If there is one thing which most western companies coming into China miss out on is the idea of “trial spots”, or as they are called in Chinese 试点。

So what is it? Basically, it’s a city, place, province or region which is used to try out something experimental which has not been tried before. When China first opened up, Shenzhen was a trial spot for opening up the economy to foreign manufacturing investment.

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While organizing some old files recently, I came across notes I took in August 2007 during a visit with 韩工, an old mentor of mine, in Shanghai. 韩工 taught me much of what I know about sourcing suppliers in China. The topic of our discussion was how manufacturing costs in the Shanghai area (aka the East China Region or Yangtze River Delta) have come down to the point that they are now close to or the same as costs in Guangdong, Fujian and southern…

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Chinese market is a uniquely challenging market to Western businesses. The difference is its uniqueness which majority of the organisations have been struggling with. Research has proven that cultural difference is the main barrier to success in China. Where companies are caught by surprise is the large gap between the two cultures. Standard training simply does not cut it.

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At 9AM I walked into the meeting room with yesterday’s dirty jeans and sneakers full of reddish mud, and still feeling very tired. Not really the image I wanted to convey. Old J however had already explained the situation and most of the people in the room by now knew me pretty well from past meetings. As expected, the discussion went back and forth between technical explanations and price. Like the experts they were, the import-export people…

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The stock market had a decent day today, with the SSE Composite rising 1.25% to close at 1895. Bad news about manufacturing was overshadowed by an announcement that the government will expand a plan to subsidize household appliance purchases by farmers. That helped appliance manufacturers, who led the market up. I suspect that we will see an…

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