The opening ceremony of China Brand Forum held in People's Daily

on July 16, 2015 in Beijing. (Photo/People's Daily)

Yang Zhenwu, the President of People's Daily delivers a speech

in the China Brand Forum. (Photo/people.cn)

For Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group, to build a brand of global recognition has proved to be a pressing task.

"A key customer from Qatar has bought mechanized equipment worth over 300 million yuan recently. However, he just asked to cut the price without considering the quality. The customer said that compared with European and American brands, your products are not of inferior quality. But the global reputation of your brand needs to be improved." Wangmin, the President of Xuzhou Construction Machinery Group shared this story with other participants in the China Brand Forum, which was held in People's Daily on July 16, 2015 in Beijing.

Words from the customer may serve as a wakeup call for many Chinese companies. The importance of brand is self-evident in the increasingly competitive world.

"Competition between brands is a knockout. Only those competitive brands survive." the economist Liu Shijin said.

"The brand determines the success or failure of Chinese manufacturing. To build Chinese brands, we should regard innovation as the soul, quality as the orientation, integrity as the root." Gu Shengzu, Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC)'s Financial and Economic Affairs Committee said in the forum.

Liu Chuanzhi, President of Legend Holdings believes that consistency is of crucial importance in brand building. "From research & development, production, purchase, to sales and service, any link going out of order will deal a blow to the brand. Good corporate culture and incentive mechanisms are the key to realizing consistency."

Wang Jianlin, Chairman of Dalian Wanda Group urged creating influential and competitive Chinese cultural brands. "The brands that China needs are not only commodity brands, but also cultural brands. "

Brand building is not an easy task. It needs support from the government.

Liu Junchen, deputy director of the State Administration of Industry and Commerce revealed figures showing that 67,500 cases of counterfeiting and infringement were investigated in 2014, and the money involved reached 1 billion yuan. The cases investigated in the first five months of this year were nearly 20,000.

Initiated by the People's Daily, Alliance for Chinese Brand Leadership was established in the forum, which will advocate for building internationally competitive Chinese brands.

 This article was edited and translated from 《出发，为了品牌强国的梦想》, source: People's Daily, author: Zuo Ya, Cheng Hui, Li Jianguang.