How to successfully set up a business in China?

Today that is not always possible but they have a good point about the importance of understanding the intended market.

To explain this I must start with this question instead; how is it to live and work in China? I will give an example of what a day here is like.

Yesterday I went to see Avatar in 3D in one of Shanghais popular tourist areas Xintiandi. I could not pay with my Chinese card, so needed to go on a hunt for an ATM to get cash for the 4 tickets á 130 RMB (about 140 sek). To then stand in another line and pay 100 RMB in deposit for the 3D glasses. To sip on while watching the movie you could choose Cola, beer or water, we choose beer.

The subtitles were only in Chinese, so everything said in the made up language of the Na´vi was lost. 10 minutes before the end, in the middle of the emotional and powerful closing scene, half of the audience stands up and leaves. Why? Probably not because they think its bad, maybe they feel they know what will happen, or maybe they just want to get ahead of the line of hundreds that want the 100 RMB deposit back. I’m not sure but I’m very sure that was not a reaction Hollywood’s James Cameron expected from an audience. I then take the taxi back to my apartment and the 20 minutes ride costs me 17 RMB (about 20 sek).

I walk the seven stairs up to my top floor apartment, it’s a Chinese old lane house, so the staircase is dirty, full of old junk, bicycles, stored potatoes on the window sills and my neighbours cricket is playing very loudly for everyone in the house. Its dark, and the light sensors are triggered by sound.

So at 1 am when I come home from my late movie, I need to stamp as hard as I can in the stairs to turn the lights on. Do I wake everyone in the building? Probably not. What is the logic behind making loud noises to turn on the lamps? I don’t know but I have noticed a general attitude about noise – the louder – the more – the better.

I have had an obstacle course every day on my 10-minute walk to the subway. They have torn down a whole block of old houses and my local Malatang (a spicy soup) restaurant is now gone. They dug up the alley of trees on each side of the road, in total more than hundreds of them, they dug up all the roads and hundreds of rural construction workers have swarmed the streets looking with goggle eyes at me and whispering Laowai (Foreigner).

Now a days its only the people from the rural areas that react on a Laowai, the Shanghainees are since long used to us. In two months, the workers have replanted the trees, build a whole new block, widened the streets to a six-file road and restored all the facades along my three blocks walk. My landlord does not recognise himself when he comes to collect the rent – two rents in cash is the deal.

Home in Sweden you can almost always pay with card, you are not allowed by regulations to drink beer in a cinema, the audience would not leave in the emotional end scene, a taxi ride costs half a salary, staircases to nice apartments are clean and in general don’t have singing crickets, you don’t stamp your feet in the middle of the night to turn the lights on and you would never have hundreds of rural workers working day and night to restore, tear down and build a shiny new block in the middle of the city in a few weeks.

How is it to live and work in China? There is no easy way I can describe it but I hope you get a glimpse. How to successfully set up a business in China then?

My point is that the first step is the need of accepting that our reasoning does not apply here and you never beforehand know what it will be. The longer you are here, the more you realize the vast diversity and complexity of this society.

If you are interested in China, come here and see it yourself! Never ever expect things to be as they are in Sweden and do the proper research and consult trustworthy people before and while you establish here. For a westerner costs, attitudes, and regulations are often without any logic at all and don’t forget - they work day and nigh and FAST!

Probably no time for a Swedish Consensus either if you want to make it here…