La conquête du marché chinois n'est pas facile. Heureusement il y a beaucoup d'organismes qui ont la connaissance et l'expérience pour vous guider en rendant vos premières étapes sur le sol étrange aussi réussies comme possible. Un de ces organismes est la chambre de commerce du Bénélux. China Success Stories trotted to the office of this Chamber of Commerce to speak with the General Manager, Helmy Koolen.

The Benelux Chamber of Commerce (or BenCham, as they call themselves) arose out of a merger between the Dutch Business Association and the Belgian Luxembourg Business Association in China. “In 2001 the Benelux Chamber of Commerce started a chapter in Shanghai and in November 2004 we opened a chapter in Beijing. At this moment we have over 550 members. We therefore are strong representatives of the Benelux community in Beijing and Shanghai. The BenCham offers three sorts of activities: Read the rest of “China jump-start” or post a comment

One of the trends inherent to the economic growth in China, is the fact that more and more people are taking Chinese language classes. The best way to do that? Go to China and talk to Sally Zhang. She works as Program Director at the Chinese Language Education organization in Beijing. Conveniently located in the middle of Beijing’s business center.

Beijing is home to most of her students. “At this moment, we are teaching Chinese to 82 students. Mostly Westerners, but also people coming from Japan and Korea. The continuously increasing amount of students can to a degree be explained, by the steadily increasing number of foreign companies in China. A few years ago, there was only the Chinese bank, nowadays I have five students who work for foreign banks operating in China. These financial professionals need to be able to read newspapers and documents in English as well as in Chinese. Fortunately for them, they work at companies where English is, at this point in time, the most common language.”

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By Cooper Strange

Just remember, when this becomes the newest and best addition to the Olympics, you heard it here first: it looks like the Beijing 2008 Olympics are going to introduce tickling as an Olympic sport. I think we can expect the average age of Olympians to drop a little, for as we all know, the younger folk are the champions of tickling. Read the rest of “Can They Not Just Ask?” or post a comment

By William Dodson

One of the senior partners of my consultancy Silk Road Advisors is a Chinese Lawyer. Ms. Zhang is certified to practice law in China, not in the States. She typically takes on corporate cases that Western international law firms gain on behalf of their Western clients, but for whom the practice can only do so much in moving agreements through government channels. Also, many of the Western law firms prefer to stay within the city limits of the First-Tier cities, Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai. She prefers to stay outside the city limits of the First-Tier cities: the noise, pollution and overall pushi-ness of Big City China doesn’t impress her, though she is a native of Beijing.
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