Ultimate face time
Tan Wei

Back in 1999, Li Xinghao was on the verge of suffering the financial fallout of having no booth for his company, Chigo Group, at the Chinese Export Commodities Fair (CECF).
Then he reacted with some quick out-of-the-box thinking.
He hired some college students to go to the exhibition hall to invite foreign merchants to visit his company. He paid each student 500 yuan for bringing one foreign businessman to his company and 1,000 yuan if agreements were reached.
The result: Li inked contracts worth $5 million. But that’s only a drop in the ocean compared to the deals Li has signed these days, thanks to more-well-thought-out participation in the CECF of late.
“From the first day to the last day of the 100th CECF, our booths were surrounded by visitors, and every member of our business team received 100 clients every day on average,” said Li, president of the air conditioner company.
In total, Chigo received more than 2,500 overseas clients during the five-day October CECF summit, with deals valued at $450 million. “The CECF has set up a convenient channel for Chigo to advance to the international market,” Li said.
Humble beginnings
If using college students as trade-show infiltrators sounds like a sophomoric business practice, that’s nothing compared to Li’s meager financial beginnings years earlier.
Once a farmer peddling popsicles along the street, Li began to build Chigo from an air conditioner repair shop that covered only several square meters.
Today, Chigo’s own independent brand of air conditioners is sold in more than 180 countries. But in between near poverty and being listed among the top millionaires in China by Forbes in 2002, Li discovered something important about developing international networks. Chigo started to develop its international networks in 1998 with a team of several persons working for export business. The team only searched for business opportunities and sent company information to potential clients via the Internet. It is not strange that few contracts were reached.
In 1999, however, Chigo managed to sell its products in Norway, and the retail price of every air conditioner set by local dealers was as high as $1,500. Li asked the obvious question, “How can we make more overseas clients recognize the brand of Chigo and carry out substantial cooperation as soon as possible?”
That’s when the CECF first came to Li’s mind, and he spearheaded the college kids’ initiative. Li believes that through the CECF, Chigo has established cooperation with successful multinationals like Carrefour and Whirlpool.
Forget domestic customers
Before 2001, trade fairs were not as open to the private sector. But that year, 12 private companies entered the CECF with their own names for the first time.
Now, “Private companies are really playing a leading role in the CECF,” said Xiao Zhenyu, Director of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation Bureau of Guangzhou, capital city of Guangdong Province.
Compared to directly getting orders in the CECF, it is more difficult to build up a system of domestic revenues, said Zhu Qiucheng, responsible for sales at Ningbo New Oriental Manufacturing and Trading Co. Ltd., which manufactures sailboat models.
“Every year I go to the CECF twice, and there are always clients talking to our sailboat models and making orders,” Zhu said. “It is easy to do business at the CECF, and foreign clients are reputable there.”
Li Jianhua, President of the Hangzhou Wensli Group, believes that the trade show has helped to build a solid business foundation for his company.
“To most small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Zhejiang, the CECF is a platform to directly get orders,” he said. “Orders are bread and butter to the large number of SMEs in the manufacturing industry of Zhejiang.”
To large companies such as Wensli, getting orders at the CECF is not as important as using the venue to showcase their products on an international stage. With a long-term accumulation of clients, many large companies in Zhejiang have enough customers via trade platforms similar to the CECF and have established their own foreign trade networks. But additional clients are almost never a bad thing, so they still find the CECF useful.
A new role for trade fairs?
Trade fairs may be great places to connect and make deals, but could they serve a higher purpose? Some exhibitors are beginning to suggest they can be launching pads for brand building, which is sorely needed by domestic companies. “We have designed more than 1,000 varieties of clothes, attracting famous designers from Italy and France to exchange with us during the CECF,” said Wang Yongli, Deputy General Manager of the Guangdong Silk Corp. Group.
China has traditionally been known as an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) factory, and these internal product organs have made little progress toward branding.
Even in the coastal area of southeast China with the most active private economy, world famous Chinese brands are rarely seen.
Results of a recent survey made Chinese brands in embarrassment again: The survey, involving more than 2,629 foreign companies taking part in the CECF, shows that they are more familiar with the names of Chinese companies than Chinese brands. This survey was carried out by the China Brand Research Institute (CBRI) in late April, when the 99th CECF was held.
Furthermore, the surveyed foreign companies named 3,104 Chinese companies, but only 143 of these Chinese companies, or 4.6 percent, export their own brands.
Foreign companies more easily recognize Chinese companies than independent Chinese brands “mainly because most Chinese companies serve as OEMs instead of exporting their own brands,” said Zheng Xueqin, researcher at the CBRI.
Meanwhile, Guangdong is a large exporter of furniture, clothes, toys and agricultural produce. The surveyed foreign companies named 233 Guangdong-based companies in these four industries, but only 29 of them own independent brands, accounting for just 12.4 percent. Zhejiang is a large exporter of tea, electromechanical products and textiles. The surveyed foreign companies identified the names of 204 companies from Zhejiang in these three industries, but only 37 of them, or 18.1 percent, own independent brands.
Although OEMs have traditionally been the way through which domestic companies successfully made their way into the world market, at present the focus should be placed on creating more independent brands, Zheng said. That’s because southeast China’s OEM businesses only make slim processing fees, with most of the profits going to foreign brand owners, he added.
Further, OEM-oriented businesses may face trade barriers erected by foreign countries in retaliation against large export volumes. In the recent anti-dumping cases involving Chinese-made leather shoes and color TV sets initiated by the European Union and the United States, large OEM production volumes have been cited as the culprits.
According to Wang Yongli, by developing its independent brand, his company has reduced the proportion of OEM production and increased exports of products with its own brand. Wang acknowledged that his company just exported cocoon raw silk of low added value in the early period. Later it exported semi-finished silk products and now clothes and ties. The CECF has helped his company branch out with branding power. Last year, the company’s exports of products with its own brand exceeded $100 million.

(The Daily Mail-Beijing Review Articles Exchange Item)



Made in India
Momin Iftikhar

WITH emergence of terrorism as the driver of the international relations, India has been ruthless in exploiting the post September Eleven environment. Blaming Pakistan for all acts of violence occurring on her soil, the thesis of “cross border terrorism” has become a cornerstone of India’s foreign policy conduct. All falsehood, sooner or later, is destined to be exposed and much that India would persist in her brazen accusations, the undeniable ‘made in India’ brand of terrorism has, has put this theory on the fast forward mode to obsolescence.
Indigenous insurgency in Kashmir, long proffered by India as the biggest threat to her unity and security, and attributed to Pakistan, has been eclipsed by two major threats; communal violence and the left extremism, which are entirely made in India. Even as the seemingly unbridgeable Hindu Muslim divide is all set to stoke the fires of terrorism for times to come, the scale and intensity of the red tide of Naxals, inundating large swathes of Indian hinterland, is promising to surpass all benchmarks of subversive violence in India. For India the moment of truth seems to have arrived after all. While the Jul 11 Mumbai Blasts, could still arouse the ubiquitous Pakistani connection, albeit in a subdued manner, India’s acknowledgement of the indigenous moorings of the Naxal threat has been unqualified – at least for the time being. Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, while addressing the chief Ministers of the Naxal hit states in April this year, described it as “the biggest internal security challenge ever faced by the country.”
India’s grudging awakening to the threat of leftist extremism is not, by any chance, an act of sudden realization. The pot had been simmering for some time and while the Indian Intelligence agencies were concocting the chimera of Pakistan based terrorism, Naxals had been consolidating their power base and expanding their authority in the Indian hinterland. In July this year when the Mumbai’s Blasts had claimed India’s total attention, Naxal guerrillas marked their presence by striking a major blow in the Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh State. Some 800 heavily armed Naxals engaged Indian security forces and killed at least thirty one people in a relief camp. What is becoming nightmarish from the Indian perspective is that the Naxals are proving tough opponents - the count of security men killed by these guerrillas this year has surpassed the casualties sustained by the security forces in the Indian Held Kashmir. According to Indian media reports, from January to July this year, at least 102 personnel of the security were killed in the Naxal attacks while the Kashmir casualties sustained by the Indian security forces were pegged at 85.
Naxal Movement was born in 1967 in the Naxalbari Town of West Bengal and has been steadily expanding its foot print. Naxal ideology stems from the abject and all pervasive poverty in the Indian hinterland, ruthless exploitation of peasants and tribals by the landlords- timber mafia combine and crass neglect and corruption by the governmental machinery. The roots of the movement are strongest among the tribal territory of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. It is worth noting that these two states were founded on tribal identity and were meant to secure the interests of the tribal people. Good intent not withstanding, the influx of outsiders has pushed the local Adivasis to the margins of existence and has given a boost to Naxal operations. It is no coincidence that two third of the 55 most severely insurgency hit districts lie in the tribal belt. Fueled by the anger of the masses, the Red Corridor held by Naxals stretches across the swath of forest lands from Andhra Pradesh in South India to Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar and is expanding. Only the last one year and a half has seen the insurgents spreading Naxal influence from 76 districts in nine states to 118 Districts in 12 States.
Naxal movement, with the passage of time is showing signs of better organization of its political and military wings. The Communist Party of India (Maoists) was formed on September 21, 2004 through the merger of two prominent naxalite outfits – the People’s War Group (PWG) and the Maoists Communists Center (MCC). The military resources of these guerrilla movements have been now combined as People’s Guerilla Army (PGA) forming the cutting edge of the Naxal movement. A characteristic of PGA operation is attack by large groups of insurgents to paralyze a districts’ administration; giving the Indian security forces a run for their money. Large scale attacks were launched during the Assembly elections in Bihar and Jharkhand during Feb 2004. The following period of April – Jun saw the gunning down of a Superintendent of Police in Bihar and killing of 38 CRPF and State Special Forces personnel in Dandakaryana Forests of Andhra Pradesh. In the same period, synchronized attacks by the Naxal guerrillas struck various institutions of state including police stations, banks and civil administration offices in Madhuban town in North Bihar. In September that year naxalites gunned down 15 people in Jharkhand and triggered a landmine in Chhattisgarh killing 24 policemen.


Taliban resurgence in Afghanistan
Mamoona Ismail

A suicide bomber killed three people including the governor of Paktia province outside his office on September 9, 2006. The attacker, with explosives attached to his body ran into car carrying Governor Abdul Hakim Taniwal, his nephew and bodyguard, killing all of them. Taniwal had been governor of Paktia for about one and half years. Before that he was federal minister of mines and industry in the Cabinet of President Karzai. Taliban claimed responsibility for the suicidal attack and threatened more similar attacks.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started its operation on September 2nd to disrupt insurgent activities in the Panjwayi and Zhari districts. Panjwayi is the main southern city of Kandhar. NATO forces claimed killing 94 Taliban fighters in recent string of operations in these two districts of the southern Kandahar. The Afghan Army grip on insurgents remaining in the Panjwayi and Zhari districts continued to tighten, steadily and incrementally eroding the insurgent’s ability to continue to fight. During the nine day counterinsurgency attacks approximately 420 Taliban have been killed and 6 NATO and 14 British crew of reconnaissance plane have also died.
Meanwhile, the Taliban leader Qari Yousuf Ahmadi claimed that their fighters had killed 18 government and foreign troops and destroyed three tanks and two vehicles. Moreover, Anis Sharif another Taliban commander in Ghazni claimed that their fighters had gathered in Isfandi village (located 2.5 kilometers away from Ghazni city) and had planned an attack on Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT). He said that they fired four rockets on PRT, but had no details about any casualties. He rejected government’s claims regarding killing of Taliban militia.
In addition, in the western province of Farah, more than 100 Taliban fighters raided a government compound, killing two policemen and setting fire to several buildings. In Southern Zabul Province of Shah joy district Taliban killed three Afghan soldiers and wounded eight in an ambush. Afghan authorities also found body of a district education chief, who was kidnapped by suspected militants in central Ghazni province.
Unfortunately, as violence increases in Afghanistan, so do the baseless accusations regarding Pakistani hand behind it. There is a need to understand that the current unrest in Afghanistan and resurgence of Taliban is indigenous in nature. Pakistan is not providing any support to insurgents and is not sending them to Afghanistan. Pakistan’s role in combating terrorism is sufficient prove of her efforts to fight the menace of terrorism from the region. Mansoor Suhail, press minister at the Pakistan mission to the United Nations said, “Pakistan has captured more than 680 foreign terrorists and banned all organizations that were suspected of involvement in terrorism”. Pakistan has deployed 90,000 troops “three times as many as fielded in Afghanistan” to interdict al Qaeda and Taliban movement across the border.
Through a comprehensive military, political and economic strategy, Pakistan is succeeding in endeavour to end support for the Taliban in its frontier regions. Despite Pakistan’s sincere efforts to counter terrorism, exerting undue pressure on Pakistan by western media for Taliban uprising in Afghanistan is unfair. Instead of appreciating Pakistan’s sincere efforts to root out terrorists from its soil, a negative and hostile lobby is working to undermine its sincere efforts. Such negative propagation is creating doubts in the perceptions of the west about its support to Taliban. Pakistan has always considered Afghanistan its brotherly neighboring country sharing cultural, economic and political history. It provided shelter and support to over three million Afghan refugees despite great social, economic, cultural and demographic ramifications.