Dragon News - No. 3, 2013

M e M b e r M aga z i n e fo r t h e Sw e d i S h C h a M b e rS o f C oMM e rC e i n h o n g Ko n g a n d C h i n a

No.032013

China’s urbanisation will provide companies with substantial new markets and investment opportunities,

but could also lead to huge environmental problems, as well as unemployment and social unrest.

the giant moveto the cities

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6Christer

LjungwallUrbanising

big: the Chinese way

20Per Lindvall

he likes to do it his way

22Katarina Nilsson

a lawyer with China

in her heart

10

20

ADVERTISERS

APC Logistics page 35, Asia Perspective page 15, Bamboo page 25

B&B Tools page 51, Business Sweden page 13, Finnair page 2

Environmental Air of Sweden (EAS) page 45, Ericsson page 9

Executive Homes page 49, Geodis Wilson page 17, Handelsbanken page 52

Hellström page 45, Iggesund Paperboard page 23, IKEA page 31

Johnny’s Photo & Video Supply page 47, Mannheimer Swartling pages 26-27

Nordea page 41, Primasia page 43, Radisson Blu page 47, SAS page 37

Scandinavian Furniture page 43, Scania page 41, Scan Global Logistics page 49

SEB page 5, Sigtuna Humanistiska Läroverk page 19, Swedbank page 29

Vinge page 33, Volvo page 39

Thank you!

APC Logisticsfor your immense generosity shipping and distributing Dragon News in China, hong Kong, asia and Sweden.

Iggesund Paperboardfor being the proud sponsor for the paperboard cover sheet of Dragon News magazine in 2012. Cover printed on invercote® Creato 220gsm.

Scandinavian Airlines

for your generous distribution of Dragon News on SaS flights from beijing to Scandinavia.

The Swedish Chambers of Commerce in Hong Kong and China

Publisherthe Swedish Chambers of Commercein hong Kong and ChinaFor advertising inquiries, please contact respective chamber’s officethe opinions expressed in articles in Dragon News are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher.

Editorial management, design and printingbamboo business Communications Ltdtel: +852 2838 4553fax: +852 2873 3329www.bambooinasia.com [email protected] director: Johnny Chandesigner: Victor daienglish editor: Chris taylor

Cover photo: iStockphoto

INQUIRIESSwedish Chamber of Commerce in hong Kongroom 2503, 25/f, bea harbour View Centre56, gloucester road, wanchai, hong Kongtel: +852 2525 0349e-mail: [email protected]: www.swedcham.com.hkgeneral Manager: eva KarlbergMarketing Manager: emma Cosmofinance Manager: anna Mackel

INQUIRIESSwedish Chamber of Commerce in Chinaroom 313, radisson blu hotel6a, east beisanhuan road, Chaoyang districtbeijing 100028, People’s republic of Chinatel: +86 10 5922 3388, ext 313fax: +86 10 6464 1271e-mail: [email protected]: www.swedishchamber.com.cngeneral Manager: Yvonne Chenoffice Manager beijing: Karin rooswebmaster & finance assistant: Jaycee Yangfinance assistant: Mona zhang

Shanghai Contactoffice Manager Shanghai: Johanna Pollnowevent Manager: emma gunterberg Sachstel: +86 21 6217 1271fax: +86 21 6217 0562Mobile: +86 1368 179 7675e-mail: [email protected] Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China

CONTENTS No.032013

4

8

36

40

22

editorial

Snippets

Chamber activities in Shanghai

new members

Cover story:the giant move to the cities

10

6 opinion: Christer Ljungwall

20 executive talk: Per Lindvall

Young Professional interview: Martin Stenberg

28

Chamber activities in beijing34

22 feature: a lawyer with China in her heart

32 Chamber activities in hong Kong

48 after hours

50 the chamber and i: Views on the environment

2838 Chamber news

DRAGONNEWS • NO.03/2013 3

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Dear Reader,

Recently the World Economic Forum was held in Dalian in north China. Premier Li Keqiang, who opened the event, stressed the importance of urbanisation in China in a comment to the forum in the Financial Times. Li has previously branded urbanisation a “huge engine”.

Urbanisation is the theme of this issue of Dragon News. Chinese urbanisation has been rapid. From 1978 to 2012, the urbanisation rate in China increased from 17.9 to 52.6 per cent. In 2011, China passed a milestone. That year the country had more urban than rural residents for the first time ever in its history. Today more than 710 million Chinese people live in cities and towns. At least another 100 million people are expected to move into cit-ies in the next decade. The upcoming Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party is expected to give more clarity on the leaders’ views on the topic.

The importance of urbanisation in China caused the United Nations Development Pro-gramme (UNDP) to focus its 2013 National Human Development Report on the topic of “Sustainable and Liveable Cities: Toward Eco-logical Civilization”. The report comprehen-

EDITORIAL

The challenge of urbanisationsively describes both problems and solutions in Chinese urbanisation. Among the problems that the report highlighted are environmental degradation, pressure on natural resources, pressure on housing and employment, as well as social alienation.

Urbanisation may evoke images of overpopulation, bad air quality, strain on resources, and cramped living space. However, it is still a priority of the Chinese leadership as a solution to boosting long-term domestic de-mand and the growth of the service industry.

As demonstrated in the interviews with representatives of Swedish enterprises in China in this issue, urbanisation presents important opportunities. New, concentrated markets are created. Indirectly, further opportunities arise when the problems caused by urbanisation demand solutions. Already the disastrous air quality in cities such as Beijing poses a serious threat to the health of its inhabitants and may hamper continued investment.

While urbanisation may be good for business, the National Human Development report concludes that the challenges of Chinese urbanisation in the coming years are daunting. Economic inequality is likely to widen both

between smaller and larger cities and between urban residents and migrant workers. Urbani-sation will cause a huge strain on the environ-ment and between people. Handling it will be a major challenge to the Chinese leadership.

Curiously, while the strain of urbani-sation in China is presumed to widen the gap between its people, it may work to close the cultural differences between its urban residents and urban residents in other parts of the world. When the Swedish business intel-ligence consultancy United Minds last visited the chamber in China to share their views on the latest trends, their research showed that urbanisation leads to a global conformism of views. Urban residents in Shanghai, Stock-holm, New York, London and Tokyo are likely to have more in common than a rural and an urban citizen from the same country.

Thus we can at least hope that for all its problems, urbanisation will increase unity and understanding between people across the world. The challenge though might be what those common views actually will consist of. For example do the residents of Stockholm, New York or Shanghai care particularly about anything else than their respective cities?

When it’s time to do business, we’re exceptionally open.

Every business has a different story and a different goal. We understand that. Over many years in this market of unique opportunities, we’ve developed the local knowledge, resources and connections needed to turn ambitions into reality. That’s why we’re one of the most well-established northern European banks in the region. For corporates, financial institutions and private banking clients, we’re ready to listen and cater to your needs – in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Delhi. Discover more at www.sebgroup.com/asia

Jon

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Katarina NilssonChairman

Swedish Chamber ofCommerce in China

Ulf OhrlingChairman

Swedish Chamber ofCommerce in Hong Kong

4 DRAGONNEWS • NO.03/2013

Development in China raises the question of how big a city can become, and at the same time be sustainable, writes Christer Ljungwall of the Swedish Agency for Growth Policy Analysis.teXt: Christer Ljungwall, [email protected]

hina’s urban landscape is changing rapidly. Ancient cities like Beijing and Guangzhou have seen their population tenfold in the past 60 years. From virtually nothing the population of the city of Shenzhen has now surpassed

that of its famous neighbour Hong Kong. And the trend is not set to stop any time soon. There is little doubt that political and economic decisions today will create an urban landscape that is irreversible and affects the lives of millions. As the economist Joseph Stiglitz puts it: “China’s urban transition will be one of the two main forces shaping the world in the 21st century”. These changes, in my opinion, will by far go beyond anyone’s imagination.

Urbanisation, as such, is not unique to China and it has been ac-companied by wealth creation in most parts of the world for many cen-turies. What is unique to China is the scale and unprecedented speed of urbanisation. When Deng Xiaoping initiated the first series of reforms in the late 1970s, the vast majority of China’s population lived and worked in rural areas. But over the past 35 years, as China modernised its cities, hundreds of millions of people migrated to urban areas seeking work in the manufacturing and service sectors. By the end of 2012, China’s urban population accounted for 52.8 per cent of the total population, meaning that more people are now living in cities than in the country-side. According to figures from McKinsey Global Institute, the urban population will grow by an additional 350 million – the equivalent of the entire population of the United States – by the end of 2025, with

C70 per cent of that growth due to migration. By that time 221 Chinese cities will have populations of more than 1 million inhabitants, and by 2030 the Chinese urban population is expected to exceed 1 billion.

The pace and scale of development raises the question of how big a city can become, and at the same time be sustainable. There are only a handful of examples of mega-cities – urban sprawls of more than 10 mil-lion inhabitants – outside developing countries. There is no user’s guide to supporting these cities. Among other things, this has changed the fo-cus of China’s urbanisation. Contrary to common belief, current trends point to a dispersed urbanisation pattern, with medium-sized cities (1.5 to 5 million inhabitants) absorbing most of the new urban residents. Approximately 40 per cent of the overall urban expansion will take place in these cities. The total population of such cities, it is estimated, will almost double from 169 million in 2007 to 311 million in 2025 – or about one-third of China’s population. Meanwhile, the number of medium-sized cities will grow to 115. Their importance to the economy will also increase, ultimately accounting for some 35 per cent of total GDP. Thus, to some extent, the development of medium-sized cities are following the urbanisation patterns of most Western industrialised coun-tries – even though cities in the West are generally much smaller than in China. In the United States – one of the world’s most productive and innovative economies – there are only nine cities with populations in excess of 1 million inhabitants, although urban areas around them may contain much more people. Nonetheless, although dispersed urbanisa-tion is the overall trend in China, megacities will still continue to grow and by 2025 they will account for 13 per cent of the urban population.

Cities in both China and elsewhere in the world are acting as centres of innovation, economic growth, and employment. Experience shows that urban residents on average have better access to educa-tion, healthcare, and other basic services such as clean drinking water, sanitation, and transportation than their rural counterparts. The fact that firms and workers are, on average, more productive in cities was observed by Adam Smith as early as 1776 and is now an empirically established fact. But it is important to note that countries do not grow because of urbanisation; they urbanise because they are growing and there are more productive jobs in the cities than in the rural areas. Smaller cities and villages will adjust to these changes and specialise in manufacturing and services complementary to that of larger cities.

So far China has coped more effectively than

many countries with the demands of urbanisation.”

Urbanising big: The Chinese way

Dr Christer Ljungwall is a China analyst specialising on growth, institutions, regional development, financial sta-bility and the banking system in China. he currently lives in beijing and works for the Swedish agency for growth Policy analysis, as the head of the office of Science and innovation of the Swedish embassy. he is also associate professor in economics at Copenhagen business School.

from 2004 to 2009, Ljungwall was a guest researcher at the prestigious China Center for economic research at Peking University. he is active in a number of research projects with particular emphasis on China’s economy and participates as international adviser at several Chinese think tanks. Ljungwall publish regularly in interna-tional journals and has authored two books. he has a Phd in economics from the University of gothenburg.

So far China has coped with the demands of urbanisation more effectively than many countries. For instance, China has been able to contain the urbanisation process to the extent that there are dense living conditions but very few slum areas, compared to the cities of far more developed nations such as Brazil – or other more comparable countries such as India. In this sense, China’s urbanisation is very much develop-ment success story. However, the orderly migration to cities in China has been achieved by limiting the free mobility of people through the so-called hukou – household registration – system. Needless to say, urbanisation remains a process that entails massive challenges.

This is no understatement. The question is whether China will be able to create cities that are sustainable in the long run and can continue to generate the positive effects implied by theory or follow the examples of Brazil and India both with huge cities but also urban poverty.

Massive urbanisation – in any country, small or large – implies dealing effectively with challenges of managing a rapidly expanding population. These range from securing public finance for the provi-sion of public services; demand and supply pressure on energy, water, land, and the environment. In addition, integrating rural migrants into urban life is complicated given the current hukou system, but it is crucial in order to avoid exclusion and maintain social stability. Several cities already run significant deficits, and the pressure on land will raise concerns about food security, while the demand for resources such as energy and water will double and pollution will increasingly become a problem. Approximately 1,100 gigawatts of power generat-ing capacity will have to be rolled out by 2025 to meet the energy demands of cities; 5 billion square metres of road need to be paved; and 28,000 km of commuter rail and 30,000-50,000 skyscrapers have to be built. Projections suggest that current trends will lead to a five-fold increase in the water pollution produced by medium-sized and smaller cities.

There is both increasing awareness – as well as concern – about the fact that China may not be able to fully manage these challenges. As pointed out in a study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences published earlier this year, as many as 80 per cent of China’s cities fall short of achieving a balance between economic growth, resource efficiency, and sustainable development. If this trend is allowed to continue, the above challenges may impede long-term growth and lead to substantial and irreversible erosion of social welfare. An urban underclass would emerge, leading to increased social tensions. However, urbanisation also brings intrinsic advantages and there is confidence that Chinese policy-makers, planners and urbanisation experts from home and abroad will be able to tackle most – if not all – of the challenges and create cities and urban regions that are aligned with the needs of future generations. If carried out properly, this promises substantial new markets and investment opportunities. With markets of sufficient scale, business will see intense competition and new technologies and business practices will emerge, leading to growth in productivity and increasing employment opportunities. b

In the US – one of the world’s most productive

and innovative economies – there are only nine cities with a population in excess of 1 million inhabitants.”

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“Mainland China’s policy makers have used urbanisation as an excuse to build many buildings, but didn’t think about how to turn all that into an economic advantage for sustainable development.” Professor Patrick Chovanec at Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, to Voice of America.

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Did you know …n … that in the US, the urban population overtook the rural population in 1920? in China, that had to wait until 2012. online commentator Yu fenghui said on a Sina weibo blog: “China is only at the 1920 US level. it’s not really something worth getting excited about.”

Yu went on to say that as China’s urban population grows, it will bring with it resource shortages related to employment, education, retirement, and housing. Low-income growth, lack of social benefits, and inflation will add additional hardships, he said.

Hong Kong gets competition as a financial centren today, a 15-sq-km site in Shenzhen, South China, is just a con-struction site. but the aim, within in a few years, is for it to become a booming financial centre competing with hong Kong, which is just one hour’s drive away. Called the Qianhai Special economic zone (Sez), it will be a test-bed for the free flow of yuan and a greater convertibility of foreign exchange for investment purposes.

the urban development of Qianhai will include dozens of high-end office buildings and support facilities.

“we will vigorously bring in hong Kong talent to take part in the development of Qianhai special zone, which we hope can become a good platform for career growth and job promotion for many young hong Kong people,” zhang bei, the chief official overseeing the Qianhai Sez, told the South China Morning Post.

Meanwhile, however, the creation of a 29-sq km free-trade zone in Shanghai’s Pudong new district, which was launched at the end of September, could impact on the success of the Qianhai development, say analysts.

Seminars on sustainable citiesn in May 2013, business Sweden, in collaboration with Swedish government offices, the embassy of Sweden and the Consulate general of Sweden in Shanghai, arranged seminars on future Smart Cities and Sustainable Urban Planning and development. the seminars were held in con-junction with the visit to China of Lena ek, Sweden’s Minister for the environment.

at each seminar the par-ticipating Swedish companies introduced their solutions and services in panel discussions

that covered the topics of energy efficiency, waste-to-energy, water treatment and sustainable urban planning. in addition, a number of contracts were signed between Swedish and Chinese organisations. the seminars attracted more than 120 people consisting of governmental officials, university leaders and Chinese environmental protection companies.

the interest from the Swedish side was also great and 22 companies, organisa-tions and universities participated: abb, aiX architects, alfa Laval, blab Sweden, brainheart, Cerlic Controls, ekobalans, envac, hainan bioCng (Serious nature), Malm-berg water, Scania, Sweco, tengbom, United waters, wallenius water, Xylem, Åf, the County board of Östergötland, iVL, Kth, Mistra Urban futures (Chalmers) and the regional Council of Skåne.

An eco-city in Tianjin.

Leaving the land not easyn Urbanisation in China is described by some analysts as the process of local government driving farmers into buildings while grabbing their land. in 2011, the Landesa rural development institute, based in Seattle, carried out a survey, showing that 43 per cent of Chinese villagers said government officials had taken or tried to take their land from them. that was up from 29 per cent in a 2008 survey.

“there’s this feeling that we have to modernise, we have to urbanise and this is our national-development strategy,” gao Yu, China country director for Landesa, told the New York Times. referring to the disastrous campaign to industrialise overnight, he added, “it’s almost like another great Leap forward.”

farmers are often unwilling to leave the land because of the lack of job opportunities in the new towns. working in a factory is sometimes an option, but most jobs are far from the newly built towns. and even if farmers do get jobs in factories, most lose them when they hit age 45 or 50, since employers generally want younger, nimbler workers.


January 2012, China’s Bureau of Statistics announced that the nation’s urban population had passed the 50 per cent

mark, meaning that for the first time in Chinese history the population in cities and towns exceeded the number of people living in the countryside.

“Urbanisation exceeding 50 per cent means China’s thousands of years of history as an agricultural society is about to begin a new era,” said Li Peilin, director of the Institute of Sociology at China’s Academy of Social Sciences, in a report quoted by the China News Network.

After the global financial crisis hit China in the last quarter of 2008, the country’s lead-ers realised that they had to shift the direction of the economy from its heavy reliance on exports towards domestic consumption.

One of the milestones in this new policy is moving people from rural areas into the cities, where there are better opportunities to get jobs, to earn more money and to consume more.

This year has seen the start of a massive

scheme that aims to move 250 million rural people to the cities before 2025, and 390 million by 2030. Urbanisation, together with industrialisation, has become the main engines for China’s future development.

However, analysts say that local governments and authorities are so eager to make this scheme work that they sometimes manipulate, or fabricate, the statistics. Ac-cording to Cheng Xiaonong, a China affairs researcher at Princeton University, many towns have simply been upgraded into cities, and villages renamed as districts, achieving urbanisation of the countryside by fiat.

Others argue that more accurate statistics could be obtained by calculating China’s urban population through counting only registered city households, rather than counting total city populations.

The vast numbers of migrant workers in cities but who are not enjoying the benefits of living in the city cannot be considered part of the city’s population, the argument runs.

This problem is linked to China’s hukou system, which ties benefits such as healthcare and pensions to a person’s place of birth, effectively discriminat-ing against people who move into the cities without bringing their hukou with them – a bureaucratic challenge of often immense difficulty.

The China Academy of Social

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the giant moveto the cities

China’s urbanisation will provide companies with substantial new markets and investment opportunities, but could also lead to huge environmental problems, as well as unemployment and social unrest.TExT: Jan Hökerberg, Bamboo,[email protected]

the overall theme for this year’s cover stories in Dragon News is the four new modernisations launched in november 2012 by China’s then premier-in-waiting, Li Keqiang. Li announced the party’s four new modernisation goals highlighting beijing’s push in the areas of information technology (it), industrialisation, urbanisation and agriculture.

in China, the so-called four modernisations were first used by former premier zhou enlai in 1963 to strengthen the fields of agriculture, industry, national defence and science and technology.

and in december 1978, at the third Ple-num of the 11th Central Committee, paramount leader deng Xiaoping announced an official re-launch of the four modernisations, marking the beginning of the reform era.

in this year’s third issue, Dragon News looks into the rapid and on-going urbanisation in China – and the consequences.

Four new modernisations (3)


Sciences claims in a report on urbanisa-tion that about a third of city-dwellers in China were relocated migrants, but only 40 per cent of them enjoyed key rights and benefits. The academy put China’s true rate of urbanisation at 42 per cent – or 10 per-centage points lower than the official figure announced in the summer of 2013.

The academy suggested in its report that, by 2015, the government should issue residence permits to all urban residents, ensuring that migrant workers enjoyed the city’s basic public services and be eligible for at least parts of its social welfare system. By 2020, all citizens, regardless of where they are permanently registered, should enjoy all public services and social welfare benefits available where they live, the report said, according to the South China Morning Post.

But it is reasonable to believe that the scale and pace of China’s urbanisation will continue and that China’s urban popula-tion will hit the one billion mark by 2030, as forecasted by the McKinsey Global In-stitute, in a much quoted report from 2009 called Preparing for China’s Urban Billion.

By 2025, China will have 221 cities with 1-million-plus inhabitants – compared with 35 cities of that size in Europe today – and 23 cities with more than 5 million, according to the report.

The report also predicted that 40 billion square metres of floor space will be built in 5 million buildings by 2025; 50,000 of the new buildings may be skyscrapers, which is the equivalent of constructing10 New York cities.

The authors of the report also wrote that China would multiply its gross domes-tic product (GDP) five times by 2025.

For companies in China and around the world, the gigantic scale of China’s urbanisation promises substantial new markets and investment opportunities. And

1 billion urban consumers is music to the ears of marketers.

IKEA has already opened 12 stores in cities China-wide and more are on the way. In July this year, it was announced that IKEA has become the biggest foreign landowner in China with 6.89 million square feet.

Since entering the market 15 years ago, 11 of IKEA China’s 12 outlets have built on land owned by the company; the Guangzhou branch is the only exception.

Another Swedish retail giant, the H&M fashion clothing chain, has quickly established itself in China and has opened more than 100 stores in cities nationwide in the space of just a few years.

Plantagen is the largest garden chain in northern Europe, operating 110 garden centres in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. Plantagen offers a wide assortment of plants and garden products.

“The garden trend is yet not as strong in China as it is in Scandinavia, where it is common that families have two lives – a flat in the city and a summer house,” says

Helena Lindström, chief representative of Plantagen’s sourcing office in Ningbo.

“We don’t think that the China market is ready for us yet, but we can clearly see the first stage of a trend. China’s high-rise buildings normally have big balconies and many people like to decorate their balconies with plants and other garden products,” she says.

The interior design firm Muraya set up business in China in 2006, when the founder Love Englund partnered with a Chinese colleague, Felix Jiang. The company has expanded rapidly, designing and decorating offices, mostly for Swedish multinational enterprises but also some Chinese ones, such as the market giant, Alibaba.

The company has 45 employees, who all work in an open office in Shanghai’s Jing’an district, and it also owns a factory in Nantong that can manufacture doors, furniture and retail interiors for customers.

“The urbanisation of China clearly affects us positively. At first, we had many projects in Shanghai and nearby cities. Now, we are getting projects in other cities such as Chengdu and Shenzhen. We will also follow our customers when they establish them-selves in second- and third-tier cities,” says Love Englund, general manager of Muraya.

“We are marketing ourselves as a Scan-dinavian company and the market seems to be catching up with us now. The environ-mental trend is almost over, and now it is more about providing a healthy workplace, with good air quality, water quality, and so on,” he says.

The upper middle class’s buying

behaviour is very different compared to the mass market.”Ulf Söderström, SCA

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The scale and pace of China’s urbanisation

will continue at least until 2030.


Urbanisation has already contributed to the strong growth of China’s middle class. Urban-household incomes are expected to at least double by 2022, when more than 75 per cent of China’s urban consumers will earn between 5,000 and 19,000 yuan per month – according to research by McKinsey presented earlier this year.

Within the burgeoning middle class, the upper middle class, with monthly in-comes of between 9,000 and 19,000 yuan, will become the principal engine of consumer spending over the next decade.

By 2022, McKin-sey estimates that the upper middle class will account for 54 per cent of urban households.

“The upper middle class’s buying behaviour is very different compared to the mass market. They are more sophisticated, they like strong brands, they are more quality-conscious and willing to trade up,” says Ulf Söderström, SCA’s Asia-Pacific president, who is based in Shanghai.

SCA has been very active using social media to reach this upper middle class for its hygiene products (see separate article).

The geographic centre of the growing middle class is also shifting. In 2002, 40 per cent of China’s relatively small urban middle class lived in the four first-tier cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenz-hen. By 2022, the share of those mega-cities will probably fall to about 16 per cent, with the growth of the middle classes becoming far greater in second- and third-tier cities.

With some 20 million people moving to the cities every year, the environmental impact is enormous, since cities consume huge amounts of natural resources and emit tonnes of waste.

No wonder then that the country is constructing new cities with environmen-tally friendly profiles. A large number of

projects have been launched to imple-ment sustainable urban development by minimising emissions and other negative environmental consequences.

So far, few of them have been success-ful, though, and for various reasons; many have been put on hold.

For example, in the early 2000s, the planned eco-city of Dongtan on Chong-ming Island outside Shanghai was described as “the world’s first eco-city”, but after four

years of presenta-tions, proposals and much talk the project was put on ice.

Often, foreign architects and local developers have dif-ferent views about

what an eco-city in China should be. While architects talk about sustainability, develop-ers often simply regard such cities as green suburbs – places for the city’s wealthy to flee for the weekend, or even a suburb with a golf course.

As Tan Ying Nilsson, chief representa-tive of the Sweco Group in China between 2009 and 2013, says of an early project: “The Chinese developers were not inter-

ested in our sustainable city concept; their focus was just on urban development.”

But it is not only the early-starter pro-jects that are being halted. The much talked about Caofeidian Eco-City project in Tangshan, which the Swedish government strongly supported, is currently showing little signs of progress (see separate article).

For thousands of years, China has been a country of peasants. As late as the 1980s, about 80 per cent of the Chinese population lived in the countryside. Today, the pace of urbanisation is not only transforming the lives of rural Chinese, but also threatening to sow the seeds of social instability and widen the gap between the rich and poor.

Rural dwellers get economic benefits from selling their land and moving into heavily subsidised flats in urban high-rise buildings. However, while the economic fortunes of many subsequently improve, at least short-term, unemployment and other social woes also follow.

For many relocated farmers, adapting to life in modern, suburban concrete flats after having seen their houses demolished is difficult, while finding jobs in the city with no education is even more challenging.

The environmental trend is almost over; now it is more about

providing a healthy workplace.”Love Englund, Muraya

50,000the number of new buildings in China before 2025 that may be skyscrapers.

Muraya has designed many urban offices, for example this exhibition hall for Scandinavian companies.


with China’s new urban upper middle class rapidly emerging as a leading con-sumer group, companies have to adjust their strategies to reach them.

“they are a new generation of consumers, similar to those we see in europe. they consume more than the mass market consumers, they buy more and more online and are extremely active social media users,” says Ulf Söderström,

Successful social media campaigns

SCA targets white-collar pro-fessional women for its pre-mium products in China and is also working actively with social media to reach them.

Meanwhile, rural Chinese are increas-ingly aware that the authorities sometimes reap huge profits, by obtaining farming land on the cheap and then selling it for 10 to perhaps 100 times that amount at auc-tion to developers.

Another effect of China’s urbanisation is the much-discussed phenomenon of “ghost towns”. Throughout China, many impressive high-rise residential buildings – and even entire districts and cities – have been built and nobody came.

Buildings, districts and cities of this kind are usually built to meet demand expected from migration to the cities, while also start-ing afresh with basic urban infrastructure that is difficult to modernise in cities built in the pre-reform era. Many of the flats are bought as investments by the wealthy mid-dle class, and then sit empty as the owners fail to find tenants who can meet the rent.

Meanwhile, housing in Beijing and Shanghai is priced at 20 times the average

city dweller’s annual income, and through-out China 85 per cent of city residents who need a new home cannot afford one.

Financial experts fear that the combina-tion of “ghost towns” and overpriced hous-ing is a housing bubble that could burst at any time.

Premier Li Keqiang said at his inaugu-ral news conference in March that urbani-sation was one of his top priorities. He also cautioned, however, that the process would entail dealing with a series of accompany-ing legal changes “to overcome various

problems in the course of urbanisation.”According to the New York Times, such

problems include chronic urban unem-ployment if jobs are not available, and more protests by sceptical farmers who are unwilling to move. Rather than creating wealth, urbanisation could lead to the crea-tion of a permanent underclass in major Chinese cities and the destruction of rural cultures and religion.

In other words, it is no understatement when China’s leadership says that serious challenges lay ahead on the road to making its urbanisation programme successful. b

Many men and women like to show their image and style

by putting their iPhone on the table together with a packet of Tempo.” Ulf Söderström, SCA

Putting an iPhone on the table together with a packet of Tempo tissue is a way to show image.

The garden trend is yet not as strong in

China as it is in Scandinavia.”Helena Lindström, Plantagen

asia-Pacific president at SCa China.SCa, a global hygiene and forest prod-

ucts company, has more than 10 employ-ees at its Shanghai headquarters working with online sales and social media.

recently, SCa invited Chinese consum-ers to come up with their own clever uses for an empty box of its tempo facial tissues to drive home associations between its products and resource sustainability. the winner received a trip to the company’s private forest in Sweden, where SCa grows trees in a sustainable way to be used as raw material in its products.

“the campaign was very successful. the contest winner was followed by a Chi-nese tV team on the trip to Sweden and it

resulted in a 20-minute tV programme about Sweden, SCa, forests and sus-tainability,” says Söderström.

SCA has also used consumer road shows to demonstrate the benefits of its tissues to a broad base of Chinese consumers.

SCa’s main target group for its tempo tissue premium products and Libero diapers is white-collar profession-al woman. tempo pocket-handkerchiefs have a 60-70 per cent market share in hong Kong and have also been intro-duced in China, along with the tempo tissue boxes and toilet tissue.

“for many years, we have seen that many men and women at restaurants in hong Kong like to show their image and style by putting their iPhone on the table together with a packet of tempo. this is how we want our product to be perceived and it also shows how strong the tempo brand is.. we can now see the same trend in South China,” says Söderström.


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in 2001, the Swedish Sweco group was invited to participate in a competition to create a Scandinavian satellite town on the outskirts of Shanghai. Sweco, an engi-neering, environmental technology and architecture consultancy, won the assign-ment, launching its China operations.

the project was called Luodian new town and was part of an initiative called “one City, nine towns”, in which each town would be themed around a west-ern country. the small town of Sigtuna, near Stockholm, served as an inspiration. Central Luodian was completed in 2004.

“during the planning process, we introduced our sustainable city concept with suggestions about the transporta-tion network, infrastructure, energy efficiency, waste water, etc, but these ideas were not carried out. the Chinese developers were not interested; their focus was just on urban development,” says tan Ying nilsson, who has worked at Sweco in China since 2002 and was its chief representative for four years, before recently moving to Sweco in Sweden.

Dongli Lake, a new coastal town outside tianjin, was another important project for Sweco. the assignment was to come up with a conceptual plan for the first part of a new town, accommo-dating 30,000 residents.

“we wanted to create an ecological

Eco-cities on hold

The high-profile Caofeidian Eco City project has slowed almost to a standstill, as Chinese clients and suppliers struggle to understand the concept of sustainability.

town that was close to nature since there was a wetland nearby. at first, there were discussions about what an ecological com-munity really meant. Some thought that a golf course was ecological because it is green,” says nilsson.

“the water was also so salty that it made it difficult to plant normal vegeta-tion, but in the end, the project turned out well and is almost fully developed today, and the construction of neighbouring land is on its way,” she says.

But Sweco’s biggest project so far is the Caofeidian international eco City, a coop-erative project between Sweden and China in the field of green technology. Caofeidian is part of the city of tangshan in hebei Province, 220 km east of beijing.

“before Caofeidian, which started in 2008, we tried to introduce ecological solutions in each of our projects, but the clients were not really interested. with Caofeidian we had the political support and were able to propose a comprehensive concept that was accepted,” says nilsson.

“but the Chinese participants, including clients and consultants, were unfamiliar with and had little understanding of holis-tic, sustainable solutions.”

the plan for Caofeidian eco-City was to embrace nine major themes: liveable, in-novative, accessible, green (parks, greens, recreation areas) and blue (canals, ponds, rivers) climate neutral, resource efficient, flexible, beautiful and healthy.

the aim was for it to be the size of gothenburg in terms of its population, with around half a million people. Many Swedish suppliers were active on the project, and there were numerous trips to the site that were organised by the Swed-

ish embassy and included high-profile Swedish officials.

But for reasons that are obscure the project appears to have ground to a halt.

“Construction goes on, but very slowly,” says nilsson. “it started with high ambitions from the tangshan mu-nicipality, but investments in 2010 and 2011 were much lower than expected.”

one reason for the slowdown seems to be that local politicians also want to upgrade the industrial area of Caofeidi-an, where most of the people who were supposed to live in the eco-city probably will work.

“the ambitions everyone had in this project were very high, and no one had ever undertaken a project like this before. we think it is still possible, but a city of 500,000 people cannot be built overnight; it could take up to 20 years,” says nilsson.

She is, however, much more optimistic about another Sweco project – in Yinchuan, in the autonomous region of ningxia.

“we have been working on this project for two years now. it gives us a chance to utilise all our experience from earlier projects. this is a private project, but with the support of the local govern-ment. at the moment we are working on the landscape and road design after plan-ning work was completed,” says nilsson.

“Yinchuan is a tiny oasis in the desert, where the great wall crosses the Yellow river. the city is inhabited by both Han and Hui, a Muslim minority. an international airport is on the way, especially to serve arabic countries.

“this project could be one of our new milestones, with a focus on environ-mental issues,” she says.

Some thought that a golf

course was ecological because it is green.” Tan Ying Nilsson, Sweco

This is how Sweco wants the Caofeidian eco-city

to look like.

Luodian New Town developers were inspired by the Swedish

town of Sigtuna.


time was running the logistics company ASG (later to become APC).

“I set up Bilsom Hong Kong, with my office at Bengt’s place in Kowloon City. His company also did the warehousing for us and distributed our products to agents all over Asia,” says Lindvall.

He also had to travel frequently to the US for about a year after Bilsom bought a US company. “This is a part of my life that I want to forget. I was responsible for reducing four factories to one. It was really tough, and I even got death threats from the American trade unions. I lost some of my hair because of the stress,” he admits.

At that time, many Asian countries were changing their work protection legislation, and over a five-year period, Lindvall suc-cessfully established Bilsom subsidiaries in Japan, South Korea and China, and started distribution in Thai-land, Singapore, Indonesia and Taiwan.

In 1995, Bilsom ac-quired a distributor in Aus-tralia and because of the size of the company, Lindvall moved there to establish the Asia-Pacific headquarters.

“It was a very hectic time. But our CEO was a firm believer in Asia. He gave me a free hand, which I really appreciated,” says Lindvall.

However, Bilsom was acquired in 1999 by a French investment company, which merged it with a French competitor, forming a new company called Bacou-Dalloz. The Asia-Pacific headquarters was established in Hong Kong and the Lindvall family moved on.

At the outbreak of the severe acute respira-tory syndrome (SARS) epidemics in Hong Kong and China in the spring 2003 – which killed 775 people worldwide, most of them in South China and Hong Kong – Bacou-Dalloz, together with the American company 3M, had the most efficient masks on the market.

“We signed an agreement with the Hong Kong government to provide every employee

his early years, while in his first job at a bank in Malmö in southern Sweden, Per Lindvall’s first assignment was to drive

a Volkswagen bus with millions of Swedish kronor to be delivered to the bank’s branches all around the region.

“The only security that existed was a button outside the bus where you had to press a number between 1 and 9 to open the door. There was no real security at all,” Lindvall recalls.

That was not the only reason he did not particularly like banking – “too many rules and manuals for everything” – but he liked the bank’s marketing department, and he started selling bank services, before being headhunted by a customer, a company called Tibnor Plast. It was the early 1970s, and he started out as a salesman with responsibility for southern Sweden.

At the end of the 1970s, Lindvall met his future wife Eva at a masquerade at the yacht club in Malmö – Lindvall has always been devoted to sailing. They got married in 1979.

The couple could not have a baby of their own, so they adopted Oscar in 1985, at the age of five months from the Colombian city of Medellin.

Not long after that, Lindvall received an unexpected call from his wife, announcing they were to have another child.

“Ok, where will we be traveling to?” said Lindvall, slightly confused, before realising that his wife was telling him that against all odds she had become pregnant – even though all the doctors they had consulted had said it was almost impossible. Ida was born in 1986, making her one-and-a-half-years younger than Oscar.

Today, Oscar works as a key account manager in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, where Lindvall also works, and Ida is a manager at a consulting company in Stockholm.

In the 1980s, Lindvall worked at several different companies in the plastics and paint industries. As a managing director or market-ing director, he was mostly responsible for Eu-rope, which meant he had to travel frequently.

In 1989, he was recruited to Bilsom, a company in southern Sweden that makes safety products, such as earmuffs, earplugs, protective glasses and masks for the work-place. He was appointed global director of the respiratory division.

One year later, the company decided to establish itself in Asia.

“I really wanted that job and got it,” Lindvall says. He went to Hong Kong with his family and met Bengt Sjöberg who at that

In

with our masks. We had to fly in 40-foot containers full of masks. The government people were standing in line to pick them up,” says Lindvall.

In 2004, he was headhunted by Höganäs, a world leader in metal powder, to become head of their China operations, with head-quarters in Shanghai.

“I managed to turn their business around and I was involved in starting up a technical centre. However, when a new CEO came on board, we couldn’t see eye to eye, and I left the company after four years. I have always wanted to run my business by myself from my Asian perspective, with not too many Westerners involved.”

In 2008, Lindvall was thinking of retiring when a good friend called and said that DEFA

Technology in Wuxi needed a new managing director. Lindvall was called in for an interview, and the Norwe-gian owner said: “Run it as if it was your own company.”

“That was just my style so I decided to accept the

offer,” Lindvall says.DEFA manufactures and develops battery

chargers for the automotive and marine in-dustries, as well as interior heating and other associated products for automobiles, leisure boats and even homes.

“In 2009, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, we decided to invest in a new surface-mount technology line for circuit boards. That was perfect, so when the market picked up a few years later we were prepared and we could take a lot of market share,” says Lindvall.

Now 63, Lindvall has been thinking about what to do next. He likes it in Suzhou where they live but says he might retire in a few years time and settle down somewhere else with his wife.

“I love to spend summers in Sweden and we have a house outside Helsingborg and a 12-metre sail boat. But to live the whole year in Sweden? No, I don’t think so. I haven’t re-ally lived there since the late 1980s.” b

Per Lindvall has travelled all over the world and has made the Asia-Pacific his base since 1990. He says he works best when he is given full responsibility for a business.TExT: Jan Hökerberg, Bamboo, [email protected] PHOTO: Eva Lindvall, [email protected]

He likes to do it his way

I have always wanted to run my business by myself from my

Asian perspective, with not too many Westerners involved.”

1990the year when Per Lindvall

first moved to asia.


Katarina Nilsson, resident partner at Advokatfirman Vinge’s

Shanghai office, made an early decision to study Chinese, which

she has never regretted.TExT: Jan Hökerberg, [email protected]

hen Dragon News met Katarina Nilsson on a holiday morning at an outdoor café in Shanghai’s French Concession, she had returned

home late the previous night after attending a legal negotiation a few hours away from Shang-hai that had been followed by a traditional Chinese dinner with plenty of food and drinks.

She looks, however, remarkably fresh after spending an entire evening of ganbeis – knocking back drinks, Chinese-style, in a “cheers” fashion with neighbours and other tables.

“Fortunately, they just served wine and no baijiu [Chinese rice liquor] and I managed to avoid some of the cheers,” she says with a smile.

But dinners of this kind are just part of the daily routine for this 42-year old lawyer, who is the chief representative and resident partner at law firm Vinge’s Shanghai office. Earlier this year, she was also elected as the new chairman of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China.

Katarina Nilsson is the only practising Swed-ish lawyer in China who is fluent in Chinese. She does not only speak fluently, she reads and writes well too, having studied and practiced the Chinese language for more than half of her life.

“It is a great advantage for me and I get a lot of trust from people I meet. It is also an advantage

W

The lawyer

a lawyer with China

in her heart


for our clients that I can negotiate in Chinese; you get much more information compared to only using interpreters,” says Nilsson.

She was born and grew up in Malmö in southern Sweden. Since her early years she wanted to see the world. She has a talent for languages, perhaps inherited from her mother, a language teacher. A friend in the UK recommended her to join the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London in 1991. When asked by the professor of oriental languag-es, what language she wanted to study, she said she was interested in Japanese. But the professor recommended her to choose Chinese instead, which she did and has never regretted.

She studied the first year in London and came to Bei-jing for a second year but stayed on due to meeting Eddie Randriamampionona, guitarist in the band of Chinese rock icon Cui Jian.

Nilsson spent much of the early and mid-1990s in Bei-jing and the couple had a daughter, Bianca, together. She is 19 years today and has started university studies in Sweden.

“It has been a bit tricky to have this job far away from my daugh-ter but it has worked out well,” says Nilsson who travels to Sweden frequently to meet with clients.

After completing a Bachelor of Arts with Honours degree in Chinese studies from SOAS in 1996, she decided to start studying law at Lund University, close to her hometown of Malmö. She graduated in 2001 and spent the following two years as a law clerk at the district court in Helsingborg.

“I learnt a lot about legal analysis, writing drafts for verdicts and basic negotiations, but I felt that the courts were not my future. I wanted to work at a law firm. So I applied for jobs at the leading firms, and Vinge replied, saying that they were looking for someone who knew Chinese,” says Nilsson.

It was actually Thomas Lagerqvist – a former chairman of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, where he worked for Vinge for many years – who received her application. When she got the job and moved to Gothenburg, where Vinge had its China Practice Group, she became a colleague of Ulf Ohrling – the current chairman of the Swedish chamber in Hong Kong.

“Ulf and I know each other well. His son and my daughter studied at the same school. Ulf and his wife took care of my daughter some summers in Gothenburg when I had to work. They were very kind to us.”

In Gothenburg, Nilsson worked on many China-related projects and was sent to Vinge’s Shanghai office for shorter stints in 2004 and 2005.

22the number of years Katarina

nilsson has studied and practiced the Chinese language.

when Katarina nilsson was elected new chairman of the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China in april this year, it was the first time for the chamber to have a Shanghai-based chair. it was also the first time a woman had been elected to the position.

“i hadn’t thought about the possibility that i would be nomi-nated, but i didn’t hesitate even though it is not easy for anyone to fill the vacuum after Mats harborn [chairman for eight years],” she says. as former vice chairman and chair of the Shanghai Chapter, she has, however, plenty of experience of chamber work.

nilsson recently initiated a board discussion that has led to an on-going overview of the chamber.

“China is becoming more and more important in the world. the question is whether we need to change how the chamber is work-ing. Much of the work is still done on a voluntary basis, even as the number of members continues to grow steadily,” says nilsson.

a study of these issues, led by Johan treschow of the Stock-holm Chamber of Commerce, will be carried out and presented in January 2014.

Time to change the chamber?

It is an advantage for our clients that I can negotiate in Chinese; you

get much more information compared to using interpreters.”

Bamboo Business Communications Ltd (Hong Kong) +852 2838 4553

Bamboo Business Consulting (Shanghai) Co, Ltd +86 21 6472 9173

Bamboo has been creating content in Hong Kong and overseas from 1996 and in China from 2002 as a one-stop shop for its

customers. Here is what we can do: Customer magazines and newsletters, internal magazines and newsletters, apps for iPad and

Android tablets, e-newsletters and websites, corporate video, marketing materials for trade fairs, article assignments and photography,

interactive sales presentations, reader surveys, advertisements, etc.

We can do it in Simplified or Traditional Chinese and other Asian languages, as well as in English.

Feel free to contact us to know more or to set up a meeting.Jan Hökerberg, managing [email protected]

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We make your company’s best stories come alivewww.bambooinasia.com

Back in 1996, when mobile phones were the size of bricks; before tablets, before 3G, before Google even, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates wrote an article in which he foresaw the importance of content on the Internet.

“Content is where I expect much of the real money will be made on the Internet, just as it was in broadcasting … Those who succeed will propel the Internet forward as a marketplace of ideas, experiences, and products – a marketplace of content,” he wrote.

Bill Gates was right. Today, 17 years later, content marketing has become the art of communicating with customers and prospects without the hard sell. If you, as a company, can deliver consistent, ongoing, valuable content to buyers, ultimately they will reward you with their business and loyalty.

In 2006, Lagerqvist and Ohrling decided to join a competitor. Nilsson was asked by veteran lawyer Björn Aschan, who had set up Vinge in Hong Kong as early as 1985, whether she would like to be-come Vinge’s new resident partner in Hong Kong.

“I had just moved back to Vinge’s Malmö office and, as a passion-ate Scanian, I was determined not to leave again. But the opportunity to go to Hong Kong was an offer I couldn’t refuse,” says Nilsson.

A few years later, she also took over responsibility for the Shanghai office, and since 2011 she has been the chief representative there. Her main focus is mergers and acquisitions and general corporate agreements for mainly Scandinavian clients.

She thinks that the legal practice in China has become more similar to the processes in Europe. But, she adds, there are still many obstacles for foreign-owned companies that want to acquire Chinese enterprises: “The corporate culture is still very different here. When we do legal due diligence, we often find serious deficiencies when it comes

to labour law, environmental law and other things.”It is obviously good in that sense for a foreign-owned company

to have a lawyer who speaks fluent Chinese and can even under-stand what their counterparties are discussing internally during a negotiation … b


The lawyer

2/10, Stockholm 3/10 and Malmö 5/12). In this series, the regions in focus will expand beyond China to also include Russia and various countries on the African continent. These seminars will also be primarily case-based and built around the firm’s experience helping companies doing business in these regions to develop robust systems to prevent corruption.

what’s up?kewatec establishes joint venture in china with conglin groupKewatec AluBoat Oy, a privately owned manufacturer of aluminium boats based in Kokkola, Finland, has signed an agreement with Conglin Group to establish a joint venture in Shandong, China.

Conglin Group is a national enterprise group based in Shandong, China, with industrial activities in, among others, the aluminium sector. The joint venture company will build aluminium boats for professional use based on Kewatec’s marine technology and product portfolio.

Kewatec was advised in the transaction by Mannheimer Swartling, with Andreas Elving and Rachel Dong handling the assignment. Peter Idsäter was the partner responsible for the matter.

sca to make an offer for hong kong-listed vindaSCA has decided to make a public offer to acquire the Chinese tissue manufacturer Vinda International Holdings Limited in an all-cash

transaction valued at approximately SEK 9.4 billion for all shares and options in Vinda. The offer is, among other things, conditional upon more than 50% acceptance level on a fully diluted basis and will be paid through existing cash and credit lines within the SCA Group.

Vinda is the third largest tissue company in China with sales in 2012 amounting to approximately SEK 5 billion. SCA is a leading global hygiene and forest products company that develops and produces sustainable personal care, tissue and forest products. In 2012, SCA’s sales amounted to SEK 85 billion. For further information please see www.sca.com.

SCA was advised by Mannheimer Swartling acting as Swedish counsel in the transaction. The firm’s team was led by Anders Lindblad and Emil Boström, assisted by Johan Berg, Marcus Johansson and Marcus Ladow.

what’s new?pboc simplifies cross-border rmb transactionsChina’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), announ-ced new measures over the summer to facilitate cross-border RMB transactions. Among other things, the new rules make it possible for Chinese non-financial entities to grant loans in RMB to foreign affiliates and provide cross-border RMB-denominated guarantees or security to foreign lenders without significant restrictions or government approvals. Subject to clarification of certain ambiguous issues, the new rules could thus entail considerable opportunities for transferring funds to group companies offshore and in allowing foreign lenders to directly access onshore collateral.

mannheimer swartling partner nils eliasson participates in drafting of new convention dealing with transparency in investment treaty arbitrationNils Eliasson represented the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce in the Working Group on Arbitration of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) at its session at the United Nations Office in Vienna from 16–20 September 2013. The work consisted of the drafting of a new convention dealing with transparency in investment treaty arbitration. It is envisaged that the new convention will be adopted by the UNCITRAL in 2014, and become open for ratification by member states later that year.

anti-corruption strategies and responsibilities in focus at seminars in china and swedenCorruption is a persistent threat to sustainability. Anti-corruption efforts are therefore becoming a top priority, not only for governments, but also for enterprises.

As previously reported in Dragon News, Mannheimer Swartling arranged a series of seminars in Beijing last spring together with Lars-Åke Severin of PSU International. The purpose was to bring the new anti-corruption approach launched by China’s new leader-ship to the attention of Nordic enterprises. The new measures require enterprises to rethink how they interact with Chinese officials or else risk being accused of corruption.

Panel discussions held during the seminars confirmed a concern shared by the speakers based on their experiences from working in China – that even mature and serious players in the industry tend to delegate the responsibility of developing strategies for anti- corruption work to the country/regional management level. The risk with this can be that, in practice, delegating to country or regional level may result in anti-corruption measures being sidelined by local commercial priorities. Experience shows, however, that delegating the responsibility to implement and enforce anti-corruption measu-res can be successful when anti-corruption strategies are set at group headquarter level.

Further to the meetings in China, Mannheimer Swartling is holding a series of anti-corruption seminars in Sweden (Göteborg

Nordic touch with a Chinese edge

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TExT: Felix Nordlind, [email protected]

t first glance, Globalization Store (www.globalizationstore.com) seems to be an ordinary web store offering fashion accessories at low prices. It has also a slightly unusual name. But, it is more than it seems. Behind the business

is a well thought out concept, and behind that is a young entrepreneur, Martin Stenberg, who is currently based in Hong Kong.

After an exchange programme at City University of Hong Kong, Stenberg finally took the first steps towards becoming what he most certainly was destined to be – an entrepreneur. Inspired by the city itself and the people he met there, Stenberg started Globalization Store, an online store that offers handmade fashion accessories. Currently, there are two product lines, Thavary bracelets and the Chanthou scarves, both from Cambodia.

But that’s not the whole story.

The business has adopted a Global Social Responsibility (GSR) policy that, in contrast to the familiar concept of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), aims to improve the lives of local entrepreneurs by making their products available to the global market. Globalization Store has specifically targeted local entrepreneurs in the developing countries of Southeast Asia.

Currently, Stenberg travels back and forth between Stockholm, Uppsala, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Cambodia, juggling a Bachelor’s thesis with keeping his newly started business running.

Why did you go to Hong Kong and what part did Hong Kong play in starting up Globalization Store?“I was lucky to be an exchange student at the City University of Hong Kong. There were many courses to choose from so I took a class in

A

Martin Stenberg hopes to combine making money and undertaking charity work. His web shop Globalization Store sells fashion accessories made by entrepreneurs in developing countries.

Hong Kong is his inspiration

Globalization Store is an online store that offers

fashion accessories from entrepreneurs in developing countries.


entrepreneurship. The class was great and inspired me to actually start something. We had entrepreneurs as guest lecturers and it didn’t sound like it was very hard to start your own business in Hong Kong.”

How important has the city of Hong Kong been?“Hong Kong is my inspiration. There are so many things going on here, and there is a special pulse to the city. The sight of an old Chinese woman dragging mountains of cardboard down a street surrounded by skyscrapers; that’s one of many colliding images that inspires me in some way. It’s a lot to take in.”

Was Globalization Store your first idea?“Actually no. My original idea was to get into education in China by offering courses teaching presentation techniques. From my Hong Kong university experience I noticed public speaking was a big issue, as most people are too nervous, don’t connect with the audience and just stare at their cue cards. Then I thought about finding a product in China to sell in Sweden and focus on building a strong brand.”

Why didn’t you stick to that idea?“Because that’s what everyone else does, and the concept of taking a generic product mass-produced in China and creating a brand around it doesn’t interest me.

“I started to look for products that were different, that were unique. I went to Cambodia, where I met local entrepreneurs – people in devel-oping countries making beautiful things like bracelets and scarves using little more than their bare hands and out-dated equipment.”

In what way do such entrepreneurs benefit from supply-ing your store?“Globalization Store helps them to get their products out on the global market, as well as giving them really helpful business advice on matters like production and design. For example, if they have 50 different mod-

The concept of taking a generic product

mass-produced in China and creating a brand around it doesn’t interest me.”

Globalization Store would never sell an

amazing product that is made in a sweatshop.”

Age: 25.Job: entrepreneur, founder of globaliza-tion Store.Lives: Sweden/hong Kong.Time in Hong Kong: one year.Best thing about Hong Kong: the in-tense and inspiring vibe of the city.Worst thing about Hong Kong: that it will be merged with China.

Martin Stenberg in brief

els of a product I advise them to focus on the five that I think would be the most popular in Europe. We also have a 50 per cent dividend policy, which means that half of our dividends go to the local entrepreneurs.”

What do your customers think about your products and the concept?“The main focus on offering beautiful products and the concept of helping local entrepreneurs in developing countries is secondary. First, people see the products and then they hear about the story behind the product. It’s extremely competitive in the fashion accessory indus-try, and a nice story is just not enough; you need to focus on great products. All the same, Globalization Store would never sell an amaz-ing product that is made in a sweatshop in China, because the GSR concept cannot justify business of that kind.”

So, how has business developed?“Three weeks ago we opened a pop-up store at Kulturhuset in Stock-holm and it is going quite well, which is fun. Online sales have not really started yet but I will put a lot of effort and capital into marketing soon.”

What will happen to Globalization Store in five years?“Wow … five years. That’s a long time. I hope we will have around 10-15 employees, a flagship store in Stockholm and our products on sale in cool stores, primarily in Europe. I think an office in Hong Kong is cru-cial since we need to visit our entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia regularly, as well as actively seek out new entrepreneurs to work with. But maybe the company will not be around at that time. It’s very hard to tell.”

What does your own future look like?“In January, I’ll finish my Bachelor’s thesis about e-commerce that I’m writing in cooperation with H&M in Shanghai. Then all my focus will be on Globalization Store, which feels great. I will give it one year and then consider whether it’s financially viable.

If things doesn’t work out, will you try to start a new business?“I don’t know whether I would start a new business, but I would love to work for and be a part of another start-up. I like working in a crea-tive and un-established environment with ambitious entrepreneurs. I love the challenge of doing something new.” b


Hong Kong

STOCKHOLM GOTHENBURG MALMO HELSINGBORG BRUSSELS HONG KONG SHANGHAI

Vinge opened its o� ce in Hong Kong as early as 1985. In 1999, Vinge became the � rst Swedish and Scandinavian law � rm to obtain a licence to open an o� ce in China,

located in Shanghai. Vinge has led the way and assisted clients in Sweden-China related trade and investment matters for more than 20 years. Practice makes perfect.

Experience leads to excellence

n a record number of 230 enthusiastic and hungry crayfish eaters gathered around the pool of the royal hong Kong Yacht Club on friday 13 September to enjoy all 215 kg of Swedish crayfish – thanks to Saison food Service!

the crowd, in full throttle party mood, quickly dispelled an early threat of rain. thanks to finnair, the dJ of the evening, anthony spun tracks that filled the dance floor in no time.

the MC of the evening, Carl Christensson of Seb, encouraged people to sing, enjoy the party and just have a good time – which everyone did.

our generous sponsors this year were finnair, asian tigers and Seb. on behalf of all the participants, we would like to offer a sincere thank you, and are already looking forward to next year’s Crayfish Party!

A fun-filled crayfish party


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Personal

Beijing

Crayfish Party in Beijingn after days of rain and thunderstorms, the weather suddenly turned on a Saturday morning in mid-September, becoming one of the more beautiful summer days in beijing. the sky was blue, the air was clear, the temperature was around 30 degrees and a soft wind cooled the city. what more could you possible ask for? a fabulous evening?

that’s what happened when more than 200 guests gathered in the radisson blu hotel’s royal garden in beijing to enjoy this year’s traditional Crayfish Party. as usual,

the evening kicked off with snaps songs, before the guests tucked into the crayfish – sponsored by iCa – and the lavish offerings of the buffet and the bbQ, while also enjoy-ing chilled falcon beer.

the MC for the evening, Lars olofsson, together with guest entertainer, Janke Jöns-son, oversaw a fun event that saw repre-sentatives from the three present gold spon-sors – ericsson’s tom nygren, Claude bulté of radisson blu and Lars-olof filipsson of SaS – facing off in a crayfish eating competition.

the evening was filled with dance and traditional Swedish singing, followed by a well received live performance by Janke Jönsson.

we would like to extend a big “thank you” to Janke Jönsson and all our gener-ous sponsors who made this crayfish party so special: gold sponsors, ericsson, iCa, radisson blu and SaS; the Silver sponsors, business Sweden, falcon, SKf, Swedbank; and the bronze sponsors, SCa and nordea.


Shanghai

Crazy for Crayfishn the Swedish Chamber and 235 happy crayfish lovers gathered once again at the Paulaner bräuhaus in Pudong to celebrate on 21 September 2013. Mark Levengood and henrik Johnsson, combined hosts and dJs this year, nominated one representative from ericsson and one from SaS to serve as “Miss full Moon” and “Mr Crayfish”. they competed in a quiz about Swedish facts that was led by the hosts.

the guests enjoyed groaning tables of crayfish, snaps and drinks. Levengood and Johnsson led the snaps songs and mingled with the guests. after the dessert they entered the dJ booth and the dance floor was crowded in an instant. happy faces dancing the night away to great music - what else can you ask for?

a special thanks go to the sponsors; ericsson, SaS, SKf, Swedbank, business Sweden, grand hyatt, SCa and nordea!

Design and branding in Shanghain on 12 September, Christophe dolhem, owner and founder of dolhem design shared his experience of branding and design work with Chinese companies. twenty-five members of the Swedish chamber met at the company office, where dolhem revealed his discoveries and talked about the talented people he had met in China. he also discussed future ambition of seeing a China in which western methodologies and local talent can create a new kind of business model for China.

Newcomers’ gathering n on 5 September, the Swedish chamber held a seminar by a get-to-know-you gathering for newly arrived Swedes in Shanghai. the Swedish Chamber of Commerce, the Swedish Consulate general, business Sweden, the Swedish Church, the Swedish School and the Swedish Club all gave presentations to a crowd of 50 newcomers at the westin hotel. after the presentations, both newcomers and veter-ans enjoyed discussions over drinks, food and desserts.

Christophe Dolhemand Emma Gunterberg Sachs of theSwedish chamber.

Katarina Malm (left) and Eva Nitenius enjoyed the gathering.


Welcome Savannah!n Savannah alsén is this year’s anders wall Scholarship holder at the Swedish chamber’s office in Shanghai. Savan-nah is an entrepreneur and an Uppsala University law graduate who is interested in international business and trade. She hopes that the next 10 months at the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China will provide rare insights into the international business climate in China. She is also excited to have taken on the role of chairperson of the Young Professionals Shanghai.

Savannah has owned and run a designer shoe bou-tique and online store since 2008. She has studied Chinese at fudan University, as well as international trade law at national taipei University. we are glad to welcome Savan-nah to the Shanghai office, and at the same time thank her predecessor, alexander de freitas, for his excellent performance as the 2012 scholarship holder.

Spotlight on the Boardn SwedCham hong Kong’s board of directors engage in and lobby for various topics of interest, such as a double taxation agreement between Sweden and hong Kong, an increased number of pages for Swedish passports, and direct flights from Sweden to hong Kong, among other issues.

Stay informed and provide your input by visiting our web-site, www.swedcham.com.hk, and clicking on ‘Spotlight on the board’. Your views are always most welcome!

You can also visit our website to read about how SwedCham takes care of your corporate and private e-waste. SwedCham’s hong Kong environmental Commit-tee is launching a “Join the electronic waste Collection” activity in november 2013.

Welcome Emma and Anna!n SwedCham hong Kong warmly welcomes emma Cosmo and anna Mackel to our small chamber team. emma will take up the post of marketing manager and anna will work part time to take care of the chamber’s finances as finance manager.

emma came to hong Kong 1-1/2 years ago from beijing, where she worked as a consultant in marketing and retail for biörck & Co.

anna arrived in hong Kong two years ago from London and has worked for the Swedish chamber before. She also has additional expe-rience in the banking and telecom sectors.

they look forward to meeting you all at one of the chamber’s up-coming events. Welcome Mona and Joakim!

n Mona zhang is the new financial assistant at the Swedish chamber in beijing. Mona has just recently graduated from beijing international Studies University, majoring in english. the Swedish Chamber of Commerce is her first job and she is very happy for the opportunity to work with the chamber’s member companies.

the chamber’s beijing office is also benefitting from a new intern, Joakim eriksson, for a brief period of three months. Joakim graduated with a ba in business administration and Chi-nese at the Lund University, Sweden, in 2013. for Joakim, China is not a new experience, as he moved to Shanghai and worked as a copywriter, teacher, journalist and actor in 2006. in 2009, he worked with brand planning for a Chinese liquor brand.

we are very glad to welcome Mona and Joakim to the Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China and would also like to thank our previous intern, Johan trennestam, and office assistant, Vika Jiao, for their great contributions.

Mona Zhang Joakim Eriksson

Emma Cosmo Anna Mackel

Savannah Alsén

Dags att söka Anders Wall-stipendium till Shanghain anders walls Stiftelser lämnar till Svenska handelskammaren i Shanghai ett stipendium för att utbilda unga, kreativa affärsbegåvningar inom internationell handel och industri.

Stipendiesumman uppgår till 150 000 kr och tillträde sker i september 2014 för 10 månaders tjänstgöring på handelskammaren i Shanghai. handelskammaren ger dig gärna en arbetsbeskrivning.

Sista ansökningsdag är onsdag, 27 november. Mer information hittar du på handelskammarens hemsida www.swedishchamber.com.cn


HONG KONG OrDiNarY MEMbEr >>>

Bird & Bird4/f three Pacific Place1 Queen’s road easthong Kongtel: +852 2248 6000web: www.twobirds.com

Activitiesbird & bird is an international commercial law firm that oper-ates on the basis of an in-depth understanding of key industry sectors including aerospace, automotive, communications, electronics, energy & utilities, financial services, food & bever-age, healthcare, information technology, life sciences, media and sport. we offer local expertise within an international context, with more than 1,000 lawyers and legal practitioners in 25 offices worldwide. Most of our work is cross-border and multi-jurisdictional. we excel at managing complex projects across multiple regions with a seamless one-firm approach.

Chamber representativesai-Leen Lim, Partnerhank Leung, associate

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HONG KONG OVErSEaS MEMbEr >>>

Aktiebolaget Svensk Exportkredittriple one Somerset # 07-04Singapore 238164tel: +65 6735 5547email: [email protected]: www.sek.se

With the opening of its new private banking branch in Singapore, clients resident in Asia can benefit from Nordea’s wealth management expertise, global market access and Nordic approach to doing business, while maintaining their account in the Asian financial centre of Singapore. Address: Nordea Bank S.A., Singapore Branch, 3 Anson Road, #20-01 Springleaf Tower, Singapore 079909

Visit us at www.nordeaprivatebanking.com, call +65 65 97 10 82 or email [email protected] for more information or to set up a personal meeting.

Nordea Bank S.A, Singapore Branch is part of Nordea Group, the leading financial services group in the Nordic and Baltic Sea regions. Some products and services may, due to local regulations, not be available to individuals resident in certain countries and their availability may depend, among other things, on the investment risk profile of persons in receipt of this publication or on any legislation to which they are subject. Nothing in this publication should be construed as an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to purchase, subscribe to or sell any investment or product, or to engage in any other transaction or provide any kind of financial or banking service in any jurisdiction where Nordea Bank S.A., Singapore Branch or any of its affiliates do not have the necessary licence. Published by Nordea Bank S.A., R.C.S. Luxembourg No. B 14.157 on behalf of Nordea Bank S.A., Singapore Branch, 3 Anson Rd #20-01, Springleaf Tower, Singapore 079909, subject to the supervision of the Monetary Authority of Singapore (www.mas.gov.sg). www.nordeaprivatebanking.com

Nordea opens International Private Banking branch in Singapore

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HONG KONG iNDiViDUaL MEMbErS >>>

Lisa Enebro Grantemail: [email protected]: +852 9832 9390

Niklas Åbergemail: [email protected]: +852 5616 0032

ActivitiesSeK has been helping Swedish export companies with financ-ing since 1962. we provide export and project financing solu-tions, such as corporate lending, export credits and structured finance. over the years, we have built a broad network of fi-nancial participants, international banks and institutions world-wide. our strong reputation on the world’s capital markets allows us to borrow capital on competitive terms. this means, in turn, that we can offer favourable terms and conditions.

we understand the complexity of international busi-ness transactions and know that solid financing can make all the difference in closing a deal. we are here to help you strengthen your competitiveness in international business.

Chamber representativesCarl engelberth, Chief representative for asiarichard anund, asia representative

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Beijer Electronics Trading (Shanghai) Co, Ltd2 floor, building bno 1618 Yishan roadShanghai 201103 tel: +86 21 6145 0400fax: +86 21 6145 0499web: www.beijerelectronics.com.cn

Activitiesbeijer electronics is a technology corporation focusing on in-dustrial automation and robust data communications. for 30 years, beijer electronics has been innovating and coming up with technology solutions that bring our customers greater efficiency at lower costs. we deliver leading products and solutions in automation and data communications with the aim of controlling, monitoring and optimising industrial processes and functions. our independence as a company allows us to focus clearly on the needs of users, system de-signers and oeMs. as a result, our solutions adapt smoothly to individual requirements, yet are fully compatible with all major automation brands. our product range includes hMi, industrial switches and automation.

Chamber representativesberndt Kohring, Vice President asia-Pacificemail: [email protected]: +86 137 6187 3638eric Lv, Country director hMi Chinaemail: [email protected]: +86 188 0210 3636

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CHiNa OrDiNarY MEMbErS >>>


Absortech Desiccant (Shanghai) Co, Ltdno 70, Changgu roadSongjiang districtShanghai 201601tel: +86 21 6768 1621fax: +86 21 6768 1622web: www.absortech.com

Activitiesabsortech is a worldwide container desiccant supplier. de-veloping and marketing desiccants for the transport industry worldwide is our mission, and we offer a range of quality products that combine high functionality and excellent design, while also sharing our application expertise through advice and training. we offer efficient moisture protection for all needs.

Chamber representativesMax twisselmannemail: [email protected]: +86 186 1687 2751nicole tangemail: [email protected]: +86 133 1003 0925

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AP&T (Shanghai) Automation, Press and Tooling Trade Co, Ltdroom b808, no 88 beizhangjiabang roadPudong districtShanghai 200122tel: +86 21 5835 3799fax: +86 21 5835 3760 web: www.aptgroup.com

ActivitiesaP&t designs, manufactures and markets automation, press-es, tools and complete production lines for the sheet-metal and tube-forming industry. we are experts in forming technol-ogy and automated processes, and we deliver complete pro-duction systems, assuming complete supplier responsibility – one responsible Partner®. in China, aP&t has had its own sales and service organisation based in Shanghai since 2009. it is our mission to make our domestic customers competitive through the right production equipment and support.

Chamber representativeJoachim Ullberg, general Manageremail: [email protected]: +86 159 2133 6776

Brandon Trading (Shanghai) Ltdroom 2364, building 13, Jinjiang hotelno 59, Maoming road SouthShanghai 200020tel: +86 186 2163 3406web: www.brandoncompany.com

Activitiesbrandon designs, produces and distributes licensed and corporate merchandise worldwide. we’ll help you strengthen your brand’s position, boost its value, broaden your global reach, attract new customers and, most importantly, in-crease your profits.

brandon’s been in business since 1987. in other words, we have many years of experience. but we would also be the last to say we know it all. what we have is as much en-thusiasm about finding new and better ways of doing things today as we did in the ‘80s.

Chamber representativehans fogelbergemail: [email protected]: +86 186 2163 3406

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DST Seibu Gikenno 8, Jinlin roadnorth east development zoneChangshu City, Jiangsu 215558tel: +86 21 6236 0536fax: +86 21 6236 0535web: www.dst.cn

ActivitiesdSt is a global leader in dehumidification machinery for commercial purposes. our machines have been keeping fac-tories, hotels, essential infrastructures and more, dry, safe and free from the dangers and damage wrought by humidity for over 30 years. we are part of a proud Swedish tradition.

Chamber representativesanders Kristofersonemail: [email protected]: +46 70 334 30 99nathan fischbacheremail: [email protected]: +86 139 1895 9282

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banking and finance company law and corporate finance distribution and agency law property lease law china desk environmental law corpo-rate reconstructuring eu and competition law maritime and transporta-tion law real estate and construction law employment law mergers and acquisitions insurance intellectual property marketing and media law international law energy and investment law it and telecom litigation and arbitration private equity

Doing business in Sweden?

Lawyers you want on your side

Dellia Human Resources Co, LtdSuite 2305a, Metrobank Plazano 1160, west Yan’an road Changning districtShanghai 200050tel: +86 21 3319 7583web: www.dellia-hr.com

Activitiesdellia-hr specialises in providing tailor made recruitment solutions to existing international clients and any multi-national corporation that needs to establish new divisions in China. our involvement in negotiating the intricacies of cross-cultural and cross-ethical values separates us from other major head-hunters/recruiters. we put enormous efforts into in-depth study of the psychology of executive candidates, their motivations, their stress tolerance, their team dynamics, and their social networks.

Chamber representativesPhilip Clark, Managing Partneremail: [email protected]: +86 189 6459 6260alexander de freitas, Key account Manageremail: [email protected] Mobile: +86 156 1885 1651

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Bombardier CPC Propulsion System Co, Ltdno 68 fenglin roadwujin hi-tech development zoneJiangsu Province 213166tel: +86 519 8837 3095fax: +86 519 8837 3099web: www.bcp-propulsion.cn

Activitiesbombardier CPC Propulsion System Co, Ltd (bCP) is dedi-cated to the production, marketing and maintenance of propulsion systems for rail vehicles. Jointly established by bombardier and new United group Co, Ltd, in 2003, bCP has supplied propulsion and control systems for China’s high-speed rail vehicles, high-power freight electric locomotives and metro lines in cities both China-wide and overseas.

Chamber representativetomas anderssonemail: [email protected]

Clean Healthy Air 24/7 = Life insurance and Higher Performance

At Home • Kindergarten/School/High School/University • At Work

SWEDEN HQ Environmental Air of Sweden AB. Mr Göran Hertzberg, M D, Ph: 0046 761 048 350, Mail: [email protected]

www.easab.com

EAS Beijing Office, China, Mr Shangyou Dong, Manager, Ph: 0086 10 85322147,Cell: 0086 135 2199 5330, Mail: [email protected]

InterChina Consulting (Shanghai) Co, LtdSuite 3110, haitong Securities towerno 689, guangdong roadShanghai 200001tel: +86 21 6341 0699 fax: +86 21 6341 0799 web: www.interchinaconsulting.com

ActivitiesinterChina is a leading strategy and M&a advisory firm in China. our team of 60 professionals has conducted over 500 strategy projects and closed over 160 transactions. we have offices and professionals throughout China and in eu-rope, and are members of iMaP, a leading global investment banking organization. through our unique combination of ca-pabilities, we have delivered the highest quality of services to clients for nearly 20 years.

Chamber representativesJames Sinclair, Managing Partneremail: [email protected]: +86 138 1610 6476Michael thurowemail: [email protected] Mobile: +86 138 1750 9248

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Oboya Investment Group Hong Kong Limitedno 450, no 8 road haibin industrial Park, JiaonanQingdao, Shandong Province 266400tel: +86 532 8513 5818 fax: +86 532 8813 8586web: www.oboya.cc

Activitiesoboya investment manufactures automotive components, and has six factories and seven sales offices in China.

Chamber representativesrobert wuemail: [email protected]: +86 159 6983 5999Mikael Palm anderssonemail: [email protected]: +46 708 998 070

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CHiNa aSSOCiaTE MEMbEr >>>

Carl Felix Feyab 365, University of nottingham ningbo China no 199, taikang east roadningbo, zhejiang Province 315100email: [email protected]: +86 186 6781 3873

Kongsberg Automotiveno 30 & 32, Xi Kun roadSingapore industrial Parkwuxi, Jiangsu Province 214028tel: +86 510 8528 2165web: www.kongsbergautomotive.com

ActivitiesKongsberg automotive is a global provider of engineering, design, and manufacture for seat comfort, driver and mo-tion control systems, fluid assemblies, and industrial-driver interface products. our product line includes systems for seat comfort, clutch actuation, cable actuation, gear shifters, trans-mission control systems, stabilising rods, couplings, electronic engine controls, specialty hoses, tubes and fittings. we target the automotive, commercial vehicle and industrial markets.

Chamber representativeniklas berntsson email: [email protected]: +86 186 0510 5377

Micro Systemation ABhornsbruksgatan 28Se-117 34 StockholmSwedentel: +46-8-739 0270web: www.msab.com

ActivitiesMicro Systemation (MSab) is the global leader in forensic technology applications for examinations carried out using mobile devices. the company is based in Stockholm and has been listed on the Swedish stock exchange since 1999.

Chamber representativethomas renmanemail: [email protected]: +46-709 18 19 99

Plantagen Asia Sourcing Ningboroom 501, gu ting building, hefeng Creative Squareno 495, north Jiangdong roadningbo, zhejiang Province 315100tel: +86 188 6862 8950web: www.plantagen.se

Activitieswith our more than 110 stores in Sweden, norway, finland and ireland, Plantagen is the largest chain of garden sup-plies stores in the nordic region. our mission is to offer both inspiration as well as everything you need for your garden. we supply everything plant related, from seed bags, to cut flowers and small plants to shrubs, trees, bulbs, perenni-als, roses and orchids. whatever you need to grow, operate, crop, and nurture your plants, we have it. what’s more, we also have outdoor recreational products: barbecues, garden furniture, garden tools, and pots and gifts. Plantagen has two sourcing offices in asia, with the largest located in ningbo, zhejiang Province.

Chamber representativeshelena Lindströmemail: [email protected]: +86 188 6862 8950Joakim holmbergemail: [email protected]: +66 8 1913 3102

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Vattenfall ABevenemangsgatan 13 Se16992, StockholmSwedentel: +46 8 739 5000web: www.vattenfall.com

ActivitiesVattenfall is one of europe’s largest generators of electric-ity and the largest producer of heat, with a product focus on electricity, heat and gas. in terms of electricity and heat, Vattenfall works in all parts of the value chain: gen-eration, distribution and sales. in terms of gas, Vattenfall is active in sales. Vattenfall also conducts energy trading and lignite mining.

the parent company, Vattenfall ab, is 100%-owned by the Swedish state. the core markets are Sweden, ger-many and the netherlands. in 2011, operations were also conducted in belgium, denmark, finland, france, Poland and the UK.

Vattenfall is interested in the supply market in China, es-pecially products such as equipment and sub-components used in power plants. Vattenfall is looking into the oppor-tunities for sourcing those commodities for its european power plants.

Chamber representativeLikun zakrissonemail: [email protected]: +46 725 65 17 92

Fillidutt Co, Ltdroom 8d, hai Xing Plazano 1 ruijin (South) roadShanghai 200023tel: +86-21-6422 5727 web: www.fillidutt.com

Activitiesfillidutt is engaged in confectionary imports, distribution and sales under its own brand name.

Chamber representativefredrik wanniusemail: [email protected]: +86 186 0210 4805

• Photographic Equipment• Video/Audio Hi-Fi Equipment

• Home Appliances• Colour Film Processing/Enlargement

• Audio/Video Dubbing Services• Communication Equipment

• Electronic Equipment• Repairing Services

• Mail Order Acceptable

Shop No.65, 1/F, Admiralty Centre, 18 Harcourt Road, Hong KongTel: 852-2877-2227 Fax: 852-2877-2120

Mobile: 9051-9499 E-mail: [email protected]

Opening Hour: Mon – Sat 9:00am – 7:00pm Sunday 2:00pm – 6:00pm

JOHNNY’S PHOTO & VIDEO SUPPLY LTD

• Photographic Equipment• Video/Audio Hi-Fi Equipment

• Home Appliances• Colour Film Processing/Enlargement

• Audio/Video Dubbing Services• Communication Equipment

• Electronic Equipment• Repairing Services

• Mail Order Acceptable

Shop No.65, 1/F, Admiralty Centre, 18 Harcourt Road, Hong KongTel: 852-2877-2227 Fax: 852-2877-2120

Mobile: 9051-9499 E-mail: [email protected]

Opening Hour: Mon – Sat 9:00am – 7:00pm Sunday 2:00pm – 6:00pm

JOHNNY’S PHOTO & VIDEO SUPPLY LTD


a F T E r H O U rS

n RestaurantsHand-made sausages and home-brewed beerIn a small white brick house in a hutong alley is a small restaurant called Stuff’d. In the surrounding area you can also find many traditional hutongs that are still bustling and the famous Lama Temple and Confucius Temple.

Swedish co-owner Thomas Gaestadius says that at Stuff’d they make everything themselves, from the hand-made sausages to the pies and even the beer. The menu has a good selection of dishes, with flavours, herbs and influences from all over the world. You can even find a pizza with Swedish meatballs.

Try for example The Spice of Life, a Swedish sausage with potato in the mix, or The Siesta, a chorizo spiced with cayenne and paprika. The home-made beer goes perfectly with all dishes. For dessert, try the deliciously crumbled apple pie or the lemon cheesecake.Address: Stuff’d, 9 Jianchang Hutong, Dongcheng District, BeijingPhone: +86 10 6407 6308 Web: www.stuff-d.comOpening hours: Daily (except Tuesdays) 11.30am-2.45pm, 6-10pm

O u r w o r l d i s l o g i s t i c s

Kasper Svane KristensenSales Manager Hong Kong & China

+86 139 1609 [email protected]

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n DesignNordic Design and Innovation WeekOn 1-10 November, a Nordic design and innovation Week will be held in Shanghai. The Nordic Design and Innovation Week aims to strengthen the image of the Nordic countries and showcase the Nordic concept of sustainable design and innovation.

During the week there will be an exhibition, several workshops and networking events. On 4 November, the Swedish Chamber of Commerce has invited Volvo Cars and IKEA to host a seminar and members of all Nordic chambers are welcome to participate. More information will be posted on www.swedishchamber.com.cn.


n PublicationsThe urban secrets of Hong KongAs a member of SwedCham Young Professionals in Hong Kong, you will get a newly produced, cool pocket guide to all the urban secrets of this exciting city. The YP Hong Kong guide is a precious collaboration between inspiring individuals willing to

share their hidden gems and city secrets. Use it to find brilliant, vibrant and relaxing places in Hong Kong! We have pinned all the hot spots to Google maps for easier navigation. The SwedCham YP Committee thanks Finnair for its generous sponsorship.

n ShopsPostcards with a storyDon’t know what to do a Sunday afternoon? Take a trip to Beijing Postcards and learn about the fascinating history of old Beijing.

Living in a city that develops at the pace Beijing does, it can be difficult to feel a connection with history. Beijing Postcards’ mission is to breach this gap. Through exhibitions, walks, talks and their own unique collection of antique maps, photos and prints, Beijing Postcards continuously seeks to create a living history of Beijing.

The engine behind this small business is the obsession of two Danes, Lars Ulrik Thom and Simon Rom Gjeroe, with Chinese history. “We don’t only make reproductions of the photos we collect. We also conduct a lot of interviews with old Beijing residents, in order to get the story behind the pictures.”

Most of the pictures, prints and maps are actually found abroad, because they were taken or drawn by foreigners. The collection is used to create original products, such as postcards, calendars, large reproduction photos and bags.

Apart from the shop, walking tours and lectures about Beijing have become an important part of the business. Address: Beijing Postcards Shop, 85-1 Nanluogu xiang, Dongcheng District, BeijingWeb: www.bjpostcards.comOpening hours: Mon-Fri 12am-9pm; Sat-Sun 12am-10pm

n StampsWaldner on a Chinese stampSix-times world table tennis champion and 1992 Olympic gold medallist Jan-Ove Waldner has become the first living foreigner to appear on

a Chinese postage stamp, reports Reuters. “There is an enormous demand for the stamps,” Waldner said. “They’ve already

sold 3 million and they have 13 million more to sell. This is huge, it doesn’t get much bigger than this in China. It’s an honour to be on a stamp.”

Swede Waldner is one of the best-known foreign sportsmen in China where table tennis is extremely popular. The honour of appearing on a Chinese stamp is rare. Karl Marx, for example, is one of the few other foreigners to have appeared on a Chinese stamp.

T H E C H a M b E r a N D i

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Views on the environmentRead what our members think about environmental problems and air pollution.

Swedish Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong

DIRECTORS OF THE BOARDUlf Ohrling, Chairman [Mannheimer Swartling]Jimmy Bjennmyr [Handelsbanken]Carl Christensson [Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken]Eva Henriksson [Henriksson Consulting]Walter Jennings [Kreab Gavin Anderson]Staffan Löfgren [ScanAsia Consulting]Laurence McDonald [Ericsson]Kristian Odebjer [Advokatfirman Odebjer Fohlin Fitzgerald]Per Ågren [APC Asia Pacific Cargo]

Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China

DIRECTORS OF THE BOARDKatarina Nilsson, Chairman [Advokatfirman Vinge]Lars-Åke Severin, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Beijing Chapter [PSU]Ulf Söderström, Vice Chairman and Chairman of the Shanghai Chapter [SCA]Fredrik Ektander, Treasurer [SEB]Yvonne Chen [GM, Swedish Chamber of Commerce in China]Birgitta Ed [Six Year Plan]Karine Hirn [East Capital]Peter Idsäter [Mannheimer Swartling]Daniel Karlsson [Asia Perspective]Tom Nygren [Ericsson]Martin Pei [SSAB]Peter Sandberg [Tobii]

Heléne Loberg, IKEA IMS Wholesale, Shanghai1) difficult to say over the long term, but in recent last months

i feel the environment has improved (less pollution). i don’t know the reasons for this, and usually the pollution gets worse during the winter.

2) no.

Ulf Söderström, SCA, Shanghai1) generally better but last autumn was really bad.2) when it comes to expats with children we see more

concern now than before. all the media attention on China’s bad pollution last year has had an effect.

3) no.

Eva Henriksson, Henriksson Consulting, Hong Kong1) worse when it comes to air and seawater pollution – and

too many dogs!2) no.3) definitely in the future but not for now.4) ban all buses/trucks that spew out clouds of black ex-

haust. Sue all local commercial vessels throwing garbage

Per Axell, Nilorn East Asia, Hong Kong1) i don’t know the statistics but i follow pollution levels via

the air You breathe app. the level is normally yellow or “high” but becomes red or “very high” more often.

2) not so far. but people are more and more aware of the risks.

The Swedish Chamber of Commerce works actively with environmental protec-tion issues, and its members, both individuals and corporations, are committed to improving the environment in hong Kong and China.

for this issue of Dragon News, we ask some of our members what they think of the environment and what should be done to deal with the problems.

Questions:1) Has the environment become better or worse in recent years where you live? 2) Is your company having problems recruiting skilled staff due to pollution?3) Is your company considering moving to another, less polluted location?4) What measures do you think should be undertaken by the government?

3) no.4) China needs a comprehensive plan for reducing pollution.

taxes on fuel, restrictions on car use, control of emissions from factories (pollution tax?), and increased use of environmental friendly energy sources like wind power. Chinese awareness of their impact on the environment has to increase.

4) Subsidise environmental solutions for cars, fuel, electricity, etc. give people an opportunity to choose environmental solutions. improve public transportation. Close down heavily polluting industries. establish environmental targets short and long term. Start to educate people about how to change to more sustainable solutions. Small changes, if there are many of them, can have a huge impact!

into the water, or put a high levy on them until the water is clean. Minimise energy consumption, rather than – as is the case now – constantly increasing it by thousands of new spectacular neon lights everywhere. Since many factory owners are from hong Kong they should be responsible when it comes to pollution of the Pearl river delta so why not put a levy on them?

3) no.4) it’s of course a global problem. all industries in southern

China have a big impact on hong Kong’s air pollution. but in the case of hong Kong, the city should reduce emissions from all cars/buses in city to avoid the same situation facing beijing and Shanghai.

Jens Purup Krog, Access People, Beijing1) over the last two winters i’ve really felt the pollution in

those harsh weeks in which the scale broke through 500. 2) internally, no, but as a head-hunter for clients, yes. Since

november 2011, i have had five candidates on different final shortlists who withdrew their candidacy with the family/children as the main reason for not wanting to move to beijing.

3) no. 4) i guess the only way to change and hope for smarter behav-

iour is to put a price on it. the worst polluting industries need to be managed. the government should kill all central heating systems and ensure that individual use of heating/cooling is paid by the individual. real estate developers need to be com-pelled to use only the most energy-saving building materials.


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Documents

Dragon News - No. 3, 2013