‍In the current global trade climate, companies should be more careful about changes in regulatory environment, pay more attention to Chinese domestic consumption upgrade, and bring more innovative products into the market, according to Hao Zhou, partner at Bain & Company.

Chinese companies have been using outbound merger and acquisitions (M&As) to win at home or gain leadership in certain industries overseas.

"China's M&A market went through different stages. In the last two years, the main scene is that the Internet companies are going abroad and leveraging their existing capabilities and technical expertise...They are going to developing markets, like Latin America, and investing in Internet technology industry. For other areas, like consumer products and retails, the trading environment actually remains similar to couple of years ago," Zhou recalled.

But there are still a lot of uncertainties in the market place, according to Zhou. "Regulation changes almost overnight, every day. You see a lot of new news coming up from different countries and uncertainties for whether multinational companies, or domestic companies," Zhou said.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has downgraded global growth to 3.7 percent in 2019 in its latest forecast report, off 0.2 percentage points from April's forecast. The IMF also lowered expectations for US growth to 2.5 percent in 2019, and for China's growth forecast from 6.4 down to 6.2 percent. The ongoing trade tensions between the two largest economies in the world are cited as the key reason. 

Zhou said that a number of his clients have been facing more tightened regulation in advanced markets like Europe and the US, especially in data or national security related areas. Therefore, he advised companies to take a closer look at regulatory environments and understand that the latest environment is much more critical for them.

However, the partner is still positive on the potential of Chinese economy, stressing the importance of the country's consumption upgrade and innovation.

"China's economy will remain strong even though we are facing a new norm, which all growths are going to slow down, especially in the export sector...The good thing for the Chinese market is that domestic consumption remains very strong and there is a lot of innovation happening in the products as well as in the retail base," he told CGTN.

Zhou continued to advise that "Whether you are a stated-own enterprise or a private company, take a close look at what is happening and make sure that you are increasing capability of innovation. Companies should be more focus on Chinese consumers. Helping to bring more innovative products into the market place is still the key."

(CGTN's Xia Cheng also contributed to the story)