News

Our December 2009 China Trip

Joel Lebewitz made a successful business trip to China from December 1 – 11, 2009.

In the 10 days on the ground, he traveled to 6 cities including Beijing, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Ningbo, Hangzhou and Shanghai, and conducted more than 20 meetings and visits. The contacts that Joel met in China include our alliance Chinese CPA firms, law firms, sourcing agents, government foreign trade offices, educational institutes, investment banking firms, as well as manufacturing and engineering companies.

In Beijing, Joel visited the representative office of the University of Minnesota in China and met with the director of the office and representative of Chinese alumni, discussed assisting the University of Minnesota's Chinese alumni to develop business connections in the states. In Guangzhou, Joel did a presentation on doing business in the U.S. in the executive MBA program at the Management School of Sun Yat-Sen University, one of the best universities in China. The audience consisting of business executives and entrepreneurs responded enthusiastically to this topic and left various business leads on which to follow up. In Ningbo, the University of Minnesota alumni in the government sector hosted a welcome dinner for Joel with a promise of continuous support in the future. Also, the Director of the Ningbo Foreign Trade Bureau extended an invitation to our China Strategies Consulting Group to participate in their provincial Foreign Investment Symposium in the summer of 2010. The visit at Hangzhou was also fruitful. The discussion with our alliance firm in Hangzhou covered potential cooperation in areas of audit, international tax planning, IT audit and consulting, foreign investment advisory service and PI China market development. In Shanghai, Joel met with our sourcing alliance team to discuss and evaluate several sourcing projects for clients, which confirmed potential meaningful savings for the clients.

From this trip, Joel saw the growth of valid interest of successful Chinese private firms to expand and invest in the U.S. market. Our existing network in China will definitely help direct those initiatives to our office. With our expertise in the office, we hopefully will be the leader in this trend in the Mid West market.