China @ Baruch: Business/Economy of China

On April 19th at 6 pm I went to an event called China@ Baruch, which occurred on the 14th floor at Vertical Campus Building in the Sandra and Lawrence Simon Conference Room. The event was mainly for those who were interested in pursuing business in China in the future. It had a lot of interesting people speaking and attending, so I had the chance to practice my Chinese language once again as I’ve been taking it since 9th grade because even back then I decided that I would want to have some sort of business connections in China. This event was very informative, and some of the speakers were graduates from Baruch College whom managed to make a career for themselves. Every single one of them managed to point out different important aspect of Chinese Economy. For example, Kam Wong ’81 The President of Municipal Credit Union explained why Chinese government decided to give a huge credit loan to American government and lower down the export prices in exchange to American government selling their government bonds to China in order to fulfill their debt. Mr.Wong stated that China needs America to continue trading and buying products from China because it keeps their economy going, if they will stop selling and keep producing then the whole bubble will explode. Daniel Rosen The Co-Founder and China Practice Leader of Rhodium Group talked about business opportunities for foreigners, as it may seem that China is a very hard market to get into there are certain ways that one can start his/her own business in China. Steve Barclay, Director of Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office in New York also underlined the importance of trade between China and USA, he also mentioned Hong Kong’s stock exchange and its importance in Asian markets and World markets overall. Penny Chen Head of China Tax Team from KPMG audit firm stated that corruption is slightly decreasing in China but still very present, although if you go through the right firms you will be able to most likely avoid frauds and corruption. The funny thing was that I was very under-dressed for the event, so it took me a solid 10-15 minutes to decide whether I should come in or not because everybody was very well dressed in tuxedo’s, while I was wearing sportswear. But luckily enough all the people in front were very welcoming and they told me that its totally okay for you to come because the main goal for this event is to spread knowledge, and the way you’re dressed shouldn’t affect your opportunity of getting in and seizing it. I really enjoyed coming in and sitting next to a lot of unknown people as we had a couple of conversations in Chinese. This event opened my eyes on how connected Baruch is and on how much you can get from it if you seize all the opportunities.