roundtable
The Business Magazine hosted this roundtable event at national audit, tax, advisory and risk firm Crowe’s Reading office. Crowe, Charles Kendall Freight and HiFX sponsored the roundtable. Tim Wickham reports on …
Working with China and the Far East Participants
John Freeme : Chief dealer - corporate foreign exchange, HIFX
Christopher Lethbridge : China market business adviser, China British Business Council
Yingni Lu : Director, 88 Initiative Robert Marchant : Partner, Crowe
John McLean OBE : Chairman, China Resolutions
Darren Seward : Head of mobile, Westcoast
The Roundtable team
Robin Stevens : Corporate finance partner, Crowe
Stuart Stoter : Export finance adviser, UK Export Finance
Roundtable chairman David Murray, publisher of The Business Magazine, set the scene with some statistics: China is the UK’s fifth largest trading partner and its second largest outside the EU. Murray opened the discussion by asking participants to share their advice for doing business in this huge and diverse market.
China’s multiple markets Stuart Stoter
The first question the panelists tackled was how best to approach the Chinese market. John McLean at China Resolutions has been trading with China for 20 years and specialises in corporate governance and dispute resolution. He said China is too large to be treated like a single market: “You really need to look at China as having 34 provincial-level administrations that operate like separate countries. So it’s comparable with Europe but with a population of 1.4 billion rather than 600 million. No-one can be an expert in all provinces. My advice would be to focus on a province and concentrate on it.”
Kegang Wu
He added: “Economically, China has done what it said it would do over the past 10 years and in terms of what they want to do moving forward, you can believe they will achieve this too. The issue of US tariffs has upset the apple cart somewhat,
80
businessmag.co.uk
Peter Sunderland : Managing director, Charles Kendall
Max Vialou-Clark : Commercial director, Prodrive
Dr Kegang Wu : Managing director, BCC LinkToChina
Eric Yu : UK open market senior sales manager, Huawei UK
David Murray: Founder and publisher of The Business Magazine, chaired the discussion
but China publishes its economic plans well into the future, so the current tariffs are really just a blip for them. China plays a tactical game and while there is more openness, companies should approach business warily and go in slowly.”
BCC LinkToChina promotes stronger UK/China business connections. Dr Kegang Wu agreed with McLean’s analysis. “Chinese government policy on regulations framework nationally is identical, but implementation details may differ as different provinces put different character twists on them. I focus on Guangdong province, which has a population of around 110 million. China
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88
