Four years ago, CEO John Cestar took a novel approach to increasing the skill levels at Freeborders, a small outsourcing provider that operates in China. He took a road trip around the U.S., looking for Chinese engineers working in U.S. companies who were interested in returning to China or would soon be compelled to do… Read the rest

Most providers target the burgeoning domestic market, but a few offer a hybrid approach that appeals to the West

About two years ago, Kevin Miller needed a little help supporting legacy applications and developing new software for large automotive manufacturers. He decided to conduct a Cobol pilot project with Information Technology United Corp., a Beijing-based… Read the rest

Originally published in Computerworld.… Read the rest

Hankscraft Inc. has been making industrial motors and mechanized pumps for more than 50 years in Reedsburg, Wis. The company came to China just three years ago but already has twice as many employees here as it has at home.
Jonathan Funkhouser, who is general manager of Hankscraft’s China operations and

Among the various sourcing peculiarities and problems specific to China is regionalism, says Pieter Tsiknas, director of SearchBank’s Beijing office.
Although all Chinese nationals officially speak Mandarin, in practice, the local dialects can be mutually unintelligible. Shanghainese, for example, is a completely different language from Mandarin, and employees from Shanghai may speak Mandarin with an… Read the rest

This article originally appeared in CMO (Chief Marketing Officer), an IDG magazine (which has since ceased publication).
Jim Murphy learned about marketing to Chinese customers in bars.
When he first came to China in December of 2004, he didn’t think that consumers here could afford or were interested in the relatively pricey Jack Daniel’s whiskey… Read the rest

Originally published in CIO Insight.… Read the rest

It’s not just the intellectual-property pirates that make doing business in China difficult. The legal system makes pursuing pirates and getting indictments—let alone convictions—a struggle.
If finding a software pirate is as simple as walking down the street and looking around for wheelbarrows, why is China—home of the largest authoritarian

Article originally appeared in CIO Insight.… Read the rest
Feeble government actions not stemming piracy tide, business groups report. U.S. companies doing business in China face potential copyright infringement issues.
Despite three years of attention by lawmaking committees and a steadily increasing roster of laws protecting intellectual property, China is a shopper’s paradise for all things pirated—handbags, jewelry,