Executives of Chinese Firms Impressed by U.S. Business

If you ever get fed up with working conditions, computer snafus and middle management bulge, take heart. Chinese businessmen think we have a great system.

A group of 38 business executives and four educators from the People’s Republic of China are winding up a two-month stay in Orange County, and they are impressed with the companies they have seen in Southern California.

“The first thing we’ve got to do when we go back is make our environment better for workers,” said Tao Zeng Xin, senior engineer of the China Hua Yang Technology & Trade Corp. in Beijing.

The delegation, representing 40 Chinese companies in eight provinces, made its way Thursday morning to Cypress, where the members went on a two-hour excursion through the city’s 500-acre industrial park.

The Chinese aren’t thinking about setting up business there, at least not yet. They just wanted to see what an industrial park could look like, said Judy Yu, general manager of Golden Asia International, a Fountain Valley firm that is co-sponsoring the delegation’s tour.

They plan to use what they learn to improve their business operations in China and to open more doors to trade and business ventures with U.S. companies, Tao said through an interpreter.

Tao, the delegation’s leader, was most impressed by the operations of the Geneva Cos., a Costa Mesa firm that arranges mergers and acquisitions. Tao said he came away with a sense that employees were proud of the company, worked efficiently and projected a good image of the firm.

He cited such symbols of pride as brass cats that line the window sills of employees who earned them for completing deals and a “trophy wall” filled with newspaper advertisements trumpeting the firm’s deals.

Besides vowing to improve working conditions in China, delegation members also plan to push for increased use of computers and for streamlined management, Tao said.

“Your computer control systems are very impressive,” he said. “In China, we have very limited use of computers. In China, we also have too much management, and that affects the product. We want to go back and change the management system--cut back on red tape.”

The delegation, one of many to visit the United States in the last few years, followed a regimen that was somewhat different from most previous ones.

For the first few weeks, the Chinese studied American marketing and management techniques at Cal State Fullerton. Then they spent three weeks touring such Southland plants as Parker-Hannifin, Bridgford Foods, Xerox, IDM, Kern’s and General Motors.

A few plants, such as McDonnell Douglas and Ford Aerospace, were off limits because some of the work there involved confidential government projects, Judy Yu said.

Delegation members spent the last few weeks on their own. Individual members have been negotiating with American companies to form joint ventures in China or to export machinery and technology to China to make products that could be sold in the United States.

Zhang Lu Zhong, for instance, said he already has two Southern California firms competing to work with his firm, Liuzhou General Electric Machinery Factory in Liuzhou, Guangxi, to import a highly advanced all-purpose electric motor to the United States.

“We don’t have a contract yet. We’re still talking,” Zhang said through an interpreter.

More important to him, he said, is “making friends in the trading business.”

Golden Asia is co-sponsoring the delegation as part of a nonprofit education service for Chinese executives. The firm wants the executives to establish good relations with U.S. businesses before they start dealing with Americans, Yu said.

“Japan has invested a lot in China in the past, and, right now, China has a negative outlook of Japan because of those business dealings,” she said. “We want the top engineers and government people in China to get acquainted with the U.S. market so the U.S. can trade with China just as well.”

The two-month session has not been all work and study. The Chinese have visited numerous museums, Sea World in San Diego and one of the two places they all wanted to see before they left for China--Disneyland.

They are scheduled to leave Monday on a whirlwind nine-day tour of the country, and their first stop will be Las Vegas--the other tourist site at the top of their list, according to Yu and Tao. They also will visit the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, New York and San Francisco.

Zhang can’t wait to see New York.

“I want to see all those tall buildings,” he said.