Webinar: How to apply lean principles to your China Business: Practical advice for European SMEs (Session 2) – 2 April 2015 – Online – 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM CST, 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM CEST
Mar-30-2015 By : fcccadmin
The second session of the EU SME Centre’s Lean Management webinar series will provide further insights into Lean principles and its application in Chinese business environment.
It will discuss two Lean principles in details – behaviour and mindset, which are referred as respect for people and continuous improvement within an organisation. In addition, this webinar will provide answers to the following two questions:
Where does Lean implementation face more resistance – Europe or China?
When applying Lean principals, what are the differences among Chinese State-Owned, Private-Owned, and Wholly Foreign-Owned Enterprises in China?
If you attended the first session and have remaining questions, join this webinar to get them answered.
About the Speaker: Timo Schneemann, Manager, Staufen China Timo has over 10 years’ experience in the area of Lean management. He has successfully applied Lean principles to complete various projects such as work cell set-up, material flow and layout planning, total productive maintenance, and development programmes for managers and high potentials.
Meeting with high-level Chinese business delegation – 26 March 2015 – Ghent
By : fcccadmin
On March 26, 2015 the China-Platform (the Province of East-Flanders, the City of Ghent, Ghent University and the Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce) in cooperation with Flanders Investment & Trade received a high-level Chinese business delegation in Ghent.
The China-Belgium Technology Center (CBTC) invited this delegation to Belgium to get a better understanding of the investment environment and to seek potential opportunities for businesses, partnerships and R&D cooperation.
The delegation is in the process of seeking partnerships within the following sectors: Environmental protection and Biotechnology, IT, Electronics and E-commerce. A description of the visiting companies and their interests for cooperation can be downloaded via the following links: Companies List; Companies Summary.
The CBTC is the first Chinese Technological Incubator in Europe and is based in Louvain-la-Neuve Science Park, a business center with full facilities including 71,000 m2 of offices.
Car ownership becoming less attractive
By : fcccadmin
Up to 30% of Chinese car owners would consider giving up their cars if traffic continues to worsen or petrol prices rise sharply, a survey suggests, presenting a challenge for automotive businesses. Global consultancy Bain & Co has found that car ownership, once a symbol of wealth and social status in China, appears to become increasingly less attractive. A Bain survey of 2,100 consumers in five major cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Chengdu and Wuhan found that people were reassessing the value of car ownership because of congestion, with road journeys in China taking twice as long as comparable trips in Germany, according to Pierre-Henri Boutot, a Bain Partner. “Increasing income levels in China mean that consumers can afford the comfort of a personal vehicle, yet many are interested in alternatives to car ownership,” he said. “The status and flexibility that comes with having a car is, for many, no longer worth the hassle and increasing cost.” China has been the world’s largest auto market since it surpassed the United States in 2009, buoyed by its rising middle class, but sales growth has slowed. Last year, sales hit 23.5 million units, up 6.9% from 2013, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM). The year-on-year growth last year dropped by seven percentage points from 13.9% recorded in 2013. Aside from traffic congestion and the price of petrol, road safety issues and the lack of affordable parking spaces were also turn-offs,the South China Morning Post reports.
Profit growth at Chinese banks slowing
By : fcccadmin
Profit growth slowed for the Chinese banking sector last year while bad loans continued to rise amid pressure from an economic downturn. The Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) said that its year-on-year growth in net profit was just 8% in 2014, compared with 14.5% in 2013. The lender’s non-performing loan (NPL) ratio rose by 32 basis points to 1.54% at the end of last year, above the national average of 1.25% for commercial banks. China Merchants Bank reported that its net profit attributable to the bank’s shareholders increased 8.06% from a year earlier in 2014, compared with 14.3% in 2013, the slowest growth for the lender since 2009. China CITIC Bank also announced a fall in net profit growth year-on-year, from 26.24% in 2013 to 3.87% in 2014. Analysts said the slowdown in profit growth for these banks is mainly because they set aside a much larger amount of provision for potential losses, which greatly increased their credit costs.
Chinese bond sale market-oriented, not QE-style
By : fcccadmin
China’s local government debt-for-bond swap program, with an initial size of CNY1 trillion this year, might attract a variety of investors without triggering a U.S.-type quantitative easing (QE). The Ministry of Finance has asked provincial authorities to convert trillions of yuan of expiring debt into bonds that carry lower yields and longer-term maturities. The move is to improve transparency of liabilities and ease short-term repayment pressures for local governments. Finance Minister Lou Jiwei told the South China Morning Post there was no need to get help from the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on the debt replacement plan. The sales of the bonds would be market-oriented, avoiding quantitate easing (QE). As the PBOC wouldn’t buy the bonds on a large scale, the question arises who would be the potential buyers. Jurgen Conrad, the head of the Economic Unit at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in China, told the Post the pool of potential investors would be large, including domestic commercial banks, other institutional investors, and possibly also foreign buyers. State-owned policy banks, which have heavily financed infrastructure projects, might be interested too, Conrad said. A Federal Reserve-type bond purchase by the PBOC was unnecessary, while the size of the bond offering was small, equivalent to only 1.5% of China’s gross domestic product (GDP), he said.
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