Dr. Jan Hu / Chief Representative of DZ Bank AG Beijing Representative Office
Q: How has the pandemic accelerated trends towards digitization in China, and what opportunities does this present for foreign investors?
Most of the people had to stay at home working from home and a lot of communications had to be done via visual meeting systems. Therefore the changes that been brought by COVID various in many areas.
First of all, what I can think is because we learned to work from home, therefore all these software systems that support working from home or support visual communications are new areas that would be interesting for further investments.
And the second when we're talking about the virtual meeting systems, that is also related to everything based on internet. People were also used to learn things from internet and from virtual systems, so I would say the internet based training and schooling will also be bombing in the future.
Q: Can you discuss the role of partnerships between Chinese and foreign companies in driving economic growth in China, and what examples have you seen of successful partnerships?
The role of a partnership between Chinese companies and foreign investors apparently has been very critical of supreme importance in my view in making a successful business in China. We have seen so many examples in the past, the reason why you need to have a good partnership is when you are investor in China, you are investing in a different culture not only in a different economy, so both sense of different economy with different economic systems and maybe different legal systems.
But in the meantime you also invest in a different culture, therefore you need to have a partner who understands local market, local culture and local systems. A foreign investor is always important because when you want to enter into a partnership that means that you see the advantages and competitiveness of that international investor.
So we have seen so many examples in the past that the joint adventures between Chinese companies and international companies have been successful. As far as I know for instance the very well named like Daimler Benz automobile company in cooperation with Beijing automobile. They have been working together for many years and have produced a lot of cars that have been sold in the Chinese market.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges Chinese enterprises face when expanding to European and global markets？
There are quite some challenges facing by the Chinese companies going abroad, making investments in the North America Europe as well.
The first challenge is the Chinese companies have been growing up in the Chinese economy under the Chinese legal systems. So when they go abroad, the advantages of the Chinese companies in principle would be normally based on low cost and technologies that are not really cutting edge, but may be more practical in the more applied sciences applied several technologies. Therefore you are facing developed the country's companies that have advanced technologies as well as super standard management systems. So if you want to be successful then you need really to learn from those large companies and competitors in Europe or in U.S.
The 2nd practical challenge is the legal system compliance and nowadays also ESG so ESG means environmental social and governance. so the governance of course is also related to legal systems and rules on the industry rules of the market like competition rules for instance because the European countries are always emphasizing so called level play and field which means a fair competition.
