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China
Shanghai, May 2010
Shanghai is the most modern and cosmopolitan city of mainland China (without Hong Kong and Macau). Many western companies have an office in the bustling 23 million people city, among these, of course, many automotive suppliers and manufacturers. In spring 2010, I spent 1½ weeks in China travelling with a sales engineer my employer's Chinese office. Like in 2009 we visited Shenzhen and Chongqing again. From Chongqing we flow to Hangzhou at the east coast to visit the car manufacturer Geely. From there we hit the road in a taxi to cross 400km / 250mi of Chinese country side to get to Wuhu. Here, we visited the Chinese car manufacturer Chery. From Wuhu we boarded the taxi again (the driver stayed in Wuhu with us) and drove another 600km / 400mi to Shanghai. We spent the weekend in Shanghai and visited several car manufacturer (e.g. GM) and parts supplier.
In Chongqing I visited an automotive supplier for the Chinese market. The city lies in central China where the Jialing River meets the mighty Jangtze. If administrative city limits are taken as reference Chongqing has a registered population of 32 millions, which makes it the biggest city in the world.
Shenzhen is situated immediatly north of Hong Kong on the Chinese mainland. It is the fastest growing city in the world. In 1979, Shenzhen was a small place of only 30000 fishermen. Today the city counts 12 million people and has a prosperous electronics and telecom industry. Shenzhen was the first special economic zone in China and thus attractive to many foreign investors. In winter 2009 I visited the Chinese car manufacturer BYD (=Built Your Dreams). BYD is well known for copying German and Japanese cars (e.g. see the old BMW-like logo here).
Hong Kong
During business trips to Asia I stayed several times in Hong Kong. Among the destinations was the world's largest consumer electronics fair and visits to customers in nearby Shenzhen. My first trip to Hong Kong is more than 10 years ago. Since then the globalization has changed the town a lot. People became wealthy and the streets clean. Reeking pools of animal blood at steet markets and the openly carried dead pig on the bicycle obviously belong to the past. At the time of my visit in October 2008 the town was hit by the world-wide stock market crash. Many people complained about the shut-town of numerous companies in the Pearl River area.
Hong Kong, Oct. 2008/Dec. 2009
Macau, October 2008
During my stay in Hong Kong in 2008 I went on a weekend trip to the neighboring Portugese ex-colony Macau. The town grows rapidly. Land is continuously reclaimed between the islands and the mainland to provide space for ever fancier casinos.
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