My First Blog in China

Good day everybody and happy new year to all the chinese in china and around the world. Its my first experience and also my first time at blogging. I hope to be able to contribute what i know and what i had learned over the years with regards to the mobile business in china.

China is BIG. China is growing phenomenally. China has tremendous opportunities and such phrases go on and on. These are the common phrases that had been said and mentioned several times by writers and reporters. Its true to a great extent that such are the phenomena of China and many had rushed into China over the years with or without preparation. Some had made it big and many had suffered financially.

China is unique to me in a sense that while its a big country that is united with one mandarin language, its divest in many ways as different chinese from different provinces speak different dialects and having different cultures and customs. At the end of the day, its a multi cultural and multi dialects nation. Thus doing business in china require more than just the understanding of the mandarin language.

In China everybody associate doing business with building "guanxi" or in english building relationship. No guanxi no business. So thats the basic rule of business in china. The next problem is with divest cultures and dialects, how do you then build such guanxi? I always thought that being able to speak mandarin was one way to build guanxi. I was wrong. Even being a foreign chinese carries no special privilege. What more when you are a non chinese. In fact even local chinese who hailed from other provinces are not even treated as equal. The Shanghainese has little respect for anybody thats not from shanghai. They treat them like peasants from other provinces. Such are the challenges that many of us had to face and confront in order to build our guanxi in major cities like shanghai and beijing.

Having said the above, i still believe that there are a lot of opportunities in China as the country is big enough and has sufficient economic dynamics and size for everybody. Its not easy and its very competitive. Only the fittest will survive. Its really up to you to ask your self whether you have the same flexibility, the competitiveness and the agility to survive in this environment. In my next blog, i will be blogging on the phenomena rise of the mobile and internet industry in china and where its heading and what opportunities lie ahead......

alvin foo