| | Jun 10th, 2004
| | | Digging a Tunnel To China
| | | June 10 - 17, 2004 | Kate Wallace
2004 Here Publishing Inc.
Digging a tunnel to China
A Saint John man and Chinese woman link Canada and the world’s most populous nation.
A bit of advice from local businessman Mike Tilley to anyone doing business in China: put aside your copy of Asian Business Etiquette for Dummies and turn instead to Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, an ancient manual that can shed light on negotiating in the world’s most populous nation.
Tilley, president of CANLink Global, a Saint John based company that links business opportunities between China and Canada, said he has seen tactics from the ancient treatise used in China’s boardrooms and karaoke bars.
"When you read it so much more makes sense," he said. "And it gives counter moves," he added.
Tilley, whose business opened its Charlotte Street office this January, said even Chinese schoolchildren are educated with Sun Tzu’s ideas. "Negotiation tactics are taught at a pretty young age," Tilley said. In China, he said, "Everybody’s in business in one form or another."
Perhaps even more valuable than his copy of The Art of War, however, is a human resource Tilley has at his disposal: Xiaoxing Han, a Chinese immigrant he first met when the two were working at local IT firm Kinek Technologies. Han (who goes by the nickname Cindy in Canada to help English tongues pronounce her name) moved to Saint John for a position with Kinek in March, 2003, after living in Toronto for three years, where she studied English and worked for an e-commerce company.
Since the economic downturn a few years back, Saint John has seen some of its high-tech darlings fall on hard times. A lot of talented, young professionals were left without jobs and there was a fear that this would contribute to the out-migration of young people that has afflicted the city for the past 10 years.
Tilley and Han are success stories, both from a retention and an immigration perspective.
When Tilley and Han lost their jobs after Kinek scaled back last year, Tilley saw it as an opportunity to leverage his Chinese contacts and go into business for himself. From his experience as a rep in the Asia/Pacific market he already had a strong Chinese contact base in place. And Han was a natural addition to CANLink Global not only as director of translation and communications but also for her implicit understanding of her country’s business climate. "In China, if you want to do business you have to have a connection," she explained. "You need to deal with people personally. The relationship is very important."
Unlike North America, where connections tend to be forged between companies, "In Asia, it really stays with the person," Tilley said. "Our networks stayed exactly the same."
Han has a theory about why this difference might exist. "Canada has a very well established business system. Everything is regulated by laws and restrictions," she said. In the less regulated Chinese business climate, however, it is more important for trust to develop between business associates.
When Tilley first travelled to China three years ago as a software rep, "I knew that this was the future," he said. "There’s such a buzz." Since then he has returned seven times, with another trip booked for June.
Many factors have contributed to the nation taking huge strides towards development, not least its 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization. "There are more cranes in Beijing than in all of Canada," Tilley said. Host city to the 2008 Summer Olympics, China’s capital city, in particular, is experiencing a huge push to Westernize and modernize. As Han put it, "Development creates opportunity."
Tilley’s first introduction to China was simultaneously a heady and exhausting experience. Three years ago, he and a colleague flew from Saint John to Hong Kong, where Tilley entrusted his passport with a local "agent" who disappeared into the crowd with promises of returning 10 minutes later with an entry visa into China. "Ten minutes turned into 20, into 30, into 40. I thought for sure I’d been taken. I thought, ’Here I am stuck between two borders with no passport,’" he said.
But the agent returned, visa in hand, in time for Tilley and his travelling companion to squeeze onto a hot, crowded bus and cross into China, where they were met by their local business associates. Taken straight away to a dinner, Tilley said they were served chicken’s feet and sea worms as part of their first course. After the meal, the two headed directly to the airport to catch an evening flight to Xiazen, where they were ushered immediately to another banquet. "Talk about wrinkled suits! We were still carrying our luggage," Tilley said. After dinner number two they were taken to a karaoke bar into the wee hours. They barely had time to nap, shower and change in time for a 9 a.m. meeting.
Tilley said that doing business in China can sometimes feel like an exercise in endurance. "How late can you stay up? How many drinks of mau tai [a Chinese wine] can you handle? They love to test newcomers. They’ll take you to karaoke bars and have you meet early the next morning," Tilley said.
Tilley said that the stereotype about karaoke’s popularity is true. "I am not into public singing whatsoever," he said. That is, until his rendition of Elvis’ Love Me Tender elicited cheering and applause. "By the end of the night you couldn’t take the mike out of my hand," he said, laughing. "There is very much a mix of business and social lives, they are very much intertwined," Tilley said. "They try to get as much enjoyment out of their business dealings as their social lives."
That said, Tilley explained that it is not unusual for business deals to close outside of the boardroom in this kind of casual setting. He said this is the kind of thing Canadians looking to business in China need to understand. Han said China can "create a big puzzle for foreigners." One of CANLink Global’s major services is getting businesses China-ready, guiding clients through China’s political and business structure, manners, culture and gaffes to avoid.
Another role of CANLink Global is to serve as a portal into the Chinese market. "We are here to help them make deals, to solve their problems," Han said, such as facilitating the import of raw materials from Chinese suppliers directly to Atlantic Canadian companies. "In Atlantic Canada, we have kind of gathered our own nuts," Tilley said. "We tend to think domestic first, US second. "He said he understands why some companies in Atlantic Canada have been reluctant to source materials outside of North America - language, culture and geography present very real obstacles, not to mention the need to have a Chinese contact in the first place, which is where CANLink comes in.
Both Tilley and Han see education as a major opportunity for the province. "New Brunswick could be the incubator for a new model of student recruitment," Tilley said. Himself a former UNBSJ student, Tilley said that when he was enrolled in classes there in 1987 the campus was "not very international."
Now, Tilley sees major partnership opportunities with the growing body of Chinese students on the Saint John campus. "They understand New Brunswick, they’ve been here, they’ve lived here," he said. Plus, it is one of only two provinces that offers international students a two-year work visa after graduation.
Tilley points to other local products and services, including seafood and IT, as potential opportunities. In October, for instance, he wants to take a New Brunswick delegation to China’s largest high tech fair, a huge event featuring over 10 000 exhibitors, where more than $1 billion in deals will be signed. "As a province we lost a bit of our IT swagger," Tilley said. "But nationally and internationally we are still looked at as a leader."
Beyond materials and products, Tilley said expertise is another kind of export they are looking at. His old university buddy Scott Darling (who Tilley laughingly referred to as the "Karaoke King") is a case in point. Tilley took the local real estate agent and developer to China in February of this year to explore opportunities in property management. "The concept is totally new in China," Darling said. High rises are erected with the expectation that they will stand for just a dozen years.
While in China, Darling met a Chinese developer who was excited to meet a Canadian businessman in the same line of work. "He had $280 million in the ground," Darling said, laughing at the difference in scope between their projects. Cultural exchange is another avenue for the Saint John company to explore. Han, who was a radio talk show host with an audience of three million in her hometown of Dalian, has a number of contacts in China’s entertainment industry. Tilley said they were approached by the organizer of a large music festival to help source acts from Canada. The company has also been approached about arranging for a Canadian symphony to play a New Year’s concert in China.
Both Tilley and Han spoke of the need for New Brunswick to improve its immigration programs and they have been in discussion with the province on the matter. Tilley points to Manitoba as an example New Brunswick would do well to follow in terms of attracting Chinese immigration and investment.
"They have a very strong Chinese community," Tilley said, pointing to their extensive immigration support services and the fact that their immigration website is written in Mandarin, as well as English and French.
Han is just the kind of person the province is interested in attracting. She said she left China in the first place "to open my eyes, to open my mind." She chose to come to Canada because she perceived it as "very peaceful and very beautiful." In Toronto, however, "I felt a kind of separation from my background and my culture, which made me a little bit upset," she said. "I thought, How can I keep a balance?’"
Ironically, one of the reasons Han moved to Saint John from one of the country’s most Chinese cities was that her work here would allow her the chance to travel back to China on a regular basis.
Plus, "I fell in love with Saint John immediately," Han said. "I can smell the cold smell of the sea. This made me think it is like my hometown."
Now, Han said, "Saint John is my second home town." She and her husband are finding ways to integrate their Chinese culture with life here. He was recently elected chairman of the city’s Chinese Cultural Association, which has a core membership of 30 to 40 families. And every Sunday, Xiaoxing teaches mandarin to Canadian raised children of Chinese immigrants. "China is very crowded," she said. "You don’t really have personal space, you don’t have time to enjoy your family life." Life in Saint John, by comparison, "feels very relaxed," she said.
Tilley and Han embody the vision of CANLink Global to link opportunity between Canada and Saint John.
Appropriately, both were born in 1969, the year of the rooster on the Chinese horoscope, which is associated with an "early-bird-gets-the-worm work ethic." Han explained that the Chinese word for rooster is pronounced the same as the word for luck.t that they seem to need it. |
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