Business in Beijing

Take Australia’s population of about 22 million people and try to fit it into roughly one city. That’s Beijing. This city is home to one of China’s largest populations and despite many environmental odds, it continues to be a prospering city.

The typical Chinese business environment is home to 2 types of companies: state-owned and private enterprises. While familiar to the North American market, it’s important to note that it is difficult to compete with state-owned enterprises which often have a monopoly within their respective sectors operating environments ie) banking, agriculture, and energy companies. That’s not to say that small to medium enterprises are not commonly found, they are in fact everywhere but often their Achilles heel is their own success which hinders further progress when they begin to get noticed by other competitors.

While in Beijing, I had the opportunity to meet with Lyndon Fung, partner at KPMG Beijing (pictured left) , and my conversation with him was quite insightful and candid about the Chinese culture. Majority of the Chinese population never stop working which makes for an incredibly competitive environment. The sheer size of the population (approx. 1.4 billion people) always ensures that any opening anywhere is quickly filled in an organization. In professional services industry, such as mine, one always makes themselves available to their clients who can contact you throughout the day and the norm includes a nearly instantaneous response time in order to maintain good client relationships.

While the Chinese work ethic is remarkable, it has been the main driver placing China onto a successful global platform to compete from. During my stay in Beijing, I had the opportunity to meet with management within Public Relations at Huawei Technologies Co, Ltd. 

Huawei is a leading Fortune 500, ICT solutions provider who service 45 of the world’s leading top 50 carriers including Canadian companies Bell, Telus and Wind Mobile. Through their customer base, they indirectly serve 1/3 of the world’s population. That’s a lot of people.

Until my initial meeting, I will admit that I didn’t fully understand the global impact Huawei has. Through operating in more than 170 countries (I can’t even name that many!), and employing more than 150,000 employees, Huawei’s impact goes beyond that of a typical Chinese firm. While there is a focus on being at the cutting edge of technology, and Huawei has certainly not lapsed in that regards (they are the #1 Chinese company with the largest number of patents in China), they have also paid considerable attention to long –term investment in innovation by way of making digital access for the masses both accessible and affordable. Of the many examples shared, one that stood for me is that in recent years Huawei has successfully focused on manufacturing a smartphone that costs a mere $50 to make it more accessible and affordable for the global middle class mass, when compared to a competitor's average cost of $300 per smartphone. Going beyond products and service offerings, Huawei has also invested substantial efforts in partnering with over 70 universities worldwide to facilitate ICT knowledge transfers and providing thousands of interested students with ICT training worldwide. An impressive feat all around don’t you think?

While in China, JTC’s goal is to meet with representatives from many different sector which included financial, agriculture, education and information technology. While I have been successful in this goal which included meeting with senior representatives of the China China Construction Bank, I noticed that scheduling more than two to three meetings a day has been a challenge due to numerous factors. Challenges primarily included in having slower paced meetings which focused more on relationship building and also traffic which was unlike anything I have seen! Hopefully this doesn’t remain a concern as we move on further into mainland China!