The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce, Ghent University, Cacaolab, the EU SME Centre  and the Province of East Flanders will organise a seminar on how to export chocolate to China. During this session, experts will give you a better insight into the Chinese market, consumer behaviour, cultural differences, export regulations, legal aspects and stability issues of exported chocolates. This will be done through different case studies. You will also learn how to export through the different Chinese e-commerce platforms. Even more importantly, you will directly meet the right contacts, who can introduce your product on the Chinese market.

This seminar is informative, practical and will help you to get connected with the right people!

Program:
10:00   Welcome by FCCC and Ghent University/Cacaolab
10:10   How to deal with Cultural Differences between East and West by Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce
10:30   How to export snacks to China? by Mr Yu Xiaoning, EU SME Expert and Founder of EG DistriSelecta (a Beijing-based importing company operating in the F&B Sector for 25 years – mostly beer, chocolate, biscuits, and other FMCG)
– Overview of the market
– Consumer behaviour and future outlook
– Case Studies of EU Companies exporting to China
12:30-13:30   Lunch
13:30-14:10   Exporting via E-commerce by Mr Yu Yingbao, Representative Shanghai Overseas Promotion  Center for Service Trade (SOPCST)
14:10-14:30   Legal aspects when exporting to China by Mr John Balzano, Partner Covington and  Burling (labeling, IPR)
14:30-15:00   How to guarantee the stability and shelf life of my products by Prof. dr. ir. Koen Dewettinck (Head of the Laboratory of food Technology and Engineering of Ghent University and CEO of Cacaolab (bvba) and Mrs Claudia Delbaere
(Project Manager at Cacaolab bvba).
15:00-16:00 Testimonials followed by Q&A

Cost:

The reduced entry fee for this seminar is €600 (VAT excluded) per person for registrations before 1 October 2019. For registrations from 1 October onwards, the registration fee is €750 (VAT excluded) per person.
Participants of Flemish SME’s can apply for a subsidy via the “KMO-portefeuille” to reduce the price by 30% to €420 (for medium enterprises) or by 40% to €360 (for small enterprises).
More information on: https://www.vlaio.be/nl/subsidies-financiering/kmo-portefeuille

Alimento will provide a financial contribution of € 130 per participant (max. 3 participants per company) for all companies whose participants work in the joint committee PC 220.
More information on: https://www.alimento.be/nl/opleidingen-en-personeelsadvies-voor-werkgevers-bakkers-en-leerkrachten

Date: 10 October 2019, 10:00

Location: House of the Province of East-Flanders:
Gouvernementstraat 1, 9000 Gent

Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce:
info@flanders-china.be – www.flanders-china.be
Cacaolab: Claudia.Delbaere@Cacaolab.be – www.cacaolab.be

Subscribe via this link: http://www.cacaolab.be/?q=content/how-export-chocolates-china

 

China has shown unprecedented economic growth since its market opened four decades ago, rising to become the world’s second-largest economy today. What is happening in China? What are the new business opportunities for European companies? How can you break into the Chinese market and win?

Within the booming Chinese market, there are always changes and challenges, forcing companies to rethink their China strategies. There are many different business models and China entry strategies. Knowing what has worked and failed for other companies can help you succeed in China.

The Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC), VOKA West-Flanders and the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB) have the pleasure to invite you to the seminar focused on: Win in China: Business Models & China Entry Strategies.

This event provides a comprehensive discussion of the Chinese business environment. There is also a large selection of case studies of Western companies that have failed in China, which will help avoid the same mistakes. Finally, the course aims to help you find the right China entry strategies and business models.

Benefits
* Understand the unique business models that work in China to fine-tune your strategy planning, product design, and market positioning.
• Clarify the real reasons behind the failures of some Western companies: let the mistakes of others help you build the right strategies.
• Master your vision of the Chinese market and build new approaches for your company to succeed in China.

Intense Learning with Substantial Gains
Win in China is a half-day China immersion program for European senior executives to learn, rethink and develop their China strategies. During the course, you will discuss new business model concepts and frameworks with the CKGSB faculty and your peers. Explore their applications in real-life contexts through interactive group exercises and simulations. You will also learn from the successes and failures of large and small companies operating in China. All these experiences will inspire you to rethink your approach to the Chinese market.

Course Outline
• 4 reasons why companies failed in China
• Top tips on what to learn based on previous failures
• 4 popular business models in China
• 8 strategies to enter the Chinese market
• 10+ real-life case studies
• 2 group exercises and class discussions

Attendees Profile:
CEOs, founders and managers from companies interested in doing business with China.

Agenda:
12:00 – 12:30 Registration & Sandwich lunch
12:30 – 12:40 Introduction by Gwenn Sonck, Executive Director, Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce
12:40 – 15:30 “Win in China: Business Models & China Entry Strategies” by Bo Ji, Assistant Dean & Chief Representative for Europe at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB)

16:00 – 16:30 Experiences of Barco in China by Nicolas Van Den Abeele, Senior Vice President – GM Entertainment, Barco

16:30 – 17:00 Q&A Session
17:00 – 17:30 Networking

Practical information:

Location: Barco – Beneluxpark 21, 8500 – Kortrijk

Price: €290
Flanders-China Chamber of Commerce (FCCC) and Voka members: €190

Ambassadors: Free

Companies can use the KMO – Portefeuille

Subscribe here

About the speaker

Experiences of previous participants:
“The enthusiasm of the speaker was remarkable. Through the experiences of the 
lecturer everything was very understandable and clear. There was a lot of interaction in the group through which allowed us to know the experiences of others.”
Peter Cannaerts, Purchasing Manager of Agfa Graphics:

“A very dynamic speaker and a very interesting workshop where the diversity of the group was a big advantage. In addition to the speakers information and tips, we could learn through the experiences of each participant.”

Bo Ji is an inspiring TEDx speaker, a Chinapreneur, and game changer for global startups expanding into China
Bo is currently the Assistant Dean & Chief Representative for Europe at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB), a top business school with more than 10,000 chairman/CEO level alumni in China. Bo had an over-20-year successful corporate career in Global Business Development, Innovation, Strategy, Supply Chain Management, M&A, etc. He served as the senior executive at the headquarters of many fortune 500 companies such as Monsanto, Cargill, Pfizer, Wrigley and Mars. After a long corporate life, Bo became a serial entrepreneur and investor. Bo founded the “China Start” to bring global startups and scale-ups to China. He created a paradigm shift for global startups to expand to China instead of Silicon Valley.

Combining his extensive business experiences and in-depth knowledge, Bo has been teaching EMBA/MBA at some of the world’s most prestigious business schools such as INSEAD, Esade, MIT, New York University, Sydney School of Entrepreneurship, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Technology University of Munich (TUM), Tsinghua University, CKGSB, Zhejiang University, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shanghai Jiaotong University and Taiwan’s National Chengchi University etc. Bo offers more than 10 innovation and entrepreneurship related lectures and seminars worldwide, such as “Customer focused innovation”, “Steve Jobs Mind: Disruptive Innovator’s DNA” ,“Capturing the Audience: How to pitch for investment?” , “Question Storming”, “Win in China” , “Unicorn or Dragon: How to tap into the Chinese Market for Growth”, “The New Trend of the Global Innovation and Entrepreneurship”, etc.

In addition, Bo offers advice to Chairmen and CEOs at large corporations. He also serves as a mentor & advisor to startups and scale-ups at incubators, accelerators and co-working spaces around the world such as Plug & Play, China Accelerator, Sydney School of Entrepreneurship, Techcode, etc.

Bo is a well sought inspiring speaker at renowned international conferences, forums, TV media and annual corporate meetings. He frequently appears at large scale tech/startup conferences around the world as keynote speaker, such as Mobile World Congress (Spain), London Tech Week (UK), Pioneers 18 (Austria), Wolves Summit (Poland), Horasis Global Meeting (Portugal), UN Empretec Global Summit (Turkey), Arctic 15 (Finland), Info Share (Poland), Startup Village (Russia), Lean Startup Europe (Netherlands), Campus Party (Italy), European Startup Days (Poland), OurCrowd Global Investor Summit (Israel), Technology Innovation Summit (China), Startup LaunchPad (Hong Kong), India Blockchain Week (India) etc.

Bo is well connected globally and has an extended global political and business network with 30,000+ startup founders, 5000+ investors, and 15,000+ corporate CEOs.

The U.S. and China imposed additional tariffs on each other’s imports, further escalating the tariff war. President Trump moreover “ordered” U.S. companies to seek alternatives for trade with and investment in China. There is also a total stalemate in trade talks between the two countries.

On September 1, the U.S. is set to implement a 10% tariff on Chinese imports worth around USD130 billion. Tariffs on a second batch of about USD155 billion worth of goods were postponed to December 15. But in retaliation for the first batch, China announced imposition of 10% tariffs on USD75 billion worth of U.S. imports. China’s Customs Tariff Commission said the duties will apply to goods includin soybeans, beef, pork and crude oil, and a 25% tariff on American vehicles and car parts would take effect from December 15, up from the 5% now in place. The U.S. announced it will increase tariffs on USD250 billion of Chinese goods from 25% to 30% starting 1 October and raise the tariffs on another batch from 10% to 15% starting on September 1.

The Chinese action led U.S. President Donald Trump to again raise tariffs on Chinese imports. He also for the first time called his “good friend” Xi Jinping an “enemy”, although he rhetorically asked whether Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell might be even worse. The comment “is a milestone moment that can’t be walked back”, said Robert Daly, Director of the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States. “Even if all Trump meant by ‘enemy’ was to say that ‘someone who annoys me at the moment’, Beijing will reasonably view this rhetorical shift as a deliberate threat,” Daly added. “Trade negotiators seek accommodations; enemies wish each other harm.”

The U.S. President also ordered U.S. companies to leave China and look for alternatives. “Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA,” Trump tweeted. But the President has no legal authority to compel U.S. companies to leave China, and it is as yet unclear how he will impose his “order”. But according to Trump himself, he does have the authority to force all U.S. businesses to leave China, citing a law of 1977 which was passed precisely to restrain presidential power. He might, however, declare a national emergency to impose exceptional measures.

“This is a trade war that should have taken place years ago … somebody had to do it. I am the Chosen One,” President Trump commented. But at the G7 Summit in Biarritz, France, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron urged Trump to ease tensions with China and stop the tariff war. “I want to see a dialing down of tensions, and I want to see tariffs come off,” Johnson said.

Trump also ordered Amazon, Federal Express, UPS and other logistics companies to search for the opioid fentanyl in shipments from China, claiming that the drug kills 100,000 Americans a year. Trump boasted that he was “the chosen one” to take on China in the trade war and that he was going to win. Tension between China and the U.S. also escalated last week over Trump’s approval of the sale of 66 F-16V, or “Viper”, jets to Taiwan in a USD8 billion deal, with Beijing threatening to impose sanctions on companies involved in the sale.

The slide of the Chinese currency may be partly offsetting the effect of the tariffs, as the value of the Chinese yuan fell to a fresh 11-year low against the U.S. dollar. The drop in the yuan followed a reduction in interest rates by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) last week. “Perhaps the PBOC is sending a message to the U.S. trade hawks that it will let the yuan gradually weaken as a policy weapon to neutralize the effect of increased tariffs,” said Stephen Innes, Co-founder of Valor Markets. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) warned that businesses should prepare for a prolonged conflict and be aware that the trade war could escalate in other ways. The weaker yuan and prospects that other Asian currencies would follow, could exacerbate the sharp increase in capital outflows from Asia already underway, analysts warned.

U.S. Vice President Mike Pence repeated President Donald Trump’s warning that it will be harder for the United States to reach a trade deal with Beijing if protests in Hong Kong turned violent. Trump hinted that the White House would like to see Beijing resolve the Hong Kong protests before any agreement on trade is reached. But the People’s Daily warned the U.S. not to link the trade negotiations with the situation in Hong Kong. “They would be naive in thinking China would make concessions if they played the Hong Kong card,” according to a commentary in the newspaper. It came after President Trump said that trade talks with China could be hampered if Beijing used violent means to crack down on the ongoing protests in Hong Kong.

After Huawei received another 90-day reprieve till November 19 from the restrictions of having been put on the U.S. Entity List, the company is drawing up new plans to be better prepared when the restrictions effectively come into force. The Entity List restricts Huawei’s ability to buy hardware, software and services from American hi-tech companies. The aim of the temporary license was to minimize disruption to the company’s existing networks and mobile services, which include many U.S. rural networks. “We believe that Huawei will not be able to return to normal operations until a comprehensive trade agreement is reached between the U.S. and China,” said Jean Baptiste Su, Analyst with Atherton Research in San Jose, California. He added that Huawei “will have to contemplate launching future smartphones and network equipment with its own operating system and permanently find a replacement for its U.S. suppliers, including Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and Broadcom” if the trade war and its blacklisting are not resolved.

Huawei decried the move to add more of its affiliates to the list. “This decision, made at this particular time, is politically motivated and has nothing to do with national security,” the company said in a statement. “These actions violate the basic principles of free market competition. They are in no one’s interests, including U.S. companies. The company’s financial results have so far not been affected by the trade ban, as it posted a 23.2% increase in first-half revenue on the back of higher smartphone shipments and robust demand for its 5G mobile network equipment. Huawei Founder Ren Zhengfei said he doesn’t want relief from U.S. sanctions if it means China must make concessions in the trade war. He also said he was confident Huawei will do well without relying on American companies because it is developing its own technology.

As soybean imports from the U.S. have plummeted, China is boosting domestic output and looking for alternative long-term suppliers such as Russia. The trade war with the U.S. was the main theme at the the fourth China Soybean Industry International Summit Forum in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, attended by 800 delegates. “In the thousands of years of Chinese history, soybeans have never been so closely watched by the whole world and by state leaders in various countries as they have today,” China Soybean Association President Yang Baolong, told the Forum. Shi Yong’ge, President of the Jiusan Group that produces half of China’s soybeans from its base in Heilongjiang, said that China’s 25% tariff on U.S. soybeans have made them uncompetitive in the Chinese market. Between October 2018 and March 2019, China bought just 2.7 million metric tons of U.S. soybeans, around a tenth of the 24.4 million metric tons bought during the same period a year earlier.

China is preparing to launch a widely anticipated “unreliable entity list,” to severely punish companies that have undermined China’s national interests. The “unreliable entity list” mechanism is currently going through internal deliberations and “will be announced in the near future,” MOFCOM Spokesman Gao Feng told a press conference. The scope of the “unreliable entity list” will not be limited to the Huawei case as other foreign companies have also been accused of undermining China’s national security regarding “secessionist actions” in Hong Kong and arms sales to Taiwan, Bai Ming, Research Fellow at MOFCOM’s Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, told the Global Times. Punitive measures could include hefty penalties, cancellation of business licenses that are compulsory to do business in China, and a temporary or permanent ban from the Chinese market, Gao said. He added that China will likely launch the mechanism first instead of listing the companies.

China’s industrial robot market suffered negative growth for the first time by 3.75% in 2018, according to data released at the World Robot Conference 2019 held in Beijing last week. Despite the downturn, experts noted that traditional robots, such as transfer robots and assembly robots, will be upgraded to be applied in more areas of advanced manufacturing, life services, medical treatment and health. The main reasons for the decline are the depression in the automobile industry and 3C industry (Computer, Communication and Computer Electronic), said Qu Daokui, CEO of Siasun, during his keynote speech on August 21. “Because of the tremendous changes in the Chinese market, the global robot market kept a growth rate of around 1% last year, nearly zero,” Qu said.

Xin Guobin, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, echoed Qu’s view and pointed out that the growth of industrial robot output has slowed down since the latter half of 2018. “There are various reasons. For example, the international trade environment has deteriorated, the pressure of global economic downturn increased and the automobile and electronics industries suffered slumps,” said Xin. However, China’s domestic robotic products performed well in 2018, with a 16% increase amid the overall decline, according to Qu. In contrast, sales of foreign brands decreased by 10.9%.

“China is the largest robot market with growth in the world. But if you look at the robot numbers employed in factories, the penetration of robots is still relatively low compared with South Korea, Japan and Germany. I think it’s because China began automation relatively late due to the competitive labor cost,” Adam J. Sobieski, General Manager of Danish company Universal Robots, told the Global Times. He noted that due to young Chinese people being less willing to work in factories, there are a lot of opportunities to increase the penetration of automation in Chinese factories. The high turnover rate of Chinese labor, rising labor costs and the aging problem in China create opportunities for the robot industry, the Global Times reports. But robots in China will not be able to survive in the near future if they don’t combine their mechanical qualities with the technologies of artificial intelligence (AI), electronic information, big data networks and sensory systems, experts said.

The majority of property developers in China reported continuous but slowing profit growth in the first half of 2019. Industry experts said that this means that a stable development trend is emerging in the nation’s real estate market. The net profit of leading real estate company Country Garden increased 41% in the first six months to CNY23.06 billion, compared with the same period of last year, but the growth rate last year was more than 90%. Another leading developer, China Vanke, saw its net profit grow 29.8% in the first half of this year. In the same period, it acquired 54 new projects with a total planned gross floor area of 13.728 million square meters, down by 33%.

About 30 developers so far declared negative growth, including China Evergrande Group, whose net profit is expected to plummet about 49% to approximately CNY27 billion from that of the same period last year, due to the decrease in the floor area of properties delivered in the first half of the year. The company recently also started a sales campaign to stimulate sales, providing a discount of 22% in more than 500 of its property projects nationwide. Last year its discount was limited to 11%.

September and October is a traditionally busy time for property developers. Zhang Dawei, Chief Analyst at Centaline Property Agency, pointed out that the real estate market is still mostly on the rise in terms of profit and scale, but its growth rate is slowing down due to tightening regulatory policies to curb an overheating market and rising financial pressure.

From the beginning of 2019, financing channels for developers have become limited to prevent too much capital flows into the property market. Yan Yuejin, Director of the Shanghai-based E-house China Research and Development Institute, added that property developers are proactively paying off their debts and controlling risks, instead of pursuing aggressive expansion. He predicted that the market would continue its steady development in the second half of the year. Sunac China Holdings, one of China’s five major property developers, expected tightening regulation to cause a gradual drop in land prices from the current relatively high level back to a reasonable one. “People will not be hurried to buy a house,” Sunac Chairman Sun Hongbin said. Sunac reported net profit of CNY10.29 billion for the first half of 2019, up 61.7% compared with the same period one year earlier. Revenue increased 64.9% to CNY76.84 billion year-on-year, the China Daily reports.

Chinese investors are now pumping more money in the French real estate market. More than 14% of properties sold in Paris to non-resident and resident foreigners during the first three months of the year were bought by buyers from China, pushing out Italians as the biggest group of foreign buyers of homes in the French capital. In terms of numbers, British investors are traditionally the most active non-resident foreign buyers in France, but their focus is outside the capital. The 13th arrondissement in Paris has the largest Chinese population in the city.