies managed to get their factories running, other critical suppliers from China are lagging, which may ripple upstream producers and cause a "bottleneck" in global production.
Despite the daunting challenges, European investors' interests and confidence in the Chinese market will not be changed or shaken because of the new epidemic, observers said.
