In 1986, Dwight Walker, our director, visited South-East China and Hong Kong on a short south-east Asian holiday. It is a huge country. Back then it was sleepy but it has been waking out of its sleep over the past 20 years and may well overtake USA as the powerhouse economy of the world!
We have a continuing interest in translating our site into Chinese (Mandarin) so that Chinese can work with us. Skype is proving to be very useful in reaching China cheaply from Australia. Chinese are keen to learn English and Western technology to develop their country. We feel we can assist there and also grow our business in a burgeoning area right on our doorstep here in the Asia-Pacific region.
We are interested in hi-tech software or support sales to China and perhaps working with Chinese nationals to grow a division of our business in China.
Australian export to China of Liquid Natural Gas from the Northwest Shelf and of iron ore from Western Australia went up dramatically since 2002 or so since a large 25 year contract worth $20-$25Bn AUD to export LNG to China was signed with the help of the Australian Government. (story). In April 2006, Australia also signed an agreement to sell Uranium to China (CNN story). Telstra bought a controlling stake in the huge Chinese internet news, information and real estate portal SouFun in September 2006 (story).
We are very open to work with non-English speaking countries like China or Japan or Korea. We love their food and culture. We were born in Australia and have grown up with many cultures at our door. We are open and gregarious as a nation. We are keen to work with our neighbours and are much more than an outpost for European or US powers or businesses. This is how Australia is growing up!
China is very keen to grow as an economic power. Chinese are very smart with trade. We are keen to fine-tune our deals so that we both win. We, like them, often suffer from low capitalisation but have found, as they have, that with time business that is nimble and agile will win over from the slow and ponderous larger companies in the world. Being the new kid on the block doesn't have to eliminate them from being a trade force in the future. China is now a member of the WTO.
China will be reaching out to the world through the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Shanghai has been renovated with many new buildings to transform this city into a futuristic one! China Homestay is one way to visit the Games via staying with locals and is run by Canadians.
We can work with them as we have less to lose and being agile can adapt quicker to Asian ways than our US colleagues. Also we are in the same time zone as Asia so can work in the same time of day rather than the US or Europe which are 10 to 18 hours different from Asia. We are only 0 to 2 hours difference from most Asian countries.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd spoke in Mandarin to Chinese leaders and students in Bejing in March 2008 on a world trip and also at APEC in Sydney in September 2007 when he was opposition leader showing how easy Australians are connecting to our large neighbour in language skills.
We are interested in embedded systems and wireless networking for Chinese companies. We have noticed that currently NICTA has many Chinese PhD graduates working on hi-tech products for Australia. Hence there is a keen interest in China to work with the West in spite of past experiences when Europe and America tried to take it over. We in Australia are much better at working in a multicultural climate and would make better suppliers and co-workers with Chinese companies than these other world powers.
I believe there is a high interest in Linux mobile phones and PDAs in China (Access Netforce browser). China's Red Flag Linux operating system distribution is very popular in China and have beaten out Microsoft which we are very happy about. With Japan's MIRACLE LINUX, Red Flag Linux has teamed up with Asianux to increase adoption of the Linux desktop in China, Japan and South Korea.
Open source software is easier to develop due to less restrictions on intellectual property which lets the Chinese own their own code rather than licensing it from an overseas company. Hence being a Linux advocate, we are in the box seat re sending software to China or using Chinese open source software to expand our business over in China without the overheads of and prejudice against open source software like in Australia.
China made an unsuccessful bid for the OpenOffice Conference (OOoCon) in 2007 which was won by Barcelona, Spain. They have a staggering array of software engineers and embedded technology being developed in Beijing.
China will be hosting the 2008 Open Office Conference in Bejing on 15-17/10/2008.
One of the biggest challenges is editing and displaying Chinese characters in a word processor or Web page. The correct character encoding or language pack needs to be loaded.