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France–China

Your first business trip to China: what to settle before you board

The trip is short and the flight is long. Almost everything that determines whether it was worth it is decided in the three weeks before.

France → China

First trips fail in a predictable way: the traveller arrives with a vague objective, two appointments, no way to communicate, no way to pay, and spends four of six days solving problems that had solutions at home. The trip is then judged as a disappointing market rather than as an unprepared visit.

Three weeks before

  1. Fix one objective for the trip, written in a sentence. « Qualify three suppliers » and « find a distributor » are different trips with different itineraries.
  2. Confirm appointments in writing with a date, a time, an address in Chinese and a named person. An unconfirmed meeting is not a meeting.
  3. Check the visa and the entry requirements for your nationality and purpose well ahead — these change, and they are the one thing no amount of preparation on site can fix.
  4. Send in advance what you want discussed: the specification, the drawing, the quantity. A factory that has prepared gives you a useful day; one discovering your product gives you a tour.

The practical layer

  • Communication: set up the messaging application your counterparts actually use, before leaving, and test it.
  • Payment: many everyday payments are made by phone. Arrange this in advance rather than discovering it at a taxi door.
  • Connectivity: assume the services you use daily may not be reachable, and arrange an alternative before you need it.
  • Interpretation: for a technical visit, someone who understands the product beats someone who only understands the language.
  • Documents: business cards, ideally bilingual, and a one-page company presentation you can leave behind.

Build the itinerary around geography, not enthusiasm

Distances inside China are national distances. Three factories in one industrial cluster is a productive day; three cities in three days is a travel log. Group visits by region, leave a real gap between appointments, and keep one day unscheduled — the best meeting of the trip is usually the one a supplier proposes on the second evening.

Entry rules, visa categories and payment arrangements change. Verify the current requirements with the relevant consulate and with your bank before travelling.

Keep reading on this.

ShenzhenShenzhen in a day: what the city actually is when you come to buyMost first visits are spent in the wrong places. Shenzhen is the commercial and engineering end of a region — the factories are mostly somewhere else.ShenzhenThe questions worth asking on a factory visit — and the ones that waste itA tour is not a visit. The useful questions are rarely about the machines, and the answers matter less than how easily they come.ShenzhenWhy being on the ground changes the negotiationDistance is read as optionality. A buyer who has travelled, who will come back, and who can be reached the same working day is a different counterparty.France–ChinaWhy France–China projects fail, in the order they failVery few fail because the market was wrong or the product was bad. They fail in a sequence, and each stage has a warning that was visible months earlier.

If this raised a question about your own project, tell us where you are — the first conversation usually clarifies more than a proposal.

Tell us where you are →Read the full guide