Visiting a friend of my wife and me in Beijing, I also got some insights into the life of locals and how things work or not - also behind the stage. The country does yet not seem to have a public pension, health care or education system. So people have to take care of that themselves mostly. This was surprising to me knowing that China has such a huge amount of money reserves. But of course with 1.3 billion people those reserves are relative and per capita much lower than elsewhere. There are now actions on the way to fix this but seems to go slow still. Then I was told that mos of the traffic in Beijing is not from private people but from government vehicels. The amount of government personnel and all of the have cars is unbelievable. When last year African leaders were invited to attend a conference in Beijing, the government vehicles were banned from the streets for a week or so, and guess what, no more taffic jams at all in Beijing!

Guangxi. The concept of Guangxi has not changed at all it seems. You still have and is expected as normal business practice to take care of customers and business partners. What seems to diminish though a bit is the concept of middlemen. Back 10 years ago you could NOT do, even if you tried to keep the Guangxi concept, any business directly, you always needed someone to help you to ensure things flow through the right channels.

IP issues. Also obvious the copy industry is in full swing although they try to do it more behind the curtain and not showcase it on every corner. The laws are officially in place to protect companies but practically not enforceable for small or mid-size companies. This is the input I got from our Chinese friend who has excellent insider view.

Employees. Finding people is relatively easy for foreign corporations. The unemployment rate is still relatively high and the huge amount of engineering graduates visiting the job fairs show that there is no problem with that like in Germany e.g. where too few want to study that. Of course the issue for tech companies is to find experienced, qualified people with management skills. Unlike ten years ago where the need was mainly for construction workers and hands-on technicians with certain skills, what China needs now - and cannot find enough of - are experienced managers. This is already and will be even more of a problem having serious consequences in terms of growing the economy. My observation in general was that growth has slowed down, still growing more than elsewhere, but I doubt the official statistical figures show the true situation - if not even are inflated.

Local competition. Local Chinese companies move more and more into the role of replacing foreign tech enterprises. This can be seen e.g. in the automotive and telecommunications industries quite well. China pushes their own 3G mobile phone standard TD-SCDMA and even puts spectrum licensing on hold to ensure that the TD-SCDMA suppliers are ready and have a chance against the two other dominating 3G standards from the US and Europe. China is building their own high-speed trains now already and probably shocked the western companies, who did not expect them to be able to do that so quickly. The high-speed trains that I used (e.g. Shanghai to Hangzhou) were quite well done and I was impressed. Of course nowhere are good management skills more important than in high-tech, fast-paced competitive markets where innovation, good quality and speed determine who wins. To bring out a mediocre product will not do it for the Chinese and there is not too much time for them to catch up since new technology is needed now and not in 3-5 years. That explains the multitude of joint ventures in this area stretching from semiconductors, wireless and fixed line telecommunications as well as to the pharmaceutical industry apart from the fact that it is legally required also.