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The idea to organize the Chinese Enterprise Summit was originated to create an annually business matching-making event for Dutch and Chinese enterprises. Although CES got setback in 2006 & 2007, its initiating team did not give up and decided to try another time.

Currently, the preparation of CES 2008 has been started and the next CES will be held in three locations: The Hague, Helsinki and Reykjavík. More than 80% of the total programmes would take place in Holland. In the following text, a few recommendations will be given to make the third CES succeed in the next round.

First of all, the objectives of the CES 2008 are identified as follow:

1). Promote CES 2008 and its activities in a coherent way.

2). Improve the communication between the CES organizing team and all applicants or attendants.

3). Ensure Chinese participants to comply with the application procedures and decide the attendance before the deadline.

4). Minimize the misunderstandings during the event caused by language problems.

5). Lessen the ineffective communication caused by distinctive culture perceptions.

6). Help Chinese participants to improve the presentation of company images.

To achieve mentioned objectives, the following means are recommended as:

1). Various communication channels can be used; for example, distributing print-out promotions, organizing press conference, publishing articles and news reports, constructing a website of useful information and finding appropriate sponsors etc.

2). Different channels will be used to communicate with applicants or potential participants, such as creating an e-community, distributing promotion DVDs, and publishing regular press releases and newsletters.

3). A one-month business trip to China will be arranged to enhance the relationship with Chinese officials. Use the influential power of Chinese governments to force the applicants to make final decisions as early as possible.

4). Recruit more translators by publishing advertisements on newspaper two months before the event. Arrange professional translators for one-week intensive training regarding translating skills.

5). Remind all participants the existence of cultural differences by making a printing guide book containing tips of cross-cultural communication and diverse business etiquettes beforehand and publish useful suggestions on the website.

6). Remind Chinese participants to prepare several company brochures before their departure. Advise principals to improve the quality of company publicities, i.e. format of designing, English writing – using simple and clear sentence, in order to minimize the misunderstandings and misinterpretations.

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http://www.geert-hofstede.com

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CENGAGE Lrng Business Press.

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http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Eric_Yee

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http://www.bbcer.com/publication/refer/2

Zhou, J. (2005). Cultural barriers to intercultural business negotiations. Business Intelligence Development.(6)

Appendix I: Interview with the CES project manager

Ms. Maja Chunmei Sun is the project manager who initiated the Chinese Enterprise Summit and was in charge of handling the event planning and execution. When working in The Sun-Sun Group BV, I have established intimate personal contact with her in addition to the boss-employee relation. Thus, she delivered much detail information about the CES in the casual daily talks. On 15 July 2007, I requested a formal interview with her for the final paper’s research. The interview transcript is summarized as follows.

Writer: The second Chinese Enterprise Summit that was ended two months ago had overall 160 Dutch and Chinese participants. The attendant number is bigger than that of the first conference last year. How did you comment the CES year?

Maja: The second Chinese Enterprise Summit this year achieved a bit more than the first one. First of all, as you mentioned, there are more participants this year, approximately 107 Chinese and 53 Dutch, 86 Chinese companies and 38 Dutch companies. Last year, there were about 50 Chinese companies and 30 Dutch companies. Secondly, we had Chinese

government delegation that brought large-scale projects, such as Chinese Tianjin City – the biggest economic centre of North China, and Jiangxi Province – the biggest agriculture region in whole China. And finally, the second CES got intensive media exposure. From the Chinese side, nearly all important new agencies that had representative offices in Brussels sent their reporters to the CES. Chinese Central Television made a short piece of video and reported it on TV. Xinhua News Agency which is the only official new agency reporting international news published four articles in their website. All of published articles were quoted by various other media agency in over 2,400 times. In the Dutch side, NRC and Financiaal Dagblad both sent journalists to participate in the conference.

Writer: It is not easy to get so many influential media to report a business event. What’s your secret to get such large media spotlight and how to make Chinese government involve?

Maja: You are right. We spent lots of efforts to make the good relationship with media. The Chinese New Year Celebration (shorted as CNY), which is consecutively held in The Hague for five years, is another project organized by our team. The CNY project had great fame and was fully supported by the Chinese Embassy in the Netherlands. Every year, the Chinese Embassy invites reporters from all important media agencies in Brussels to write articles about the CNY project. Through this occasion, I have very good personal contact with them.

But they are professional journalists who are interested in meaningful and valuable events and occasions. We really appreciate they make public know the CES.

This year, the Tianjin and Jiangxi Government delegations are the cooperating partners that organized Chinese enterprise application. From the beginning of the first CES, we select partners in China to organize the Chinese participants. Last year, Association of the World Excellent Chinese and Beijing Century International Travel Agency were the appointed partners in China. Their main tasks were to convince potential Chinese companies to attend the CES by telephone calls, internal memos or personal contact. And all Chinese participants

for the first CES were their members and clients. But we wanted more Chinese participants this year and Association of the World Excellent Chinese could only promise 30 participants to come. Then, getting contact with Chinese provincial governments became another choice.

Chinese enterprises all have very close relationship with local government sectors and they would like to follow the instruction from the provincial governments. Once the local

governments decide to promote the CES, the number of participants will increase in the large number. Of course, it was not easy to contact with Chinese officials. In January, we visited the Tianjin and Jiangxi and finally got the support from them. Commercial department of each distributed an internal memo to introduce the CES in February.

Writer: You just mentioned the positive side. But as I know that the event has not achieved good result so far. In fact, only five companies said that they had further cooperation, for instance, oral agreement on project or planning of future visit. Do you satisfy with current situation?

Maja: It is just two months after the CES ended. Business cooperation takes normally much longer time. After we finished the evaluation, to be frank, there are some places we did less efficiently. First, there should be more Chinese attendants this year. 162 Chinese business persons applied the attendance of the 2nd CES, but 60 of them cannot make the decision in the end because they could not decide whether to go abroad before the application deadline that had been prolonged to 10 April. The original deadline was 15 March. But most of the applicants could not make the final decision in time because they need attend Chinese National Congress meeting in Beijing in March. The application deadline had been prolonged to no longer than 10 April, otherwise The Hague Chamber of Commerce – one organizing party of the CES, had no sufficient working time to find suited Dutch companies to match.

Then, through the questionnaire analysis, we found another two major mistakes. Not many Dutch participants went to the welcome dinner in the evening of opening conference day. And the task of Chinese-English translation during the business-matching did not work well. In the perspective of Chinese businessmen, business dinner is the ideal place to enhance trust and contact. They feel talking freely in a relax place. But many Dutch

participants only spared time for business meetings that were ended before 3 p.m. and were not likely to attend the dinner from 7 p.m. As to the translation problem, students act as major interpreters during the business meetings. We somewhat overvalued their ability in Chinese-English translation. It seemed they had not enough professional knowledge and practices.

Writer: You explained the causes to the result of the CES this year. If you still remember the interview last time, in April 2006 before the first CES, you said that you were fully confident to have at lease one-fifth of the total attendants who were satisfied with the event-holding and would find their new ideal business partners. But after reading the evaluation report for the CES 2006, I discovered that only seven participating companies maintained contact with

Maja: It was truly that we had confronted some difficulties for the first time. As a matter of fact, we had only three-month time to prepare the CES 2006. Because of the time issue, we could not get enough participants and can hardly control the quality of participating

companies. For example, we did not expect that more than 80% Chinese attendants cannot understand or speak English and went abroad for the first time. So they had very limited experience in dealing with foreign business persons. All communication during the business-matching totally depended on translators. But we did not arrange so many translators.

Actually, we did make some improvements in the CES 2007. As I mentioned, the CES 2007 had more participants both from the Chinese side and the Dutch side. It also gets large media attention.

Writer: The CES 2008 is on the way of preparation. Do you have some new ideas this time?

Maja: The CES 2008 will be planned to hold in three locations: The Hague, Helsinki and Reykjavík. The Netherlands, Finland and Iceland all have their strong industries. For example, agriculture, logistics in the Netherlands, timer producing in Finland, and terrestrial heat source in Iceland. The Netherlands acts as the major role and more than 80% of the total programmes will be arranged in Holland. The CES 2008 will find new turning points to connect real demands from Chinese companies with strong points of three European countries, such as technology cooperation, outsourcing contact, etc.

Writer: I wish you all good luck. Thank you for taking the interview.

Appendix II: Participants Analysis Part I: Profile of the CES participants

1. Nationality *247 respondents

5. Experience dealing with foreigners *247 respondents

Nothing 36.0% 89

A bit 25.9% 64

Enough 21.1% 52

A lot 6.5% 16

Very much 10.5% 26

Part II. Comment on the event

6. The CES programs are relevant to my work. *240 respondents

Nothing 6.3% 15

A bit 9.6% 23

Enough 46.7% 112

A lot 9.6% 23

Very much 27.9% 67

7. The CES has extended my networks that are relevant to my work. *232 respondents

Nothing 19.4% 45

A bit 14.7% 34

Enough 23.3% 54

A lot 37.9% 88

Very much 4.7% 11

8. The CES provides me with new idea and knowledge relevant to my work. *236 respondents

Nothing 14.4% 34

A bit 29.7% 70

Enough 37.7% 89

A lot 8.9% 21

Very much 9.3% 22

9. Please rank the main programs of the CES. *78 respondents

10. Motives of the CES participants * 247 respondents

11. Did you reach your goals? *231 respondents

Nothing 22.9% 53

13. How long did the business matching take? *139 respondents

< 15 minutes 16.5% 23

15~30 minutes 51.1% 71

31~45 minutes 30.2% 42

> 45 minutes 2.2% 3

14. Do you need a translator in your business meeting? * 167 respondents

Yes 92.2% 154

No 7.8% 13

15. Do you think the translator can help the meeting? *167 respondents

Nothing 26.9% 45

A bit 38.9% 65

Enough 20.4% 34

A lot 12.6% 21

Very much 1.2% 2

Part III. Summary of follow-up interviews

16. Do you maintain the contact with any company you met during the CES? * 190 respondents

Yes 88.9% 169

No 11.1% 21

17. Why did you think you fail to maintain the business contact? * 190 respondents

I am too busy to contact the counter-business. 9.5% 18

The counter-business was not interesting enough. 20.0% 38

I expected the counter-business to contact me first. 9.5% 18

We did not have good communication during the CES business-matching. 40.0% 76 The counter-business did not react to my contact request. 17.9% 34

Others 3.2% 6

18. Do you think the meeting of the CES business-matching run well? *190 respondents

Nothing 28.9% 55

A bit 46.3% 88

Enough 11.1% 21

12. Would you like to develop business cooperation with the company you met during the CES?

Very much 1.6% 3

19. Which factors do you think led to the satisfactory result? * 48 respondents a).The company has interesting products and production ability. 25.0% 12

b).Communicating without translation was possible. 16.7% 8

c).Communication was pleasant. 54.2% 26

d).Others 4.2% 2

* 86 respondents

a).Chinese people don't speak good English. 27.9% 24

b).Translators did not help much. 12.8% 11

c).Chinese businessmen are reluctant to talk about the product price. 8.1% 7 d).The company brochure they provide was not interesting to read. 2.3% 2

e).Chinese counter-partners often avoided eye contact. 3.5% 3

f).The company is not qualified enough to further business cooperation. 15.1% 13

g).Chinese officials behaved too much arrogant. 2.3% 2

h).Chinese businessmen delivered too much vague information. 16.3% 14

i).The products or projects they provided did not interest me sufficiently. 10.5% 9 j).It's annoying of Chinese businessmen to request me drink a lot during the dinner. 1.2% 1

* 104 respondents

a).Translators took too much time during the meeting. 27.9% 29

c).Dutch businessmen didn't like drink wines. 3.8% 4

d).Dutch people behaved too directly and wanted to start main points every quickly. 15.4% 16

f).Dutch participants did not show enough respects. 10.6% 11

h).Dutch counter-partners had too less knowledge about China. 1.9% 2

e).Dutch counter-businessmen always asked very detail questions at the first meeting, some of which were identified as business secrets.

b).There were no enough chances to have through talk with Dutch counter-partner during the dinner.

g).Dutch people ended the meeting too soon, therefore the meeting was too short to discuss more.

20. Which factors do you think led to ineffective result with Chinese counter-partner?

21. Which factors do you think led to ineffective result with Dutch counter-partner?

14 13.5%

8.7% 9

18.3% 19