Every project is different and nobody can give you dates. But the shape is remarkably consistent, and it is the shape that matters: it tells you whether four quiet months are a failure or a phase. Companies that abandon a China project almost always do so during a period that was going exactly as it should.
Phase 1 — Understanding what you are walking into
Who already sells your category, at what price, through which channel; what regulation applies; whether your trademark is still available. This phase is cheap, unglamorous and routinely skipped. Skipping it does not save time — it moves the same discovery to a point where it costs money instead of attention.
Phase 2 — Making yourself findable and credible
Chinese-language material that answers a buyer's real questions, a presence that loads from China, a name that works in Chinese. This produces nothing measurable for months and is the reason the later phases work at all — a partner who can look you up behaves differently from one who cannot.
Phase 3 — Meeting people, and the long quiet
Meetings go well. Then nothing happens for a long time. This is the phase where projects die, and it is also the phase where the work is real: your contact is checking you, discussing you internally, waiting for a budget cycle, or simply seeing whether you are still there in six months. Disappearing during this period answers their question.
Phase 4 — A first order that is a test
The first order is almost always smaller than you hoped and is not really about the product. It tests your paperwork, your lead time, your response when something goes wrong, and whether the person who visited still answers. Treating it as a small order rather than as an examination is a common and costly misreading.
Phase 5 — Where it compounds
Repeat orders, introductions to their network, a second territory. Everything that made the first four phases slow now makes this one fast — which is the whole argument for not stopping at phase three.
Two things genuinely compress this calendar: arriving with material a partner can circulate internally without translating it, and having someone present who can answer within the day. Neither changes the phases; both shorten each one.