Dear Insight China 2013 readers,

We would like to present you our latest newsletter on the project of Insight China 2013. The newsletter contains on-site seminars (Beijing, Lanzhou, Suzhou and Shanghai) with the focus on "The Health of a Nation". Some culture insights and impressions are also included. We hope you enjoy reading this edition. 

In addition, please do not forget to take part in our price draw which can be found on page 24. The winner will be announced during the final event, which will take place in the Aula, Olten at 17:30 on April 25th.

Kind regards,

Insight China PR Team

Another Insight China journey is slowly coming to an end. For some of us it was the first trip to China, others already had the chance to visit this country and for a few it was even a “homecoming”. 17 days full of different impressions and experiences. 17 days filled with many great opportunities to see, discuss, reflect and learn. Many of us will leave China with a different understanding, and some even with more questions than answers. And I am convinced, that not only our understanding of China has been challenged and maybe changed. I am pretty sure, that at the same time our views of Switzerland, Germany and many other places will also be different.

Trying to sum up some of the learning I would like to highlight only a few aspects.

• China has lots of opportunities and potential, but at the same time it is hard to get established in this market. To be successful as a foreign company it needs among many other aspects a differentiated understanding of the Chinese realities, time and commitment. You have to be flexible, be willing and able to adapt to the ever-changing situations. Much what you have learned in other markets is not really helpful within China.

• China has many different faces and realities. Even though there is a central government, provinces and in some cases cities have a lot of impact on the way business is done within their territory. Companies doing business in more than one location in China, are therefore facing many different realities. And one could easily say, there is not one China but many!

• China is going west in a double sense. In the current five year plan the government is developing the western part of the country. We were able to visit the new development zone in Lanzhou. It was an impressing visit, and one can feel the will of the people responsible to make this development become true. But also in smaller cities in the western regions the development is accelerating. And at the same time many Chinese companies are moving into western countries and are trying to be active in those markets.

• Health care has become a major topic in China. The government has started to develop a national healthcare system. Today already 95% of its population is covered with a basic insurance system. But there are many challenging development steps ahead and problems to solve. No other country has even undertaken such a complex development in the field of healthcare. The future will show us if China will succeed in this major project. It was also interesting to see how China handles its traditional and modern medicine. We were able to visit a TCM hospital and a TCM university. The TCM is still important in the Chinese health systems, and you can also see a certain interaction of both medical systems.

• The urbanization in China is snowballing. China has today already 156 cities with more than 1 million inhabitants and the number will further increase in the future. The country is facing many problems related to this development. Air and water pollution are only two of the most obvious challenges. These problems have been addressed quite often in discussions, but there is not yet a change or even a solution to see at the horizon. According to a new study, done by the WHO, China has lost 25 million years of human life because of pollution, and especially in Beijing many foreigners are considering leaving the city. According to the New York Times of this week many companies have increasing problems to hire experienced foreign experts, because of the living conditions in some Chinese cities. On the other side, cities like e.g. Suzhou are different in living conditions and are also in western standards place with a high quality of life.

• China is investing in his transportation infrastructure. Many high-speed trains are already running, others are being built and further planning is on the way. Also in the inner cities metro systems are expanded. However, individual traffic is still increasing, even though the governments in many cities try to reduce the number of new cars on the road. Even tough there are many projects for public transportation, the transportation of merchandises is still mainly done by trucks on the roads.

• The competition for labor is going on. The qualification of the workforce is still leaking behind the need of many parts of the economy. Companies are challenged to develop their employees and to retain their qualified workers. At the same time wages are rising constantly and China is today in many regions no more the “cheap factory” place for the West.

China is different in many senses. The trip was a unique opportunity to grasp some of these differences. But a lot is still covered and it would need much more time to extent and deepen our understanding. Some of our former students have gone this way and are today working and living in China. It was also interesting to talk to some of them and we hope some of the members of the group will also have the chance to spend more time in China.

In a lecture about the Silk Road at the Lanzhou University a poem was presented. In this poem a traveler is telling, while leaving the Gansu province on his journey to the west, that there will be no friend anymore on the other side of the last city wall. We also left Switzerland two and a half weeks ago in the other direction, going east and even though we left friends and family behind, we were on our trip always among friends. On the whole trip people always welcomed us with open hearts and open minds. Therefore, if we wrote a poem today, we would tell to the people, that also beyond the last city wall in Switzerland there are friends….

Cultural visits in Suzhou as well as a visit at the InterChina Consulting

With the morning sun the delegation visited the Humble Administrator’s Garden in Suzhou, which is one of the top-rated cultural world heritage sites in China according to UNESCO.

Contrary to what we had expected because of its beauty and love for the details, the Garden did not belong to the royal family, but to an incredibly successful scholar in the 15^th century. Our guide Robert explained with patience all the brilliant details of the Garden and we learnt about different styles of Chinese architecture (the types of roofs) or that no window in the Garden has the same pattern. With a lot of imagination we could see how trees and plants were formed in the shape of Chinese characters, using the white walls as paper. After the interesting visit we moved further to the Tongli Water Town, which is between Suzhou and Shanghai.

The Water Town is also known as the Venice of China. Unfortunately, it is a National Holiday (Tomb sweeping-Day) at the moment and the site was overcrowded. But this didn’t affect the good mood of the Insight China delegation while strolling alongside the small channels before enjoying a tasty meal with typical Suzhou food (sweet). With the heat of the afternoon we hit the road towards Shanghai and checked-in at Marriott (not so bad!). At 6pm we had our final company visit at Inter China Consulting, where we learned about the Chinese market for medical devices from two very successful consultants from Switzerland. Some of the key-facts are that a lot of SME are struggling to set foot on the market because of the regulation jungle. A common mistake is to think that the whole Chinese market can be regarded as one (at least distinguish between north and south, west and east). One of the big difficulties is to find and choose the right distributors (please choose more than one!) as well as teaching the hospitals about the benefits of the product (e.g. joints or metal-plates for broken bones). Patents are important, but not the most important of all and that the product must be adapted to the Chinese market (e.g. size, extra-functions, material etc.). After the presentations we discussed about the Chinese healthcare-system (still weak, but tremendous improvement), the problem of corruption (doctors are not paid enough), the importance of innovation and the change of the healthcare-market in the next years. Putting it in a nutshell: China works different!

After that a part of the delegation moved on to an Urumqi-Restaurant where we ate delicious foods from the Muslim-region of China (e.g. lamb) and with celebrating our friendship a very successful day ended.

Christian Fischer