Top Web Sites for Doing Business in China

After working with business partners in China for well over a year, and having been to China on business a few times already, I've collected the following web sites to help someone new learn the ropes:

• China Gateway and China Home from the U.S. Department of Commerce -- several very useful pages for getting started doing business in China; their page on Protecting Intellectual Property Rights is particularly valuable to read, as this is one of the areas where doing business in China is markedly different from doing business in the West, or in other countries (like Japan) with more mature governmental systems for establishing and enforcing patents, trademarks, copyrights, and the like.

• Hong Kong Trade Development Council (tdctrade.com) The HK TDC is a great hub for product sourcing, business matching services, trade show information, market research, and general business resources. Their goal is to promote foreign trade with and through Hong Kong, so there are many people in and around the organization that can connect you or your business with a variety of manufacturers or services. Hong Kong itself is a gateway to China in many ways -- even though it was transferred back to the sovereign control of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1997, it operates under the policy of "one country, two systems" whereby it has a different set of laws, currency and economic system, customs and commerce rules, etc. from the PRC, which in many instances makes it more desirable for foreign companies to deal with to get money and products into and out of China. The HK TDC also runs seminars and other events in major US cities to further promote Hong Kong business and aid US companies in understand the differences in culture and business practices.

• Alibaba Probably the biggest website for China importing and exporting, from finished goods to discrete components and raw materials; free to post buying and selling trade leads. Alibaba is also highly unregulated and well populated with manufacturers of counterfeit products (even their "Gold Suppliers"); as always, you must be very cimcumspect with respect to whom and how you exchange money for goods, the quality and content of goods, and whether they actually have the rights to sell you those goods.

• Global Sources Another very comprehensive site for finding manufacturers and other suppliers for products from China; this one requires their companies to pay, and may do some additional verification of their legitimacy -- as a result, there are far fewer counterfeiters on Global Sources than Alibaba, and the suppliers tend to be of higher quality as well. Global Sources also runs many trade shows year round, including the giant China Sourcing Fair that happens twice a year in Hong Kong, in April and October (coinciding roughly with the major trade shows sponsored by the HK TDC).

• Passagemaker China This is a specific contract manufacturer/sourcing company in China founded and run by a US expatriate (Mike Bellamy). They have some good information on their site (including several articles) about issues that are encountered when trying to get a product made in China; given the fact that they are an interested party, I found a lot of the information to be quite accurate, honest, and useful.

• James Fallows, a foreign correspondent at the Atlantic Monthly, who has been living in and writing about China for some time now -- including this great article about Shenzhen -- a "sister city" to Hong Kong, located in mainland China, where a huge amount of China's manufacturing and new businesses are located.

Doing business in another country is always a learning experience, but there are so many differences between the West and China that it can be truly fascinating, frustrating, and in many ways exhilarating because of the incredible amount of growth, change, opportunity, and raw energy of modern China.