It was exciting for me to attend the luncheon in honor of Xi Jinping in Washington on Wednesday. It was an opportunity to meet impressive people and reconnect with old friends. Carolyn Brehm, for example, whom I had met in China in the late seventies as a trail-blazing China expert...
There was an article we came across not too long ago on the popular China Law Blog called “Buying a Chinese Company? Why China Deals DON’T Get Done.” This was a great write up on, as the title suggests, why generally as a foreign company you DO NOT want to...
Qualifying your supplier and maintaining steady and regular audits of factories that you cooperate with is essential for China sourcing. Often buyers will assume that once a relationship with a factory has been firmly established, the hard part of the China buying process is over. However, most will find that...
One of the most important factors with international purchasing is how to reduce costs, specifically shipping costs. When an order is less than a full container, an effective and relatively easy way to accomplish this is through LCL consolidation, which is the consolidation of orders that are “Less-than Container Load”....
Legends and mythology are a big part of Chinese culture, especially in relation to the Chinese Zodiac (生肖 in Chinese). The 12 animals that appear on the Chinese Zodiac calendar include the rat, buffalo, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog and pig. It’s an unusual combination of...
The following is a guest post from CPG partner, CRCC Asia, a leading China internship and consulting firm. “Taking a trip to China,” American President Richard Nixon observed before his momentous visit to the People’s Republic in February 1972, “is like going to the moon.” This year will mark the...
Understanding the rules and regulations of the importing country can be an incredibly important aspect of sourcing, particularly from China. There are many opportunities for incongruities and miscommunications to arise as you are dealing with the relationships between yourself, your supplier, competing regulatory agencies and any intermediary agents or QC...
These days it's not hard to find news predicting the end of China's manufacturing growth, marking the recent slowdown of China’s manufacturing and export industry, with reports showing that China manufacturing activity fell to a 32 month low in November 2011, slowed down by a slump in the global economy....