A favorite saying in China is “the first time we meet we are strangers, the second time we are friends,” Everett Area Chamber of Commerce President Louise Stanton-Masten told her audience at Everett Community College’s International Business Roundtable in early February.
There is really no easy, quick way to establish trading partnerships with the Chinese, she said.
“When you go to China a second time, you don’t try to establish new relationships, you work to build on earlier relationships. It’s not just looking at dollar signs when you begin to get into trade with China. That’s not how they look at it,” she said.
She traveled to China recently with Visakan Ganeson, director for international education at Everett Community College; attorney Terry Preshaw with Preshaw and Zisman, and Cindy McCain of Emb@Sea, a Snohomish embroidery business. As a panel, they discussed their trip Feb. 5 and answered questions.
The group toured Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, visiting high-tech research and production facilities, seeing Japanese culture and meeting with business leaders in China.
“The size of the cities was overwhelming,” she said. “We rode a 250-mile-per-hour Magnetrain, saw huge traffic interchanges, community colleges, high-rise towers and shopping center.”
But the panel agreed the most important moments of the journey were the meetings with Japanese business leaders and educators. Once groups get to China, like the chamber tour group, the Chinese government pays for lodging, food, transportation and all other expenses, she said.
“It’s very important to take time to learn about Chinese culture,” she said. “We had picked out a gift plaque for our hosts but our guide pointed out that the design had sharp, saw-like angles. To the Chinese that’s like a sign of cutting friendship ties. We bought a different one with curved edges. It’s very important to realize what’s important to them,” she said, adding that many Westerners address the Chinese by using their names backward because they don’t understand their culture.
“They won’t forget that you made an effort to learn about their culture, even in simple things you think aren’t related to doing business,” she said.
Shanghai, in particular, she said, is home to “astounding high-tech industrial development centers that are helping the Chinese compete in the world economy in areas that include aerospace, health and life services and industrial development,” she said.
The economy of China is already the third largest in the world, she said, behind the United States and Japan and will be the second largest soon, she said.
Terry Preshaw said “there is no competing with China , because of their cheap labor and population, but there are incredible opportunities to development business relationships and cooperation … they’re reaching out to American business people who come over to see them and what they’re doing.”
Cindy McCain said Americans seem to be very “assertive and aggressive in our business practices, whereas the Chinese are very intelligent, soft-spoken people … in our education systems we need to produce people who recognize how to work with global communities like China.”
The Chinese, under Communist rule, had been suppressed for 50 years but now they’re coming out and interacting with the world and its economies, she said.
Ganeson said seeing their school system “showed us we are not preparing our students well enough to compete in the world economy, which means we’re setting them up for failure.”
He said the Chinese plan 10, 15, 20 years ahead and set goals for generation after generation.
“We need to see more Everett Community College students going overseas to China and other countries, to see the world and other people’s ways of conducting business, Ganeson said.
The panel was introduced by EvCC President Dr. David Beyer.
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