Businesses overseas keen on curbing risks

Chinese companies are shifting from reactive crisis response to proactive risk management as their global expansion brings increasingly complex challenges to test their ability to protect employees and maintain business continuity, according to International SOS.

Demand for cross-border medical assistance, security risk management and crisis response services has steadily increased as Chinese companies invest in overseas projects and send more personnel abroad, the global health and security risk management company said.

Rather than relying primarily on post-incident assistance, more companies are investing in risk intelligence, travel risk management, emergency planning and employee security training before problems arise, International SOS said in a reply to questions from China Daily.

The shift coincides with the growing scale and diversity of Chinese enterprises operating on foreign shores. By the end of 2025, there were more than 50,000 Chinese business entities overseas operating across 190 countries and regions, with China's cumulative outbound investment ranking among the world's top three for nine consecutive years, said the Ministry of Commerce.

China's outbound direct investment reached $174.38 billion in 2025, up 7.1 percent year-on-year, while nonfinancial outbound investment rose 1.3 percent to $145.66 billion, the ministry said.

As their overseas footprint broadens, companies face compounding challenges rather than single, isolated threats. Geopolitical conflict, social unrest, cybercrime, changes in trade and regulatory policies, extreme weather, infectious diseases and inadequate local medical services can occur simultaneously and amplify one another, International SOS said.

Compared with two or three years ago, these risks are evolving faster and becoming more interconnected, leaving companies less time to verify information and make critical decisions, it added.

International SOS' recently released Risk Outlook 2026 Pulse Check found that only 10 percent of surveyed organizations believed they could respond "very quickly" to emerging risks. Another 68 percent said they could respond fairly quickly, while one-fifth described their response as slow.

Governance gaps remain a key constraint. Seventeen percent of respondents were unsure how to proceed when a new threat emerged, while 25 percent lacked clarity about the conditions that should trigger escalation. Only about 20 percent said they had a very clear understanding of how global and local response mechanisms should and could work together.

The survey, conducted with Echo Research in April, covered 250 senior decisionmakers responsible for employee health, well-being, security and risk management across 53 countries.

Artificial intelligence is adding a new dimension to corporate risk management. While the technology can help rapidly identify, consolidate and compare information, it also makes fabricated reports, images and videos easier to produce and distribute.

Nearly 60 percent of survey respondents see AI's greatest potential in risk management lies in validating or corroborating information from multiple sources. However, more than 40 percent said their organizations had either been affected by false, misleading or unverified information involving health or security risks, or lacked sufficient visibility to determine its impact, with 21 percent experiencing at least one such incident.

AI-generated videos impersonating medical professionals, false public health advice and unverified reports of security incidents could cause employee anxiety, prompt unnecessary changes to travel plans and disrupt crisis responses, International SOS said.

"The potential of AI is real, but organizations also need to avoid overestimating the maturity of current tools," said Cvete Koneska, global security director at International SOS.

AI could help organizations identify, synthesize and prioritize information more quickly, but information verification and expert judgment remained indispensable when decisions affected employee health and security, Koneska said.

"For now, the more prudent approach is to integrate AI into a human-led risk management model," she added.

International SOS said more Chinese enterprises were building overseas security and emergency-response systems, arranging on-site support, conducting drills and providing specialized training for employees.

Such preparation is becoming increasingly important as Chinese companies expand into a wider range of developed and developing markets, where risk levels can differ sharply among countries, cities and individual project sites.

Companies should therefore assess exposure according to project location, workforce distribution, industry characteristics and business models, rather than relying solely on country-level risk ratings, International SOS said, adding that for Chinese companies operating globally, the priority is moving beyond the collection of large volumes of information toward faster verification, clearer decisionmaking authority and coordinated action across medical, security, communications and business-continuity teams.