East Meets West With Hopes of Making Deal

The meeting began with a blizzard of business cards, ended with an exchange of gifts and was punctuated with the sound of an otherwise-dignified Edward Moser banging ventilators and respirators on the polished conference table and with a shrug of his shoulders declaring “durable” to his polite but perplexed Chinese visitors.

The sales pitch to government-backed Shenzhen Pharmaceutical Manufacture & Supply Corp. was one of the first forays into the giant Chinese market for Irvine-based Life Support Products Inc.

But as China increasingly looks to the West for joint ventures, U.S. businessmen such as Moser, director of marketing and sales for Life Support, are hoping that such meetings will improve their chances of breaking into the enormous Asian market.

And if last week’s meeting at Life Support Products was any indication, both the Shenzhen group and Life Support might just find what they are looking for--despite the hurdles of culture, business differences and language.

“They have to determine whether there is a viable market in China,” said Robert A. Hovee, president of Life Support. “They think there is, and we think there is. First, though, they have to present the products to the medical community there.”

If the country’s doctors are receptive, Hovee hopes Life Support can plug in its products in China’s estimated 55,000 hospitals.

The four-person delegation from Shenzhen Pharmaceutical arrived in the United States three weeks ago looking for medical products that they could purchase or arrange to manufacture in China through joint ventures with American companies. The Chinese firm is based in the province of Shenzhen, one of four special economic zones authorized by the Chinese government in 1980 to attract international investment.

“This type of delegation has become tremendously frequent since 1985,” said a U.S. State Department spokesman. “It was in 1985 that the Chinese began coming to the United States to encourage investment and joint ventures. Shenzhen is one of the four economic zones and one of the most active in these efforts.”

Life Support manufactures oxygen systems, trauma- and burn-care products and rescue equipment, which are distributed throughout the United States and in 17 foreign countries. To date, however, it has no Chinese presence--and it wants one.

What ensued was a meeting scheduled for one hour that lasted nearly five. It progressed from a polite--though slightly stilted--sales pitch about Life Support’s products, to a no-holds-barred discussion of just what would be needed for the Chinese and American companies to work together.

And it wasn’t easy.

When language failed, drawings were made. When drawings failed, hand signals were tried. Moser was left red-faced with exertion after one particularly arduous oration, in which he tried to communicate the idea of “bellows.”

To Moser, a bellows’ motion goes up and down. So he put one palm on top of the other and moved his hands apart and back together. To the Chinese seated uncomprehendingly in front of him, bellows move sideways, like an accordion. Five minutes later, they realized they were talking about the same thing.

Some concepts, however were easier to communicate, such as “options.” Xuan Shan, deputy general manager of Shenzhen Pharmaceuticals, at first said there were only two: “We both have to chip in capital or you could provide technology and we’ll provide materials,” she said through an interpreter.

By the end of the discussion, those two joint-venture options grew to five, Hovee said, ranging from the Shenzhen’s purchase of Life Support’s products for distribution in China’s hospitals, to Shenzhen’s manufacturing Life Support’s products for sale worldwide.

The last, Hovee said, “is not a possibility. . . . I’m not about to turn my business over to them.” The others, he said, could be worked out, although any agreement would be months in the future.

The first, said Bill Cheng, the Chinese delegation’s agent, “is impossible. . . . They are interested in a joint venture.”

Still, Hovee said, “There is an interest on both sides. . . . It is something that could happen.”