The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce is organizing the China Awareness Workshop. This event will take place on Wednesday 13 June 2018 at 15:00 h. during the FIT Exportbeurs.

Not only differences in language, but also in corporate culture often present a difficult barrier for business people in both countries. According to a study by the Business School of the University of Science & Technology in Hong Kong, the biggest obstacle for Western business people in China is intercultural.

Communication is a process of information exchange which requires that the parties who are communicating understand each other’s system of symbols, gestures and behavior.

• In this China Business Awareness Workshop you will learn how to communicate efficiently with China.You will become aware of the visible and invisible differences between China and Flanders.
• You will get a general China insight, and a more profound view of the Chinese generations through which you will be able to better position and evaluate your Chinese customer, consumer, entrepreneur – who are all products of recent Chinese history.
• You will learn to empathize with the socio-cultural context of the ethnic Chinese. You will get an insight in Chinese corporate culture and will learn to handle specific problems linked to Chinese traditions.

** Please register for this event on the website of Flanders Investment and Trade here.

Programme
15:00 Introduction by Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce
15:10 ‘China Business Awareness’ by Wim Polet, Managing Director, Chinainkling
16:30 Q&A session
16:45 End

Practical Information
Date and time: Wednesday 13 June 2018 from 15:00-16:45
Location: Brussels Expo – Paleis 1, Belgiëplein 1, 1020 Brussel
Price: Participation is free of charge

About the speaker:
Wim Polet is a sinologist who first visited in China in 1984. He worked and lived in China and at present is commuting between Flanders and China. Since 1999 he is focussing on “Efficient communication with China’ at China Inkling Cross-cultural Dynamics (www.chinainkling.com)

Contact
VCKK: info@flanders-china.be

More information about the Exportbeurs 2018 can be found here.

The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce and KBC Bank organized a briefing on “China’s economic outlook and key issues for foreign investors after the 19th Party Congress”. This event took place on 16 May 2018 at KBC Bank in Ghent.

During this briefing, two bankers from KBC Bank in China discussed the following topics: Economic outlook & key issues for foreign investors; major developments after the 19th Party Congress; and opportunities for Belgian companies: Greater Bay Area, Belt & Road.

Following an introduction by Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce, a presentation was given by P.C Leung, General Manager, KBC Bank N.V. Shanghai Branch and William Ip, Head of Corporate Banking, KBC N.V. Hong Kong Branch.

A Q & A discussion concluded the event.

China and the U.S. put a looming trade war on hold after Chinese Vice Premier Liu He held two days of trade talks in Washington. He also had an in-depth discussion with U.S. President Donald Trump, a meeting which was not announced in advance and was upgraded from a 15-minute “protocol call” to 45 minutes of “talks of substance”. The U.S. put the imposition of tariffs on USD50 billion of Chinese imports on hold, while China agreed to buy more U.S. agricultural and energy products to help narrow the record USD375 billion bilateral trade deficit. “There was a consensus on taking effective measures to substantially reduce the United States’ trade deficit in goods with China,” the White House said in a joint announcement, adding that the U.S. will send a team to China to work out the details. Vice Premier Liu He said: “This is a positive, pragmatic, constructive and fruitful visit. Both sides have reached a lot of consensus on the healthy development of Sino-U.S. trade relations.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said: “Right now we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework” agreement on reducing China’s trade surplus with the U.S. Mnuchin confirmed that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will lead another round of trade talks in Beijing. “We are immediately going to follow this up with Secretary Ross going there with very hard commitments in agriculture, where we expect to see a very big increase, 35% to 40% increases in agriculture this year alone,” Mnuchin said. “In energy, doubling the energy purchases. I think you could see USD50-60 billion a year of energy purchases over the next three to five years.” Both countries would also step up trade cooperation in the areas of health care, hi-tech products and finance.

China pledged to strengthen intellectual property laws, including the Patent Law, and continue negotiations. Both sides also agreed to encourage two-way investment and to strive to create a fair, level playing field for competition. But President Trump warned in a tweet that “the U.S. has very little to give, because it has given so much over the years. China has much to give!”

In a concession to the U.S., China has terminated anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations into imported sorghum from the United States. China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) scrapped the anti-dumping duty of 178.6% imposed on April 18, saying it increased costs for consumers and was against the public interest. The government will also return temporary antidumping deposits collected at Chinese customs.

China may also invite foreign companies to take part in its “Made in China 2025” plan to support its domestic technology sector. The strategy has been singled out by Washington as a prime example of Beijing’s “unfair trade practices”, saying it is using preferential policies to unfairly boost Chinese firms. But China will refuse to give up this strategy. “Made in China 2025 is a national strategy – we will not give it up, no matter what,” a government source said. “Just like any other country, China has the right and it has reasons to upgrade its industry. We cannot accept that we will always be the supplier of cheap products.”

Before the agreement was reached, China’s Foreign Ministry had dismissed rumors that China had offered to cut its trade surplus with the United States by USD200 billion. The U.S. and China had proposed tens of billions of dollars in tariffs in recent weeks, fueling concerns about the outbreak of a full-on trade war that could hurt businesses globally.

President Trump said he was working together with President Xi Jinping to get ZTE back in business as soon as possible after his Commerce Department had banned all U.S. companies from selling components to ZTE for seven years to punish the company for failing to punish staff involved in circumventing U.S. sanctions on Iran. Wu Xinbo, Director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said that by conceding ground on the ZTE issue, the U.S. was showing its openness to finding a solution to the recent trade tensions. But U.S. and Chinese officials insisted that the trade negotiations and the ZTE case were two different issues.

Covestro, which was spun off from German drug maker Bayer in 2015, has launched a flagship store on Alibaba Group Holding’s business-to-business (B2B) trading platform 1688.com as part of Covestro’s “digitalization” strategy that will also see the Leverkusen, Germany-based firm plough “tens of millions of euros” up to 2020 to overhaul its production control systems globally. “We want to piggyback on Alibaba’s presence to position our products and services, and attract new small and medium-sized customers who may not have heard about us, but happen to be searching for products on Alibaba,” Chief Commercial Officer Markus Steilemann, who takes over as Chief Executive from June, told the South China Morning Post in an interview.

The firm, which was known as Bayer MaterialScience before it was listed on the Frankfurt stock market in October 2015, is aiming for its store on Alibaba and its own e-commerce trading platform to contribute up to €1 billion in accumulated sales by the end of next year. The e-commerce strategy is also targeting a younger generation of procurement managers, whom are “internationally educated digital natives” with a different purchasing style, according to Steileman. “They are the type who would say, I don’t want to meet you or have a fancy dinner with you, just deliver the materials and give me services, whereas the company founders are used to meeting face to face, building trust, negotiating each and every deal, and ordering via paper and telephone,” Steileman said.

Covestro makes and sells materials such as foams used to insulate buildings and homes, plastic car seats padding and interior panels, coatings that make furniture water and scratch-resistant, as well as adhesives and sealants used in manufacturing. The company’s materials are also used to speed up the production time and cut down the production cost of wind turbine blades, while making them more durable. Of Covestro’s €14 billion of global revenues last year, some 22% came from its largest market, China, where sales grew 8% to €3.06 billion. Its global net profit jumped 152% last year to €2 billion, the South China Morning Post reports.

Tianjin plans to set up a CNY100 billion (USD15.7 billion) fund to spur development of the artificial intelligence (AI) industry, in what is the latest and probably largest effort by a single Chinese city amid the country’s push to fulfill its ambition to become a world leader in AI by 2030. The AI industrial fund is part of Tianjin government’s grand plan to “speed up the development of the smart technology industry”, which includes a CNY10 billion smart manufacturing fund financed by the municipal government and a string of talent incentives – up to CNY2 million cash reward per person – to attract high-end tech talent.

The planned fund comes as competition heats up between China and the United States in dominance of AI technologies, which are vital to enable an array of emerging applications from talking robots to self-driving cars. Tianjin’s fund amount also dwarfs funding announced last month by the EU Commission, which said it would boost investment in AI by 70% to €1.5 billion (USD1.78 billion) between 2018 and 2020. The investment is expected to boost total private and public European investment in AI to at least €20 billion by 2020.

China’s goal is to develop itself into a key global AI innovation center and build an AI industry valued at more than CNY1 trillion by 2030, according to three-step development road map released by the Chinese government in 2017.

Local governments in China have been investing money and devising policies to spur AI development ever since the central government made AI a national priority. In January, Beijing municipality announced a plan to build a CNY13.8 billion AI development park, aiming to house up to 400 enterprises with an estimated annual output of CNY50 billion. At the end of last year Shanghai announced a plan to build a globally competitive AI industry with an output of CNY100 billion by 2020.

Besides investment funds in major cities, companies are also investing in AI. Chinese voice recognition company iFlyTek plans to raise up to CNY3.6 billion via a private placement to ramp up research and product development in an effort to maintain its “world-leading position in core artificial intelligence technologies”. The Shenzhen-listed iFlyTek said the proceeds will be used for further development of its so-called next generation cognitive technology, an AI speech open platform, smart service robots, as well as upgrading sales and services, and improving the company’s cash flow. The AI speech open platform alone will receive a total of CNY2.05 billion of investment. The fundraising comes six months after iFlyTek was tasked by the Chinese government to spearhead the country’s development in voice intelligence by building an “open innovation platform”, the South China Morning Post reports.

In November, the Chinese government said it would build four national AI open innovation platforms by relying on Alibaba Group Holding in smart city technologies, Baidu in self-driving technologies, Tencent Holdings in AI-enabled medical treatment, and iFlytek in voice-recognition technology, while China Mobile is building a large scale internet of things (IoT) network.

The second World Intelligence Congress was held in Tianjin last week.