What qualities should a chamber of commerce president possess?

In recent years, chambers of commerce across various regions have flourished, playing a positive role in promoting local economic development. The role of chambers of commerce as social organizations has increasingly gained attention from party and government leaders at all levels. However, considering our national conditions, the development of chambers of commerce is still in the exploratory stage. Therefore, some chambers operate well, demonstrating their importance and sustainability in economic and political activities, while others are less satisfactory for various reasons. As the first president of the Raoping Youth Chamber of Commerce, I have gradually accumulated some experience over the years in this role. I have my own views on how to run a chamber well, maintain its healthy and stable development, ensure members manage the chamber, unite and strengthen it, provide services, manage according to regulations, break through development bottlenecks, and truly serve members, enterprises, and the government.

Being the Chamber President Must Meet People's Expectations

The president should be honest in business, have achievements in commercial operations, and enjoy a good reputation among fellow townsmen and peers; the president must be well-liked, possess a noble sense of responsibility, and have the spirit to sacrifice personal interests; should have some political knowledge and the ability to grasp policies. A chamber needs a good leader to unite and lead everyone to develop together. Member management of the chamber is the primary condition for stable development. When electing the president, member elections should be combined with recommendations from higher authorities.

Being the Chamber President Requires a Spirit of Dedication

Since you have been elected president by everyone, you must take on the responsibilities of the role. The president should primarily consider what member enterprises need, what the chamber should do for them, and how to do it. The president should also devote some energy to chamber work and treat it as their own enterprise. When the chamber needs funds or talent input, the president should be the first to take the lead. The president is the pillar, the core, and the leader of the chamber. Members always hope the president will help them grow and strengthen their enterprises. Enterprises join the chamber mainly because they recognize the president's personal charm and the chamber platform. Some member enterprises also hope to gain some benefits from the chamber. If member enterprises only pay fees without actual gains, their enthusiasm will cool down, and once cooled, it is hard to rekindle, making chamber development more difficult. A president who only seeks personal benefits and is unwilling to invest energy, intelligence, manpower, and financial resources for the chamber's development, and does not consider the majority of members, cannot hold the position long-term. In a chamber with many members, the president must often endure losses and dare to take losses to have influence and accomplish things.

The Chamber Must Establish a Scientific Mechanism

The chamber needs an efficient working team, which is the secretariat. A capable, policy-savvy, communicative, self-sacrificing, and energetic secretary-general should be selected to handle major affairs. The secretariat should improve its structure, establish and perfect various rules and regulations to standardize, institutionalize, and make work efficient and regulated. The secretariat is the core operating body of the chamber and acts as the advisory department. Staff must be selfless, dedicated, wholehearted, and responsible.

A chamber includes many enterprises of various sizes and levels, with different strengths and members having different educational backgrounds and understandings. It is neither a typical family nor a single enterprise, so a harmonious mechanism is necessary to ensure the chamber's stability and sustainable development. Major issues should be decided democratically, fully utilizing the president's office meetings and the board of directors. The president should respect everyone, gather strengths, and discuss matters promptly. The chamber should strengthen unity and cooperation, enhance communication, seek common ground while reserving differences, consider the overall situation, and effectively enhance cohesion and centripetal force. Chamber leaders should strengthen their own learning, focus on self-cultivation, and continuously improve the scientific nature of major decision-making. The chamber should fully leverage the secretariat under the board's leadership.

The Chamber Must Have a Service Awareness

Serving members well is a basic requirement for the chamber organization. The chamber must rely on service to establish itself, and services must have substance. The chamber should develop a membership plan, recruit more strong, dedicated, enthusiastic private entrepreneurs who are willing to serve fellow townsmen, supplementing new forces. When membership grows, sub-chambers or branches can be established by industry or region to better reflect member management. The chamber should continuously organize member training, learning, exchanges, forums, and expert lectures to improve members' overall quality, highlight the service purpose, work earnestly, and improve service ability and level in practice. Service-based establishment means focusing on serving members, actively striving for policy support, protecting legal rights, facilitating information exchange, and seeking cooperation opportunities.

The chamber should summarize its service to members as the "Three Finds": members with money but no projects find the chamber; members with projects but no money find the chamber; members with products but no sales channels find the chamber. Besides the "Three Finds," any matters related to chamber members, from large investment projects to members' children's schooling, the chamber should extend a warm hand and truly implement all service work so members feel the importance of joining and the warmth of a family.

"Sustaining the Chamber through Business" Is the Only Way

To achieve "sustaining the chamber through business," chamber leaders should have strong resource integration capabilities. Member enterprises must first make good use of existing resources. The chamber absorbs various resources and talents during member enterprise development, expands networks, shares information, and lays the foundation for enterprise profitability. Resource integration often brings unexpected business opportunities and profits to member enterprises. For chamber project development, the philosophy should be to hold on tightly to big projects, not retreat or yield on small projects, and seize clever projects promptly. Business opportunities are unlimited. Capital operation is the highest realm for businessmen and the path modern enterprises and entrepreneurs must take. One must learn to "borrow a boat to go to sea," be good at cooperation, join hands with experts, and unite to succeed.

The Chamber Seeks Development and Functions

Brother chambers should use their own chambers as carriers, establish industry chambers in mature industries, and invite already established industry chambers to come together. In reality, we often see some industry products being sold at lower and lower prices and services getting worse. This cycle not only shrinks the entire industry's profit space but also makes it a dead end for any single enterprise trying to pursue quality. Such vicious competition in the industry directly affects the vital interests of every enterprise within it, and the government cannot intervene in commercial behavior. The final result is often the collapse of an industry in a region.

In contrast, industry chambers of commerce, being voluntary, non-governmental, self-regulatory, and non-profit social organizations formed by enterprises, share the common starting point that "only when the entire industry prospers can individual entities benefit." Members know each other well and have vested interests; combined with their familiarity with the market and business, they can self-regulate member enterprises from the perspective of the entire industry's benefits, effectively filling the gap left by the absence of government administrative power. Therefore, matters that the government should not, cannot, or does not manage well are precisely where industry chambers of commerce can make significant contributions. Hence, starting from common interests, being good organizers and effective arbitrators is the core focus of chamber work. In summary, there are several aspects:

1. Organize members to unite in defending their rights. Chambers can convey members' wishes to government departments and also communicate government policies to members, which individual enterprises find difficult to do. Especially since China's market economy is not yet fully developed and the legal system is not perfect, the market position of enterprises is fragile, and administrative and other infringements occur frequently. Individual enterprises, especially small and medium-sized ones, often cannot protect themselves. Therefore, when problems arise, coordinating and communicating with government departments through the chamber can easily gain government support and prompt timely policy adjustments. In short, organizing members to unite and jointly safeguard their rights not only helps enterprises solve problems but also promotes government departments to administer according to law, benefiting the establishment of market economic order.

2. Organize members to unite for development. On one hand, chambers mainly provide a platform for mutual exchange and learning opportunities, such as organizing group visits abroad and brand promotion. On the other hand, they need to expand markets. Pursuing profit is the fundamental goal of enterprises, and only by occupying the market can enterprises make profits. Therefore, enterprises need to leverage the collective strength of the chamber to develop markets, such as organizing and participating in various domestic and international trade fairs and exhibitions. Research on business strategies, optimization, and upgrading of enterprise management, and other issues related to enterprise development are areas where chambers should play a role.

3. Organize members to unite for self-discipline. Competition drives progress, but competition requires regulation. To ensure the purity of the industry, joint industry self-discipline becomes necessary. For example, conducting quality certification, actively guiding and organizing member enterprises to obtain certifications such as ISO9000 and QS industry alliance standards, improving industry quality through certification, and conducting peer price negotiations. To address the issue of peers undercutting prices leading to reduced benefits and quality decline, minimum protection prices should be formulated under the guidance of pricing authorities and self-restraint enforced through industry regulations and agreements. This aims to unify enterprises' actions in production, sales, pricing, and after-sales service, with the goal of jointly resisting unfair competition behaviors such as dumping, monopoly, arrears, counterfeit products, and poaching.

4. Coordinate various relationships. Although industry chambers are voluntarily organized by like-minded enterprises within the industry, competition and trade disputes are inevitable. Therefore, when disputes arise among enterprises, the chamber should take on the role of mediator, embodying the principle of "insiders managing internal affairs." The chamber acts as an arbitrator, and it is the president's inescapable responsibility to intervene and mediate.

The government should guide chambers of commerce to seek development.

Chambers of commerce are assistants to the government in developing the local economy. The varying degrees of government attention to chamber development restrict the planning of chamber growth. How to properly handle the relationship between chambers and the government is a crucial link in chamber development.

The most concentrated issues between the two are: first, the question of "should or should not manage" by government agencies and higher authorities regarding chambers—what should be managed and what should be left alone; second, the government should appropriately delegate power, granting chambers certain functions that they can shoulder and effectively perform, which government departments cannot manage well, helping private enterprises solve practical development problems; third, the government and relevant functional departments must truly recognize the role of chambers, value their work, and provide services and guidance; fourth, how to streamline the system and properly handle the relationship among chambers, government, and semi-official associations to prevent external interference in chamber work; fifth, the government needs to increase support, provide certain sponsorship funds for projects developed by chambers, and pool human and financial resources from government and chambers to promote industrial upgrading and development; sixth, the government should transform its functions, reduce direct administrative intervention in enterprises, and gradually transfer these functions to enterprises, the market, chambers, industry associations, and other social intermediary organizations, thus achieving the "transfer" of power.

Raoping Youth Chamber of Commerce was established not long ago. Due to my limited experience, some views are just summaries of experiences since its founding. In the future, we need to strengthen vertical communication with higher authorities and horizontal exchanges with peer chambers, learning from their strengths to make up for our weaknesses, fostering a strong and progressive spirit. The secretariat will do a good job in publicity and reporting, allowing more people to understand the Youth Chamber and Raoping merchants, thereby showcasing the chamber's image, enhancing its reputation, strengthening cohesion, promoting patriotism and dedication, unity and cooperation, and joint entrepreneurship, making Raoping Youth Chamber of Commerce a first-class social organization with high prestige, full functions, strong cohesion, and significant influence.