Day 8 In the afternoon, we went to Sun Feng San Park. Look at the grand entrance! I felt really small when i was approaching it. Our last visit of the day was to Zhongshan Torch International Trade Development Area. At first on the bus, Yi Ling told me we were visiting a place that manufactures torch i was confused. But after realizing it was a Trade Developement area, we had a good laugh at it. Our welcome message. *shy* Zhongshan city has won a series of honours including: -National hygiene city -National gardening city -United Nations Human Settlements City -Demonstration city of National environmental protection -China excellent tourism city -National two-support model city -Nation Technology model city -Nation civilization city (2005) The zone is loacted in the east of Zhongshan city, 12 kilometers away from city center. Facing the estuary of the PRD on the east, it is adjacent to Shenzhen and Hong Kong. Also close to Zhuhai and Macao on the south, Panyu district of Guangzhou and Shunde on the north, Jiangmen and Foshan on the west. The favourable geographic location is a strong guarantee for the zone to make a rapid advancement. The development zone constitutes administrative organizations based on high-standards of State-level, dedicatiung itself to provide domestic and international businessman effective, efficient, professional and international high-standard services. Moreover, the zone focuses on human services through providing one-stop service from negotiation to registration, from factory construction to manufacture and to export. There are also special bonded warehouses in the zone in order to facilitate the import and export of raw materials and products. As a state-level development zone, Zhongshan Torch Development Zone enjoys not only the natioanl beneficial policies, but also the Municipal Economic Management Rights as a prefecture-level granted by Zhongshan municipal governement, and also, the city government set up first grade financial system and favourable supporting policies to the zone. In that area, they are further divided into more zones and each focusing on different areas. I feel that it is a good idea that there is existence of seperation between zones because it allow the area to have that "specialized" and unique environment that boosts the attractiveness to foreign investors because basic infrastructure is already in place. Labels: development zone, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Macao, Park, Shunde, Sunten, Xiao Deng, Zhongshan
Today the first thing we did was to visit Suten Electric Company. 
The company produce 4 main products-dry type transformer, rector, substation (No. 3 in the world) and switch gear. 
With 1500 employees, their output is an whooping amount of 15 million. Not only is it the biggest in the world, their brand name is also well known. 
Their revenue for 2004 was 12.3 billion RMB. They share close relationships with well-known government bodies and schools like Tsinghua University and Xian Jiaotong University which are prominent in their country. Not only do they have strong sales support team of 160 people and well known for resource planning, all their employees are well educated and have training, re-training, rewards and benefits given to them.
Similar to Singapore, the importance of keeping your workers up to date in their skills is one way to help them retain their job and for to have an competitive edge in the market because you have skilled labours as your valuable assets.
Sunten faces 3 main problems. The first one being the constantly increasing price of raw materials such as copper and steel accelerating from 3 million to 7 million dollars and 1 million to 3.5 million respectively. The flucuation in prices adversely affects the profits that were agreed on.
That leads on to the second problem which every company faces, competition. In order to keep that competive edge, prices need to be kept low and quality guaranteed. Their 5 close competitor compete with Sunten by pushing their prices low and use lower quality materials.
Finally, the problem of lack of capital and cash flows. This shows how important cash management is to every successful company. In order to be able to set up a company overseas successfully, enough cash and capital is not the way. It is important to know the culture, build relationship, understand basic rules (hire the locals) and regulations and lastly "mianzhi".
Yi Ling wasn't feeling well on that day so she missed out all the visits. Since we were on the move from Shunde to Zhongshan, the only way she could rest was in the bus. I think she got a cold and Xiao Deng insisted that she take his jacket. It is a authentic Armani Exchange jacket.
And the size is like 50!! So when Yi Ling put it on, she really looked quite puffed up. Haha
But she looks warm and happy. =D
It simply means more photos shots with the lovely environment around us. 
The red gang- (from left) Stephanie, Andrea, Zhi Wen, Bao Yi and me.
The dark/grey gang-Bao Yi, Rong Xing and me. 
The cutest little boy i've seen so far. His dad was really nice allowing us to take photos with him and carrying him. He didn't even cry or run away when we all took out our cameras and started snapping photos of/with him. 
A closer shot of him. Isn't he adorable? 
A last photo before we go-(from left) Guan Hong, Andrea, Dickson, Elizabeth, Bao Yi, Xin Ni, Me and Zhi Wen.
iblog; 5:00 PM