China National Commitee meets in Ningbo

I was honoured to be able to attend the meeting this week of China's National Technical Committee on Exhibition & Convention Standardization in Ningbo. OK, it may not be a title to get the pulse racing, but it is actually the only official, national level committee of any kind for the exhibitions industry in China. It is chaired by Chen Xianjin from the Shanghai World Expo Group who is also the chair of UFI's Asia/Pacific Chapter. The 20 or so key members are a real who's who of the industry in China.

I gave an overview of developments with the ISO's new standard and in UFI's own standardisation efforts. Pictured here, next to Woodward are Chen Xianjin (L) and, next to him, the Head of Ningbo city government's Convention & Exhibition office.


Other leaders of China's exhibition industry in the picture (and taking leading roles in the Committee) include (from the left) Tang Guifa from Shanghai, and Chen Fang and Li Kai from Beijing. Not pictured included old friends from the industry in China such as Wang Mingliang of CMP Sinoexpo, Mike Jiang of Reed's Shenzhen Sinoexpo business and many others.

BSG mentioned in Folio article

Many thanks to Plastic News' Bob Grace for mentioning us in his interesting interview with Folio on e-publishing in China. The article says:

Plastics News took a digital-only approach for two reasons: one, the Chinese government requires foreign publishers to partner with a Chinese publisher on all print ventures (but not digital); and two, distributing a print news publication in a country the size of China would have been both prohibitively expensive and inefficient. “We wanted to try to sidestep or postpone that and get our brand known. We do breaking news and our Web site turned us into a global news service,” says Robert Grace, editor and associate publisher.

Crain executives took some initial trips to China and met with publishing consultant Paul Woodward of BSG Asia. They also contacted trade associations and asked the Chinese customers of their Western customers if they’d be willing to share marketing lists.

Thanks Bob!

The article mentions that you don't need a Chinese partner for e-publishing ventures which isn't quite true. If you want to locate a web site on servers in China, then the restrictions on foreign-owned publishing are similar to those for print (although with different regulators). If you publish in Chinese from outside China, however, it's perfectly feasible to go it alone.