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Facts to be known before establishing a business setup in china

Here are some facts which must be known before establishing a business set up in China:

• In China, the family name precedes the given name, which is occasionally followed by the second name or the western equivalent of a first name. Some Chinese will switch the order of their names when they are dealing with foreigners. In addition, married women rarely take their husband’s family name.
• Chinese usually conduct business over lunch and dinner, and deals are often concluded over a meal. Entertaining is a critical part of Chinese business culture.
• You have more than one option for a local presence – WOFE, Contractual Joint Venture, Equity Joint Venture, Representative Office, or a local representation by a third party.
• Carefully define your business scope – Scope must be defined so as to be permitted and encouraged by China National Development and Reform Commission.
• Select the right location for operations.
• Confirm the minimum registered Capital – based on the judgement of your business scope and operation scale.
• Integrate commercial clauses in the Articles of Association to maximize profit repatriation – The AOA is to be submitted to local government agencies for approval and filling during business license registration.
• Fully understand employer’s responsibilities and liabilities – China issued the new Law of Labour in 2007 which specifies issues on employment contract, redundancy, etc. You also need to be aware of the mandatory employee welfare and benefits so as to include such costs in the budget.
• Conduct thorough due diligence and credit check on your joint venture partners – Your partners may not be what they claim to be. Chinese have a business culture to show their wealth and status and look financially viable but live on bank loans and personal debts.
• Develop a comprehensive local employee management system – A sound and robust employee management system will encourage the engagement and commitment of local staff and avoid potential risks.
• Never give a Chinese person a clock as a gift. It denotes to attend someone’s funeral.
• Business cards printed in both Chinese and English should be presented and received with respect in accordance with Chinese custom at all business occasions.
• Courtesy and good manners are appreciated by the Chinese and are fundamental in any business discussions and negotiations. Patience is great asset in dealing with these people.
• Make friends first, do business later – You may have to take several trips before getting the contracts signed.
• Don’t take their saying “YES” literally to mean affirmative – They have a habit to say yes to show that they are paying attention to you. In such a context, the word “yes” does not mean that they agree with what you say or that they agree with your terms.
• Superstitions and Numbers: The number 4 rhymes with ‘death’ or ‘failure,’ number 14 rhymes with ‘sure to fail’, ‘sure to die’, so avoid these numbers. The number 3 rhymes with ‘growth’ and welcomed to business people, and number 8 rhymes with ‘prosperity.’ Number 168 reads in Chinese to sound like ‘forever prosperous’ a definite crowd pleaser.
• Food and beverages, Travel and transport, IT and telecommunications, Minerals and energy, Environmental protection, Building construction products and services are few of the major industry sector currently experiencing rapid growth.
• According to the Chinese Company Law, every business entity must deposit a certain amount of money equivalent to its registered capital reported to the registration authority into a specified bank account. This capital injection has to be audited by a certified public accountant and the money in this account can only be used for the company’s business activities.
• The minimum amount of registered capital required for a JV or a WFOE starts from USD100,000 while for companies in some specific industries, this minimum registered capital requirement can be much higher.
• Do your “due diligence,” well.
• Check the reliability of the data on your partner or customer from independent sources.
• Be careful, you can lose a lot of money if you make a great deal with the wrong partner.
• In addition to creating proforma balance sheets, spend some time at the beginning of a project to create scenarios of what you will do if things go wrong. Try to anticipate possible problem areas. If you can’t find any, hire somebody who knows well about the potential problems to help you.
• Create a strategy to deal with potential problems. Have an escape strategy for each stage of your project, even though you do not plan to use it.
• Chinese have a high regard for rank and seniority. The Chinese will be impressed by and are usually more attentive to senior representatives of foreign firms. Ranking your company can help to impress the Chinese, especially if you are the biggest or the oldest.
• If you are dealing directly with a customer in China, make sure you receive cash for full payment first or use a letter of credit (L/C) to receive payment.
• Be careful – as Chinese insist that your senior executive travel to China immediately to sign the contract with them in person and request money prior to the trip to pay for a reception in your honour, and/or, once in China, they request money or goods to “grease the wheels” with local officials.

– They insist to pay you later

– Their telephone numbers are always busy or never answered during business hours.

– They have no English speaking staff although they claim they have been in the import/export business for years.

In today’s connected world, where customers research purchases online and seek recommendations from friends and family, it is in the best interest of most small businesses to have a vibrant and interactive social media presence.

What other points do you have to add to the list? Please leave your viewpoints in the comments.

20 Things highly focused people don’t do

Successful people are those who are highly focused because focus is the key to success. They are the ones who do not deviate from their goal plans and they know what is important to them and what not. Highly focused people are not different people but they do things differently. It is this difference in their working style and pattern which keeps them focused and hence helps them produce results. They live in present situations and don’t worry on the future outcomes. They enjoy their work and love to do it. They don’t do things which can have negative impact on their work. They develop certain habits and follow them on regular basis. They are thoughtful people who judge every act on their priority lists. They just cut off the unimportant ones. They know where to say no. Here are certain things they don’t’ do or avoid because they know these acts will kill their productive time and will deviate them from their success path. Here is the list of such things:

1. They don’t jump to peep into their e-mails and social networks as a very first job:

Highly focused people don’t check their e-mails and social networks as a very first job. They know better how to focus on their work and start working the real work as a kick start. We have a fresh mind and positive waves in the start of the day. By checking e-mails you are working for the other’s problems and not your own work. While checking e-mails and social networks too, they just utilize these tools towards their goals achievements and leave the rest. They don’t indulge in unnecessary matters. They just do their real work first which is the first step towards producing results.

 

2. They don’t make silly excuses:

Highly focused people don’t make silly excuses not to work. They are a dreamer, a doer and a believer of their work. They know well how they can concentrate on their work and produce results. They know time is short and they have to produce results in the given time. They know well making excuses is easy, but they know the fact well that it will distract them from their way to success. They just make reasons why not to work. They manage their work activities well in their time and keep on improving until they are well enough.

 

3. They don’t waste a single minute of time:

Highly focused people don’t waste their single minute of time. They know how to best utilize their time and they even know how to fully utilize the gaps of time they are idle or waiting on. They know time is money and they have to perform in the given time. They don’t excuse, “I don’t have the time,” because they know that the people who succeed also have the same amount of time in a day. They know life is a race and if they do not perform there are thousands of people who are utilizing the same time to conquer their dreams and they will go ahead.

 

4. They don’t live in their comfort zones and let lack of resources stop them:

Highly focused people don’t live in their comfort zones. They know how to live with constrains and with limited resources. They know better that the person they want to become can only be achieved living outside their comfort zones. They invent techniques using their creativity to reach their goals with the limited resources they have.

 

5. They don’t involve themselves in the matters that don’t concern them:

Highly focused people don’t involve themselves in the business or people that don’t concern them. They don’t poke their nose in other’s work neither they like other’s poking their nose in their work. They are concentrated towards their goals and how to achieve them.

 

6. They don’t compare themselves to others:

Highly focused people don’t compare themselves to others. They learn from every positive attribute they find in others. They are content with what they have and keep an eye on other’s achievements to learn the positive insights from them. They try to learn from the predecessor and even from the successor. They are always busy improving themselves that they hardly find time to compare with others. They know comparing to others is never reasonable because everyone is different and have different capacities and capabilities. They are always their self – motivator.

 

7. They don’t allow negative thoughts in their minds:

Highly focused people don’t allow negative thoughts override them, neither are they moved by the negative feedbacks and critics. They only take it as an opportunity to improve and learn. They are focused and optimistic people. They are the believers and do trust on their work and aim to make positive impact in the world. They believe in themselves.

 

8. They don’t multitask:

Highly focused people focus on one task at a time and don’t indulge in multitasks. There are some people who indulge in multitasking and keep doing different works almost near to complete 95% – 98% completeness and are not able to finish their tasks and produce results. They just wait to make it perfect. But there is nothing perfect as such. Even in a perfect work, as many times you go through, you can find some place for improvements. So keep this in mind, and go complete your task with full dedication to increase your productivity before you leap on to another.

9. They don’t gossip and make meetings standing up:

They don’t indulge themselves in unnecessary talks. They don’t feel the need to talk critics and look down about others as they are themselves busy in achieving their own goals and don’t indulge in backbiting talks of others as they consider it as their productive time killer. They make meetings standing up so that they don’t waste their time in unnecessary talks.

 

1. They don’t procrastinate: Highly focused people don’t procrastinate. They know well what is to be done now and what later. They are mindful and have clear vision and live in the present situation. They just work on their priority basis. They don’t peep out of their minds over the unnecessary jobs. They focus on their goals and work to accomplish them. They know better that a good plan executed today is far better than the great plan executed someday.

 

1. They don’t entertain distractions: They limit themselves to their tasks on hand and do not entertain distractions. They are highly focused to produce the end results. They keep themselves far from e-mail, social media and chat alerts. They also keep themselves far from people who make them distract from their work. They know very well that such distractions can cause effect on their work quality and hence deteriorate it. They manage their activities well within their productive time.

 

2. They don’t judge people and make comparisons and seek validations from others:

Highly focused people believe in their work and themselves. They know if they themselves don’t believe in their work why should others bother about it. They work for themselves first then for others. They work for their own self-growth and they are focused on their own work. They know that everyone has a story which has made them and every story is different. They don’t compare themselves with others except with the person they were yesterday. They present their work in the best possible way and can prove it to be right. Here I would like to quote few words of Mr. Ratan Tata, who says, “I don’t believe in taking the right decisions, I take decisions first, then make them right.” That’s the spirit with which they work.

 

3. They don’t allow disorganization:

Highly focused people don’t allow disorganization in their lives. They know well that there should be a place for everything and everything should be in it’s place. It saves a lot of time and you can get instant access in the time of needs. It also helps them to boost their productivity, otherwise a lot of time is wasted to procure the items when they are needed, which have an adverse effect on our productivity as well as generates stress.

4. They don’t fear to take risk:

Highly focused people are never afraid to take risks. They just do what they ought to do and just do their tasks. They don’t let fear dominate their lives and worry about the results. They know if they don’t do it now, it cannot be done. Who has seen tomorrow? They take chances and grab every opportunity which comes their way. They know better how to grab every possible opportunity, they come across. They don’t bother to change their profession, to dare any challenge, or to go for some new project. They take risks to succeed and experience from the failures. They don’t want to regret on not taking risks in the end.

5. They don’t dwell on the past:

Highly focused people don’t dwell on the past. They learn lessons and take experiences from their past and live in the present. They let go the things which happened in the past because their desire to success is always greater than their fear of failure. They learn from their mistakes and keep going on.

6. They don’t act randomly but prudently:

Highly focused people don’t act randomly but prudently. They judge before doing and take time to act with prudence. They stick to their goals and keep pushing themselves towards it. Even when they feel low they go back and think why they started and it gives them a boost and increases their motivation level towards their goals. They are of the thinking “when other’s can, why can’t I?”

 

7. They don’t have unrealistic expectations:

Highly focused people don’t have unrealistic expectations. They are patient people and do work for themselves. They know there are no shortcuts to success. They work with full concentration and focus to produce results, they are realistic and they know well life is not easy. They know well how to dance in the rain. They know unrealistic expectations are only the source of stress and frustration. They don’t panic when the outcomes don’t go as planned, rather sit back calmly and monitor where they lacked the focus and what went wrong.

8. They don’t say yes to everything:

Highly focused people don’t say yes to everything. They know well where to say no and where to cut off, they do that politely. They know that they can’t please everyone, they focus on their own priorities and they don’t bother about others if they did not give value additions towards achievement of their goals. They know that they can’t judge others and what they think about them. Those who bother don’t need any attention and to others it doesn’t matters. Research conducted at the University of California in San Francisco shows that the more difficulty that you have saying no, the more likely you are to experience stress, burnout, and even depression. “No” is a powerful word that you should not be afraid to wield. Saying no to a new commitment honours your existing commitments and gives you the opportunity to successfully fulfill them.

9. They don’t look backwards and quit:

Highly focused people don’t look backwards on the way they have started. They only move forward. They know that the road to success is not that easy and it required lot of efforts, hard work, and continuous dedicated efforts to achieve anything worthwhile. Highly focused people are tough people who never quit. They know that failure is an unavoidable part of their growth process and they have to work harder and smarter when the time demands and they keep an eye on their goals and investigate where they lacked in order to get succeed. They are hard determined people whose will power can shake for a while but they never allow themselves to quit because they know they have to succeed in any way possible. They investigate the root cause and what was the reason they couldn’t make it, they learn from their failures and again try to succeed till they actually get success.

 

1. They don’t blindly accept what they read on the internet as truth without thinking about it:

Highly focused people don’t blindly accept what they read on the internet as truth without thinking about it. They make their own judgement based on their so far accumulated knowledge and look at the source and relevance of any material on their work and lives. They just take the relevant excerpts and leave the rest.

That’s all I added up to this list of 20 things highly focused people don’t do. Do you have any other? Please leave a comment.

100 Lessons from Henry Ford

Innovators change things. They take new ideas, sometimes their own, sometimes other people’s, and develop and promote those ideas until they become an accepted part of daily life. Innovation requires self-confidence, a taste for taking risks, leadership ability and a vision of what the future should be. Henry Ford had all these characteristics, but it took him many years to develop all of them fully.

Henry Ford (July 30, 1863 – April 7, 1947) was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. Although Ford did not invent the automobile or the assembly line,He developed and manufactured the first automobile that many middle class Americans could afford.

As owner of the Ford Motor Company, he became one of the richest and best-known people in the world. He is credited with “Fordism”: mass production of inexpensive goods coupled with high wages for workers.

Here are 100 great lessons from him:

1. “In Life there are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems.”
2. “Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
3. “My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me.”
4. “If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.”
5. “One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
6. “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do.”
7. “A business absolutely devoted to service will have only one worry about profits. They will be embarrassingly large.”
8. “An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.”
9. “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays wages.”
10. “Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it.”
11. “You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don’t seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together.”
12. “There is joy in work. There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.”
13. “It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.”
14. “A bore is a person who opens his mouth and puts his feats in it.”
15. “You can’t learn in school what the world is going to do next year.”
16. “I am looking for a lot of men who have an infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”
17. “Most people spend more time and energy going around problems than in trying to solve them.”
18. “Whatever you have, you must either use or lose.”
19. “We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.”
20. “I do not believe a man can ever leave his business. He ought to think of it by day and dream of it by night.”
21. “Wealth, like happiness, is never attained when sought after directly. It comes as a by-product of providing a useful service.”
22. “History is more or less bunk.”
23. “What’s right about America is that although we have a mess of problems, we have great capacity – intellect and resources – to do something about them.”
24. Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.
25. If you think you can do a thing or you think you can’t do a thing, you are right.
26. Anyone who stops learning is old,whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.
27. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goals.
28. Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though it is sometimes hard to realize this. For the world was build to develop character and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in marching onward.
29. Don’t find fault, find a remedy. Anybody can complaint.
30. I believe God is managing affairs and that he doesn’t need any advice from me. With God in charge, I believe everything will work out for the best in the end. So what is there to worry about.
31. If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
32. One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn’t do.
33. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
34. Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.
35. If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.
36. The man who will use his skill and constructive imagination to see how much he can give for a dollar, instead of how little he can give for a dollar, is bound to succeed.
37. It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
38. A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business.
39. Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait, the grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.
40. Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
41. Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.
42. There is one rule for the industrialist and that is: Make the best quality of goods possible at the lowest cost possible, paying the highest wages possible.
43. Time and money spent in helping men to do more for themselves is far better than mere giving.
44. The competitor to be feared is one who never bothers about you at all, but goes on making his own business better all the time.
45. There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.
46. I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.
47. Competition is the keen cutting edge of business, always shaving away the costs.
48. As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.
49. Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.
50. A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.
51. Money is like an arm or leg – use it or lose it.
52. The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
53. Exercise is bunk. If you are healthy, you don’t need it; if you are sick you should not take it.
54. Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.
55. The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
56. If I have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.
57. Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it’s black.
58. Vision without execution is just hallucination.
59. Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.
60. You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn’t correct. We all start with all there is, it’s how we use it that makes things possible.
61. The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.
62. Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.
63. When Henry Ford decided to produce his famous V-8 motor, he chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was placed on paper, but the engineers agreed, to a man, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder engine-block in one piece. Ford replied,”Produce it anyway.
64. Success is 99% failure.
65. I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.
66. None of our men are ‘experts.’ We have most unfortunately found it necessary to get rid of a man as soon as he thinks himself an expert because no one ever considers himself expert if he really knows his job. A man who knows a job sees so much more to be done than he has done, that he is always pressing forward and never gives up an instant of thought to how good and how efficient he is. Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible. The moment one gets into the ‘expert’ state of mind a great number of things become impossible.
67. There are three things that grow more precious with age; old wood to burn, old books to read, and old friends to enjoy.
68. Whether you believe you can or believe you can’t, you are absolutely right.
69. Money doesn’t make us anyway it just unmasks us.
70. I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one.
71. Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
72. The way to learn to do things is to do things. The way to learn a trade is to work at it. Success teaches how to succeed. Begin with the determination to succeed, and the work is half done already.
73. “I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”
74. “We try to pay a man what he is worth and we are not inclined to keep a man who is not worth more than the minimum wage.”
75. “Genius is seldom recognized for what it is: a great capacity for hard work.”
76. “You don’t have to hold a position in order to be a leader.”
77. “To do more for the world than the world does for you – that is success.”
78. “Where people work longest and with least leisure, they buy the fewest goods. No towns were so poor as those of England where the people, from children up, worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day. They were poor because these overworked people soon wore out — they became less and less valuable as workers. Therefore, they earned less and less and could buy less and less.”
79. “There is no disgrace in honest failure; there is disgrace in fearing to fail”
80. “New York is a different country. Maybe it ought to have a separate government. Everybody thinks differently, they just don’t know what the hell the rest of the United States is.”
81. “As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty and special privilege grow”
82. “That the Devil finds work for idle hands to do is probably true. But there is a profound difference between leisure and idleness.”
83. “Those who believe they can do something and those who believe they can’t are both right.”
84. “To see a thing clearly in the mind makes it begin to take form.”
85. “Sometimes you just don’t like somebody”
86. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
87. “As we serve our jobs we serve the world.”
88. “Experience is the thing of supreme value.”
89. “To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”
90. “The one aim of these financiers is world control by the creation of inextinguishable debt.”
91. “It ought to be the employer’s ambition as leader to pay than any similar line of business, and it ought to be the workman’s ambition to make it possible”
92. “Success is about creating value
    Failure is a chance to begin again more intelligently. It is just a resting place. We learn more from our failures than our success”
93. “Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist, and you will sweep war from the earth.”
94. “Speculation into thing already produced that is not business”
95. “It is not usual to speak of an employee as a partner, and yet what else is he?”
96. “The idea of gas engines was by no means new, but this was the first time that a really serious effort had been made to put them on the market. They were received with interest rather than enthusiasm and I do not recall any one who thought that the internal combustion engine could ever have more than a limited use. All the wise people demonstrated conclusively that the engine could not compete with steam. They never thought that it might carve out a career for itself. That is the way with wise people—they are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. That is why I never employ an expert in full bloom. If ever I wanted to kill opposition by unfair means I would endow the opposition with experts. They would have so much good advice that I could be sure they would do little work.”
97. “Givers have to set limits because takers rarely do.”
98. “It is probably true that the commonest real cause of anti-semitism is the action of the international Jew who is often unknown and always secure, but innocent victim of it is the poor Jew.”
99. “That man is best educated who knows the greatest number of things that are so, and who can do the greatest number of things to help and heal the world.”
100. “Technically this isn’t a quote because no one can verify that Ford said these very words.”