China News

China and India are two of the largest and fastest growing economies in the world, but what are the differences and how would you choose which is right for you? We talked with emerging markets specialists Stephen Philips, Chief Executive of the China-Britain Business Council, Ian Coleman, Partner and Head of Emerging Markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers UK, and Chris Runckel President of Runckel and Associates. Chris Runckel: There really is no one China, you have china thats along the Eastern sea board which now is a very, actually a more a more advanced developing area for doing business. It has very good infrastructure, road systems, very good communications system in the major cities. You have modern buildings, a lot of the accoutrements that any business would be looking for. Then you have the western area of the country which tends to be much poorer, much less developed, infrastructure is starting to go in there. The government is making a push to install infrastructure through the western region and its coming up but really the cost of internal shipping inside China and some of the other costs that are added in a project still makes western China not as attractive are as it might be. Stephen Philips: For most businesses theyre going to be focussing on the more urban areas, but those urban areas arent just Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, there are many cities across China that have more than a million people which is unlike the UK clearly. CBBC itself has got offices in 11 cities across China, most of those cities most British people will not even have heard of. Chongqing in the west of China for instance, its an urban area, has got 30 million people, half the size of the UK and yes its probably somewhere that the vast majority of people have never heard of. Chris Runckel: For the west you have India which is a very, very good location for lower cost projects which have more labour content in them. Fairly good protection of intellectual property, some significant ...