SinaWest Business Consulting

Welcome to this,the first entry to our blog. We thought long and hard about how to approach this creature, then decided to just kick it out and let it develop itself, with your help of course. This first time we want introduce ourselves and our business experience in China, also set a course for this blog that will be interesting, and useful.

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How It All Began:
SinaWest started as "China Business Exchange" a Financial and Tax Consulting Service,five years ago in Beijing. We started out being retained by a group of Australian companies that have operations in China, they needed help navigating their way safely through the huge bureacratic tax and regulation monster here. We did very well for our clients. Our founder and CFO, Ms. Lily Li has over 10 years experience with Chinese and multi-national firms in China as a financial analyst and CFO.

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Our Expansion:
We quickly expanded our services into sourcing, market research, market entry, and assisting foreign enterprises in locationg profitable joint venture cooperations,  as well as getting deeply involved in cross border M&A through our close affiliation with Cromwell Morgan M&A in the U.S. who contacted us and asked if we would enter into an exclusive contract with them as an affiliate. Finding potential Chinese companies to buy American distributors, it was a natural step in the growth process that Chinese manufacturers would want to purchase their supply chains to control costs, it was a steep learning curve for us, but after four years we have fully entered the world of Business Consulting in China, (the tough and cutthroat world that it is.) and have acquired quite a bit of experience with many types of projects, and boast a honest, reliable reputation, as well as many long term clients and friends.

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Our Experience:
We have experience in many industries in China, and have had clients from chocolate companies wanting to enter the market in China, to finding overseas distributors for Chinese tire and steel companies, these days we have become more and more specialized in the area of Stainless Steel, Steel, and Metals and have just opened Itachi Trading Ltd. in Hong Kong in cooperation with one of our European clients, we export Chinese Stainless Steel to Europe directly from the mills here in China, and Taiwan, it is off to a GREAT start. (knock on wood)

SinaWest in Beijing is a Chinese company, however we maintain  an in-house staff of diverse, local and international professionals, that gives our company the flexibilty and resources to add value to our clients's services, both here in China and abroad, in other words we practice what we preach to our clients, in a global economy there is no resting place, and resources for an enterprise in this new economy have no borders.

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About our Blog:
About this blog, we hope by creating this blog we can connect people, ideas, experiences, products and services together. We welcome your input, advice and suggestions. We will monitor the comments and especially the advice, We have read a lot of advice on blogs and on websites about business in China, and much of it has been gleaned from articles and books, maybe in theory it sounds good but in reality may no be practical. There seems to be a great deal of alarmist reporting on the web from consulting companies looking to drum up business, One recent story making the rounds that was reported by the press, then picked up by the consulting comapnies is Danone Strikes back at Wahaha. Joint ventures are not intended to last forever, and the practice of setting up parallel companies by Chinese partners, in our experience, is not as widespread as is being claimed by some consultants, and bloggers.

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Our Thoughts on Joint Ventures:
First of all JV's are not dead as many pundits are claiming, At SinaWest our bread and butter was JV's in the early days.They are excellent entry vehicles for small and middle sized enterprises that either do not have the capitol, or the ambitions to establish WOFE (wholly owned foreign enterprise) in China, it is true that the larger players in China are not involved with them any longer, and prefer to go it alone, also some industries are still off limits for WOFE's but they are still a viable option for companies that have something to offer each other. The key is in planning and writing the contract.

In our article Joint Ventures we discuss the basic structure of JV's and the importance of implementing a "exit strategy" a well defined exit strategy that identifies key triggers in the relationship to begin thinking about an exit, Danone and Wahaha may have reached that point a couple of years ago, however they continued in realtionship that  most likely was deteriorating, hindsight is always 20/20 and we do not mean to suggest that we could have avoided this, had they been our clients,  in fact the people who drew up the contracts for these JV's may have suggested as much to the Danone and Wahaha , and their suggestions may have been rejected, we just don't know for sure?

However we do know that basic business rules still apply. Hoping for the best and planning for the worst, is always a smart course of action, But we know from experience in negotiating these type deals with smaller companies, that at begining stage everyone is enthusiastic, postive, and upbeat, no one wants to talk about failure, although we would classify this situation as a messy dissolution, not a failure, and  Zong Qinghou, Wahaha's founder, seems to be in a pretty weak position claiming that the agreement was not fair after he signed it ? However I always keep in mind a quote I learned in school when reading newpaper articles, "once a newspaper touches a story, the facts are lost forever."

We hope you enjoyed our first entry to our new blog, and found something of interest that maybe helped you, or motivated you to send us a question or a comment. We look forward to your participation and publishing our next blog, we hope to do at least one a week, if business is slow maybe two, in the meantime here are some of our favorite news stories in China this week for your perusal, if you have any comments or suggestions please let us know.

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This Week's China News

China holds business seminar in Tanzania
People's Daily Online - Beijing,China
The vice-president urged China's Guangdong business people to invest more in the agricultural production sector so as to help the country increase the added ...

NewMarket China, Inc. CEO Video Podcast of MN1.com Interview Now ...
WM Experts (press release) - Inverness,FL,USA
Specifically, Mr. Verges informed the viewing audience on NewMarket China's business development pipeline which includes a Chinese content IPTV service with ...

Taiwan leader for more business with India
Mangalorean.com - Mangalore,IndiaChina and said Taiwan, with its vibrant economy and a healthy ...

Top Chinese official blames foreign business for abuse
boro Record Herald - Waynesboro,PA,USA
''We welcome foreign companies that respect Chinese laws and look after their workers,'' Xie Liangmin, a senior official with the All-China...