Six months to the date of arriving in Beijing I have been rewarded by becoming the proud proprietor of a Chinese Wholly Owned Foreign Enterprise, and departed for Singapore midweek with lots of good news for the team, and with an excited Judy for whom this was her first trip outside of China. 
On the 25th July 2006 I received digital confirmation that I have become the proud proprietor of a mainland China company, and along with that comes the opportunity to grow the business and enter into the mainstream bureacracy. The licence is valid from the 17th July, it took a week for me to be notified, and is valid until 16/07/20026 – by which time I will be 59 and patiently looking towards retirement. Now the real work begins as until this point I have been in China under the auspices of the Singapore entity, but from the 17th we have a list of requirements to fulfil and dates by which to complete. In most countries setting up a new company liberates the entrepreneur, in China it engages them in a long term embrace with numerous and often ill defined ministries. My next steps supplied by Jessie of Lee & Lee. I note the ‘immediate’ time required, which essentially means that we have plenty of opportunities to be held to ransom for failure to comply. I wait patiently to see what will go wrong, and note particularly that I have to inject the US$15,000 into a bank that is approved by the State Administration for Foreign Exchange by the 16th August. The word ‘inject’ is appropriate because it is akin to injecting a vial of medicine into a patient – once inside the body of banking system in China it is very hard to get the capital back out. 
A group of people all working hard to generate capital in China are the IandI entrepreneurs. On Tuesday Ben and I went to yet another networking event where the conversation was hosted by Kaiser Kuo, bureau chief of Red Herring, and with panelists including Justin Mallet (CEO of SRT), Fritz Demopoulos (CEO of Qunar), and Forrest X.N. Zhang, Chairman & CEO, Tixa Tech Group. I had met Justin and Fritz before, but asked Kaiser what he saw as being innovative in China. “There is nothing new being invented in China, it is all copies of business models from America,” he replied. I was disappointed in this reply, and sat through the discussions long enough to realize that of course Kaiser was correct as far as the answers the panelists were offering. What is new is the structure of the Chinese market, with western models being overlaid as best as they can be onto this changing society. “The hardest part about doing business in China is how long it takes,” said Justin who has been here since the early nineties. “This market is all about patience.” Running out of patience, I left the event early beginning to feel that these networking events were beginning to have a common crowd and a common theme. On Wednesday Judy and I left Ben behind to work on the Coding Technologies media roundtable to embark on the first intercompany strategy session. For this occasion Judy completed a round of forms and I wrote a letter of invitation so that she could acquire her first passport and a visa from Singapore. Judy had been to the airport many times to meet foreign students, but never past the check-in desk, never onto a plane, never outside of China. For Judy everything was new: completing departure cards, navigating security scanners, understanding seat allocations, grappling with the seat belt, and the hardest part, turning off the handphone. I wanted to bring Judy to Singapore to partly reward her excellent commitment and also to give her training with the team; it hadn’t occurred to me what an adventure this would be, and was delighted to see her enthusiasm and proud of how well she managed with the wealthy and well travelled Singapore staff. “Singapore is a beautiful city, but a very small country,” remarked Judy after two days of covering the majority of the island state that is 3.5x the size of Washington D.C., and on Friday evening I was reminded of how Singapore has passed from third world to first in 2 generations, and is now in danger of disappearing into the abys of self-evaluation. I was invited to the Work Life Balance Awards organised by MOM – the Ministry of Manpower - presided over by MR HAWAZI DAIPI, SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR MANPOWER. Reading through the booklet that showed the winners of Work Life Harmony to include Microsoft, ABN-AMRO, Motorola, and IBM, I realised that our application was unsuccessful not as a function of our size but because EASTWEST doesn’t have a dedicated WorkLife Balance Officer, doesn’t fund MBA studies nor provide a lactating room. I enquired of my fellow diners whether the Prison Service, Anti Competitive Practices Commission or the Singapore Aftercare Association also offered lactating rooms, only to find that they don’t, but one could be provided at short notice. 
I left the awards on even shorter notice, using the sms announcement of Justin Ho’s engagement as a covering excuse, ensuring that my business card was in the ‘attendees’ bowl, feeling impatient with myself and the situation. It is 738 days today to the Olympics and every day away from Beijing feels like I have lost time. Reading of the Chinese Dive team now getting into their training schedule for the games which are just over 2 years away, I am reminded of the patient application of the Chinese for each and every goal that they set themselves. The recent crop of teenage divers swept the World Cup Championships in Changshu this week beating out the Americans and the Russians, and teenage gold medal winner Zhou Luxin said that they feel “like newborn calves without the fear of tigers.” I suspect that in China they are not going to be having lactating rooms for new born calves for some time to come. NOTE In order to remit funds overseas from China one has to apply to the "State Administration for Foreign Exchange" (or as is written across the top of the English home page, the "State Administration for Forgign Exchange")
On the 25th July 2006 I received digital confirmation that I have become the proud proprietor of a mainland China company, and along with that comes the opportunity to grow the business and enter into the mainstream bureacracy. The licence is valid from the 17th July, it took a week for me to be notified, and is valid until 16/07/20026 – by which time I will be 59 and patiently looking towards retirement. Now the real work begins as until this point I have been in China under the auspices of the Singapore entity, but from the 17th we have a list of requirements to fulfil and dates by which to complete. In most countries setting up a new company liberates the entrepreneur, in China it engages them in a long term embrace with numerous and often ill defined ministries. My next steps supplied by Jessie of Lee & Lee. I note the ‘immediate’ time required, which essentially means that we have plenty of opportunities to be held to ransom for failure to comply. I wait patiently to see what will go wrong, and note particularly that I have to inject the US$15,000 into a bank that is approved by the State Administration for Foreign Exchange by the 16th August. The word ‘inject’ is appropriate because it is akin to injecting a vial of medicine into a patient – once inside the body of banking system in China it is very hard to get the capital back out. A group of people all working hard to generate capital in China are the IandI entrepreneurs. On Tuesday Ben and I went to yet another networking event where the conversation was hosted by Kaiser Kuo, bureau chief of Red Herring, and with panelists including Justin Mallet (CEO of SRT), Fritz Demopoulos (CEO of Qunar), and Forrest X.N. Zhang, Chairman & CEO, Tixa Tech Group. I had met Justin and Fritz before, but asked Kaiser what he saw as being innovative in China. “There is nothing new being invented in China, it is all copies of business models from America,” he replied. I was disappointed in this reply, and sat through the discussions long enough to realize that of course Kaiser was correct as far as the answers the panelists were offering. What is new is the structure of the Chinese market, with western models being overlaid as best as they can be onto this changing society. “The hardest part about doing business in China is how long it takes,” said Justin who has been here since the early nineties. “This market is all about patience.” Running out of patience, I left the event early beginning to feel that these networking events were beginning to have a common crowd and a common theme. On Wednesday Judy and I left Ben behind to work on the Coding Technologies media roundtable to embark on the first intercompany strategy session. For this occasion Judy completed a round of forms and I wrote a letter of invitation so that she could acquire her first passport and a visa from Singapore. Judy had been to the airport many times to meet foreign students, but never past the check-in desk, never onto a plane, never outside of China. For Judy everything was new: completing departure cards, navigating security scanners, understanding seat allocations, grappling with the seat belt, and the hardest part, turning off the handphone. I wanted to bring Judy to Singapore to partly reward her excellent commitment and also to give her training with the team; it hadn’t occurred to me what an adventure this would be, and was delighted to see her enthusiasm and proud of how well she managed with the wealthy and well travelled Singapore staff. “Singapore is a beautiful city, but a very small country,” remarked Judy after two days of covering the majority of the island state that is 3.5x the size of Washington D.C., and on Friday evening I was reminded of how Singapore has passed from third world to first in 2 generations, and is now in danger of disappearing into the abys of self-evaluation. I was invited to the Work Life Balance Awards organised by MOM – the Ministry of Manpower - presided over by MR HAWAZI DAIPI, SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY FOR MANPOWER. Reading through the booklet that showed the winners of Work Life Harmony to include Microsoft, ABN-AMRO, Motorola, and IBM, I realised that our application was unsuccessful not as a function of our size but because EASTWEST doesn’t have a dedicated WorkLife Balance Officer, doesn’t fund MBA studies nor provide a lactating room. I enquired of my fellow diners whether the Prison Service, Anti Competitive Practices Commission or the Singapore Aftercare Association also offered lactating rooms, only to find that they don’t, but one could be provided at short notice. 
I left the awards on even shorter notice, using the sms announcement of Justin Ho’s engagement as a covering excuse, ensuring that my business card was in the ‘attendees’ bowl, feeling impatient with myself and the situation. It is 738 days today to the Olympics and every day away from Beijing feels like I have lost time. Reading of the Chinese Dive team now getting into their training schedule for the games which are just over 2 years away, I am reminded of the patient application of the Chinese for each and every goal that they set themselves. The recent crop of teenage divers swept the World Cup Championships in Changshu this week beating out the Americans and the Russians, and teenage gold medal winner Zhou Luxin said that they feel “like newborn calves without the fear of tigers.” I suspect that in China they are not going to be having lactating rooms for new born calves for some time to come. NOTE In order to remit funds overseas from China one has to apply to the "State Administration for Foreign Exchange" (or as is written across the top of the English home page, the "State Administration for Forgign Exchange")