Start trading in the Chinese markets

Ranging from consumers, wholesalers, agents, and factories, from raw materials to the products in the hands of the consumer. Access to China, a UK based company, has been operating in the Chinese markets for over 20 years with over 100 years of experience among our staff.

Over the last ten years, China has moved most of its trading online. Given the size of the country and cities and 1.4 billion people, the Internet has allowed the country to grow its internal markets. This has allowed consumer prices to be driven down and quality to be greatly increased. Given these and many other benefits, the adoption of Internet technology has been fast in China.

This adoption of new technology does not stop with the internet; green technology adoption is growing very fast. Green tech is seen in China as cheaper, fastest and functionality richer. The Chinese government are driving the development due to the high pollution level in China.

Green technology our focus for 2024. Today, China is the world's largest producer and user of Green technology.

Access to the world's largest market

Overseas social media is not available in China. Having your website seen and found is critical to successful business relationship building in China.

Many regions and countries worldwide speak Mandarin, i.e., Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, California, Hong Kong, Vietnam and many more. Adding Mandarin language to your SEO data can open your website to trading worldwide beyond China. The Chinese market goes way beyond the 1.4 billion people living in China.

Given the importance of being seen on the internet in China and Chinese markets worldwide, Access to China focus of our business is getting your business, products and services seen online in China.

Chinese green technology

Green Technology is key to most businesses’ growth in the next five years. Chinese Green Technology has been developing rapidly, given consumers and government demands to reduce China's high pollution levels.

Green technology is key to most businesses’ growth in the next five years.

The development of Green Technology is starting to give greater efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase productivity, i.e., electric vehicles; greatly reduced operating costs, greatly improved performance, and improved safety.

We believe Green Technology should give you more, not less.

Sourcing products and services from China

For the last 40 years, China has built up its manufacturing base to be one of the most successful in the world.

In recent years, the growth of the Chinese domestic consumer market has increased imports from overseas of high-quality products. In turn, this has driven up the quality of locally produced products. Today, China is moving towards better quality products.

Lower-quality products are moving to other Asian countries.

The global issues, starting with the virus in early 2020 and continuing today with conflicts around the world, resulted in a rethinking of supply chains. The repatriation of manufacturing back to your country using China's production know-how is an option for consideration.

Chinese trading information and recommendation

Access to China information and recommendations for your consideration to support your Chinese trading ambitions. In our trading in China for over 20+ years, running and operating Chinese businesses, we have gathered lots of information and recommendations.

Short video presentations (coming February 2024)
Internet in China information
Papers and reports
Useful links

We are happy to share this information and are always interested in adding to the pool of information. Any ideas, requests or information, very well.

Chinese business to consumer (B2C)

Business to consumer (B2C) check list

The internet has allowed the development of the Business to Consumer market in China.

Historical: before the internet

In the past most of the consumer products were purchased at local department store. The local stores selling consumer products had a very limited range and not part of a chain of stores.

Store Chains do exist in China but limited to large cities and shopping malls. Chain stores in the past, Chinese or oversea, have not always been welcome by local retails and consumers as local retails can be forced out of the market by the chain store. Local retail can create pressure and forced the chain store to close!

Given the lack of chain stores purchasing power and local competitor’s most Chinese made product where available outside China a cheaper price.

Overseas goods were sold in licensed overseas stores at greatly marked up prices.

Historical: the development B2C internet trading

The consumer market changed greatly with start of the local e-Mall department stores.

Before China had access to local websites the overseas e-Malls have always been available. Some of them where accessible from China, not because they were blocked, just they too slow or not accessible at all.

The other key issue was door to door delivery. The international delivery was costly and returning the goods was too exceptive.

One of the first local e-Malls was Amazon China, a local Chinese JV between China Company and international company Amazon.

This was followed by Taobao, created by Alibaba.

Taobao was a greater success;

Market penetration – Alibaba had access to most the suppliers on the internet
They resolve the end to end processing issues;
- Payment processing, Alipay
- Delivery systems
- Returns processing
- Social Media - Weibo
They welcome Chinese made products at the low prices and accessible to all.

Later Tmall (Alibaba) was added for “up market” products and Tmall Global for overseas companies

360Buy, which now know JDBuy, is the major competitor to Alibaba e-Malls.

The advantage JDBuy has over Alibaba is there trading / commercial relationship to WeChat (Tencent). We except given this relationship JDBuy market share will grow greatly in the next few years (see BATs for more information).

Amazon China has a very low percentage of the Chinese market. They lost their market share to Taobao had a created end to end solution and there greater marketing reach.

A summary of the Chinese rules and regulations

Sell on-line on a Chinese hosted internet site requires certification which only available to a Chinese business
Any product sold on a Chinese internet site is subject to Chinese rules and regulations
Products sold on internet sites outside China to a Chinese consumer are not subject to Chinese rules and regulations
Products imported to China are subject to duty and taxes
B2C purchased from foreign internet site are not subject to Chinese product certification rules (i.e. overseas cosmetic products sold directly to a consumer do not require Chinese product certification)

Chinese e-Mall market today

The good news today is all these e-Mall department stores help the suppliers to trade end to end; selling, payment, importing, shipping, taxes, etc.

These services come at higher cost then trading on Amazon or eBay outside China.

Many Chinese business feel that trading in the e-Malls is very expensive and that only the e-Malls make a high profit.

There are many problems in these e-Malls with counterfeit products been sold (or copy products as they are called in China).

The biggest trading day on-line in China is 11 November: Bachelor's Day.

Chinese overseas B2C e-Mall companies

Many overseas businesses look at their products been sold in at higher price thinking that are high margins to be made in China. The prices often include;

International shipping costs
The local shipping costs
Custom fees
Import taxes
Sales taxes

i.e. what you see often on the internet in China is the net price for end consumer.

There is a very large consumer market in China.

First you must own your band in China. If you do own your brand registration in China you can take control of who can sell your products on-line from a Chinese website. This is something which general not available in the rest of the world!

After taking control your company’s band in China you start work reducing the distribution costs, e.g. shipping in bulk, creating a Chinese company and reducing transaction fees.

Transaction fee are often higher for overseas companies

E-Mall membership fees
Deposits
Transaction fee
Payment fees

If you have the business case, make sure you have, if your oversea company name, brand ownership in China and Chinese product certification (as required)

The good news you can start your business case today without travelling to China. Just start searching the Chinese e-Malls for your products / like products and see if there is a market for your business in China.

last modified: June 2019