March 3, 2011 - 4:34pm
Chinese leaders discuss business at China Entrepreneur Forum
BY ADITYA BADRINATH
On football game days, it is difficult to find a place on campus that is as packed as the Big House. But last Saturday, Blau Auditorium in the Ross School of Business was filled beyond its seating capacity for the 2010 China Entrepreneur Forum.
The forum was organized by members of the China Entrepreneur Network — a student group founded at the University in 2009 with the purpose of increasing student awareness about business opportunities in China.
The goal of the forum was to bridge the business barriers between the United States and China and encourage students to seek jobs overseas.
Dr. Yuan Tian, chair of the influential China Entrepreneurs Forum and chair of the China-US Business Leaders Roundtable, flew in from China to give the first keynote speech.
In his address, Tian emphasized the need for a “strong (Chinese and American) relationship that would benefit corporations in both countries.”
He went on to suggest a possible way in which the United States and China could partner — splitting the process of innovation by having the United States focus on developing new technologies while China focuses on implementation and production.
Tian ended his talk by noting the importance of America overcoming its own economic hurdles.
“(If the) American economy continues its downturn for a long time, and the Chinese economy continues growing, how will the two countries deal with each other soon?” Tian said.
He added that a recovered American economy would help stabilize China’s economic growth.
Not all the speakers at the day-long event discussed global interactions. Ning Tang, founder and CEO of CreditEase, China’s first microfinance organization, was another keynote speaker who also traveled from China. Tang’s discussion centered around his attempts to establish a system that would facilitate the building of credit for lower-income Chinese citizens.
Tang noted that in the past 10 years, building credit has become a popular trend in developing countries. Though lower-income citizens are risky prospects for lending, companies are starting to see the potential in offering loans to this large sector of China’s population.
The conference placed the most emphasis on strengthening U.S. and Chinese business relations. Rena Sun, a fourth-year Ph.D. student at the University and the fund-raising director of CEN, said the goal in holding the second annual forum was to “have a platform to bring (the) U.S. and China together to have a conversation.”
She added that Chinese students have difficulties applying the knowledge they gain at the University, and said forums like this provide connections between students and members of China’s business community.
LSA sophomore Zhihui Zheng, one of the roughly 400 attendees, said the panels and discussion provided him with an idea of “how to continue developing business relations between China and the United States.”
