Overbruggen van drie jaar Covid in China

Picture 1: Horsten China colleagues at exhibitions Picture 2: the Horsten team is ready to help EU companies

Just after Christmas, as could be expected after the abolishment of the zero-Covid policy, China announced the opening of its borders and the abandonment of the quarantine for foreign travelers from 8 January 2023 onwards. This is a major change after three years of isolation of China for foreign business travellers.

Before we look forward to what’s to be expected in 2023, let’s look back to the past three years one more time.

With our permanent office and loyal team in China since 2001, also before Covid we have been very much engaged in being the eyes & ears of our customers in China. Obviously, after Covid-19 broke out early 2020 and travel to China became almost impossible, we have been focusing even more on this ‘representation, liaison and watchdog model’ for our European customers.

China suffered severe lockdowns in 2022, but generally speaking, after the first Covid-wave had passed around April 2020, it was largely back to normal in China since May 2020 and the major part of 2021. Hence, despite huge supply chain issues and other economic and social challenges in China, there was a lot going on in China too.

Here are some examples of a few of the services we provided to our customers in the past 3 years:

• As traveling within China was largely possible, we continued to perform quality inspections for our European customers. Examples can be found here.
• Although our European customers couldn’t travel to China personally, in the second half of 2020 and in 2021 Horsten’s project managers in China were present at around a dozen exhibitions in China on behalf of our customers. In this way our customers could still get a lot of exposure in China and continue their China business. Please check the following link for some examples.
• Although EU companies couldn’t travel to China, we could help them to perform a market research and help them get prepared for their China entry until the country opens up again. Some examples of this can be found here.
• In the beginning of 2021 we successfully set up our exclusive Belgian Food & Beverages store on Tmall Global, Alibaba’s cross-border e-commerce platform. In this way we could sell Belgian products to Chinese consumers without being physically present in China. More information here.
• Through our digital marketing division MyChinaWeb, we created a lot of exposure for our European customers on China’s social media platforms, including WeChat, Weibo, Douyin and others. Examples can be found on the following link.

If you need assistance for your China project in 2023, don’t hesitate to contact us.