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September 27, 2013

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Roll up your sleeves and get to work

MANY overseas Chinese professionals choose the high-tech field when they start up their own company upon returning home, but attracting capital and growing the business remain their biggest concerns.

Business owners and potential start-ups are advised to cooperate with local enterprises in order to gain a better understanding of the Chinese market, speakers said yesterday at the World Chinese Entrepreneurs Convention in Chengdu.

“Standing upon the foundation of those old overseas Chinese in the past 30 years, the new generation expects challenges their fathers couldn’t dream of,” said Wang Huiyao, director with the Center for China & Globalization, a think tank composed of mainly overseas Chinese scholars.

Wang said about 70 percent of overseas Chinese who start a business in China choose high-tech sectors like information and new energy.

Li Shan, who has a PhD in economics, lived in the US from 1986 to 1998 and half-joked that his start-up “was forced by survival pressure.”

Li and his friends set up Soufun Holdings Ltd, now China’s biggest online real estate information platform that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, after he returned. They invested a little more than 100,000 yuan (US$16,337) to start the company.

Cai Wei, the head of Jing-Jin Electric Technologies (Beijing) Co, said he used a Powerpoint presentation to win over investors in 2008.

Gong Yi, board chairman of Jiangsu Jinton Group, which mainly operates high-tech parks in China, went to the US in 1988. He returned to China and started his own company in 2005.

He said there are more opportunities now in service industries and supply chain management as China becomes more open.

He also recalled all the hard work it required to get his business off the ground.

“Compared with the saying the first bucket of gold, I refer to it as the first bucket of tears,” Gong said.

Li Shan, founding partner and director of private equity firm San Shan (HK) Limited, said creativity and hard work are essential when starting your own business.

 


 

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