ABSTRACT
The Board of Trade Report cited above, produced just after the end of the Second World War in Asia but while Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong were still fighting over who would control China, was remarkably prophetic. The message for China hopefuls is just as true 70 years later: make sure China wants you. This chapter looks at the first steps to China market entry. Topics covered include research before the first visit; options for visiting; finding business partners; using a staging post (i.e. making a first base in one of the other East or South East Asian countries); and the decision to enter. China is developing so fast that no book such as this can hope to be
up to date with facts and figures, politicians or leaders of business. The target we set ourselves is to describe the fundamentals of what makes business in China tick. It is mostly about how the culture has evolved and the crucial importance of personal business relationships. These
change only slowly. Although the population has stabilized at around 1.4 billion, the economy has leapt ahead: growing five times in the 20 years to 2000 and nearly ten times to 2016.1
Things are cooling down but China remains, on the surface, frenetic. This fourth edition, 16 years on from the first, updates its predecessors, but we argue that the underlying fundamentals are much the same.
