China Day 4 - U. S Chamber of Commerce, and Carrefour

Today we visited the U. S. Amcham - AMerican Chamber of Commerce here in Beijing. We learned quite a bit about the business climate for American companies doing business here in China. Ancham helps companies through networking, providing information and access, as well as provides advocacy to U. S. companies. There are many challenges facing companies attmepting to do business in China, the largest being the protection of intellectual property. Other issues are inconsistent interpretations of governmantal regulations and human resource management including retaining employees and finding skilled managers. Competition from Chinese comopanies is growing at a fast pace making it more and more difficult for entrants from other countries to succeed. Interestingly, many foreign companies are hiring more women than men becuase of a work ethic gap between the two genders. The Chinese culturally and hitorically work in silos, and do not work in teams, like those in the U. S. There have been many changes in the past 30 years here, and the landscape will drastically change over the next 30 as well. One large dilemma are the 700 million or so people that live on very modest salary living in the rural villages outside of the large cities, and in the countryside. There is an extremely widening gap between rich and poor here in China, even though so many people have been pulled out of poverty.

Our Carrefour visit with "Pierre", the store manager of one of about 16 stores in Beijing was also enlightining. Pierre is a "resident Ex-patriot" from France, and has worked in China for 13 years. He is possibly one of the smartest "store managers" I have ever met. He knows about his business, and the businesses of his 50 or so competitors, each of which have multiple locations throughout Beijing, and China, including Wal Mart which has about 7 stores around Beijing. Pierre told us all about the diffuculties in hiring and retaining help, the theft problem, and the lack of supply chain that Carrefour has, which he claims actually makes them more nible than someone like a Wal Mart (we'll see about that..)..The store has about 8 million transactions per year, and during Chinese new year, January and February make up 25% of the store's yearly sales.

Got to run - off to the next visit - more later..