I often hear Finnish companies, especially from ICT field, saying that they are scared to collaborate with Chinese companies because there is a lack of IPR in China and Chinese companies steal the foreign technology. Yes, this is still unfortunately partly true. However, IPR issues have improved steadily in China. Foreign companies have won cases related to violation of IPR against Chinese companies. There are still special fields where Finnish companies are considered forerunners, but for how long?
China has had the biggest number of R&D personnel and researchers in the world since 2001. According to Professor Max von Zedtwitz whom I met in Beijing in 2007, there are ca. 800 000 engineers graduating in China annually. Vesa Heikkinen,the former country manager of Tieto mentioned in a seminar that only in Chengdu city there are around 75 000 graduates from science and technology fields each year. In Finland, the number of all degree graduates is ca. 85 000 per year. When I compare those figures between Finland and China, I only wonder, what if Chinese are already doing the things that we are doing or maybe even more. More and more multinational companies are setting up their R&D facilities in China as they consider China as a growing talent pool.
It is advised in many publications and China seminars that a Chinese partner is recommendable in order to enter Chinese market. It is almost necessary to find a local partner in order to reach customers and gain at least a decent market share in a very competitive market area. However, a representative of an international ICT company mentioned in a China seminar that they have made their success in China alone and they have never needed a local partner. In the same seminar a representative of another company providing laboratory information systems emphasized that they could have not managed to make their way in Chinese market without local partners. Well, it turned out that the customers of the one without local partners were actually foreign companies operating in China; the same customers as the company serves globally. The customers of the latter one were Chinese companies. What happens when the first one wants to have Chinese customers; can they still manage alone?
Summa summarum, we can not avoid the fact that we are only a small population of people and the rest of the world is out there. China is estimated to be the biggest economy in the world by the 2020s. Their culture is different from our culture. How do we even know they want to buy our products? Not to be left outside, I think it is the time to learn to cope with the tiger and supplement our own knowledge and expertise through collaboration with Chinese.
