Beijing -
Sunday, March
19, 2006
Meeting With IT Companies
Last year, Lenovo (the largest Chinese computer company) bought
IBM’s PC division. Despite its initial plans to do otherwise, we convinced
Lenovo then to keep its executive staff in Westchester County. Unfortunately,
we arrived in China to get the bad news that the company’s new CEO (an
American) had decided to move most of the executive staff to North Carolina in
the hope of reducing costs. Why a Chinese company, known for its low cost
position in the market but needing to expand its market share, would make this
kind of move was not clear to us. But we expect to learn more and reach an
understanding when we meet with Lenovo later in the week.
In the meantime, our relationships with Lenovo have already led
to other Chinese connections. For example, in Westchester, I met with the
husband of Lenovo’s Human Resources Vice President. He was himself the former
director of software for Lenovo, but had become a technology entrepreneur and
had a group of other leading IT companies in Beijing.
Today, in the first of two meetings he set up, I spent several
hours with him and the C.E.O. of a successful IT company. In the first sign of
a major shift in the outlook of Chinese business people, he was most interested
in selling the products from one of the Westchester IT companies in the
portfolio we created.
The world changes very quickly. Eight years ago, the Chinese
were mostly interested in selling their products to us. Now that they have
accumulated so many dollars and have created a large internal market, they are
looking for products to sell in China.
We will be setting up a videoconference for both sides to
proceed to the next steps in creating a business relationship. (It is
important to realize that, unlike in China, the government’s economic
development efforts here stop at promotion, market development and trying to be
“marriage brokers”. We cannot actually make any sales, so for this effort to
ensure Westchester’s future economic success, we need the wholehearted support
and sales efforts of the companies here.)
Beyond trade relationships, he also expressed an interest in
making investments in Westchester. As a case in point, he mentioned that a
group of millionaires from Szenchen (the city outside of Hong Kong famous for
its manufacturing prowess) had put together a pool to invest in Shanghai before its real estate boom started. He was so impressed by what he had learned
that he hoped to organize a similar pool of Beijing IT business people to
invest in Westchester.
continue
March 2006 Report
by Norm Jacknis, Westchester
County Chief Information Officer
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