These come up repeatedly, across sectors and company sizes. They are not failures of effort; they are reasonable European instincts applied where they do not transfer.
The six
- Showing the brand before registering it. Rights generally go to the first to file. A trade show can cost you your own name.
- Choosing the first enthusiastic distributor. Enthusiasm is not capability. The distributor who asks difficult questions is usually the better one.
- Translating the website instead of localising it. A translated page answers questions nobody is asking, in the wrong order.
- Creating an entity before having revenue that needs one. Two years of administrative cost for a readiness never used.
- Treating one trip as market entry. The first trip creates interest; the second creates contracts. Budgeting only the first wastes it.
- Reading silence as refusal. It usually means the decision moved somewhere you cannot see.
The pattern underneath
Every one of them comes from treating China as a further market rather than a different one. The commercial logic is familiar; the order in which things must happen is not. Getting the sequence right costs almost nothing — getting it wrong is what makes entries expensive.