MBM International Business Study Tour – Ámsterdam “Doing business in China”

By Carla García, Leyre Fernández and James Tarrillo

The week of May 8 to 14 we had the pleasure of doing the International Business Study Tour in Amsterdam taking the subject «Doing business in China» at the Amsterdam School of International Business with ESIC Business & Marketing School.

Lessons and Seminars:

During that week we had seminars and conferences in the mornings with the Dean of the AMSIB Roger Busser, Professor Claudio Perotti and other outstanding professors. We have not only learned about the commercial structure of China, but also about its rich culture, history and a bit of its language (an interesting and fun aspect to study).

What we learned was that the Republic of China is located in Southeast Asia. It has fourteen borders, making China the country with the most borders in the world. It also has the largest population in the world with 1.4B citizens, making the world population 7.6B. This means that one in five people in the world is Chinese.

Also, we learned that China is officially an atheist country, but its origins come from Buddhism, Confucianism, and Toasim, so most of its social values ​​have aspects of them. On the other hand, China is one of the oldest civilizations in the world with more than five thousand years of history. It was ruled by successive dynasties until 1912 with Sun Yat Shen. It should be noted that it was the period of the invention of the printing press, paper, gunpowder and the compass. Also great sites like the Chinese wall were built in this period. After the period of foreign occupation and civil war, the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao Se Tum took control of mainland China in 1949 and established the People’s Republic of China.

The most widely spoken regional dialects are Cantonese and Mandarin. On the latter, we had the pleasure of learning Mandarin lessons, which were very interesting and enjoyable. Chinese characters have evolved over time, including hieroglyphs. The Chinese language contains more than 4,000 characters.

Also, we learned that the Chinese New Year is the most important time of the year, they cover the houses with red decorative elements that symbolize happiness, wealth and longevity. This event is shared with the family and ends with fireworks. And the next morning the children congratulate the year and receive red envelopes with money that symbolizes prosperity and good luck.

Lastly, they showed us how to do business in China, giving us tips on what to do and what not to do when doing business. They also showed us the importance of Chinese economic policy in the world of international trade.

Visit the museum

We had the opportunity to visit the Rijksmuseum, in this way we could get closer to the culture and art of Amsterdam with many works by famous painters such as Vermeer, Van Gogh or Rembrandt, but we will focus on Chinese art to understand the culture, their beliefs and how they lived.

Next, we will comment on the art that we enjoyed to see in the museum and that comes from this Chinese culture. We would like to emphasize that we have been able to clearly observe the presence of Buddhism in Chinese culture, since it is deeply rooted and present in art. This makes it closer and more significant and allows a large part of its culture to be understood in another way.

One of them was clearly «The Bodhisattva Maitreya», the Buddha of the future, who will appear during the next world cycle and rule the earthly paradise as the successor of the Buddha. At present he is still in his heaven, awaiting his descent to earth. This figure comes from Longmen, a complex of Buddhist temples carved into the living rock. The fine stylization of the clothing and facial features are typical of the sculpture at this site.

This next sandstone is called: A Bodhisattva, during the route to India it attracted many travellers, including Chinese Buddhist monks on pilgrimages to the region where the Buddha had once preached. Near this route were the caves of Mount Tianlong (Tianlongshan), a site where richly decorated cave temples were carved. Statues of him reflect the influence of India, evident in the rounded shape and graceful pose of this figure, with slightly sloping hips and shoulders.

To end our tour of the museum, we will comment on this last work, which has come to us because of the feeling it conveys with its facial expression. This work of art is called: A Luohan.

Luohans are followers of the Buddha who have achieved spiritual perfection. His task is to safeguard the Buddhist doctrine until the Buddha of the future (The Bodhisattva Maitreya) appears. They don’t live among people, they lived like hermits in the mountains. They also possess supernatural powers, such as the ability to change size and see and hear everything. There are eighteen different luohans. This is Ajita. He concentrates entirely on listening to the reading of a sutra, a scripture that conveys the teachings of the Buddha.

Visit to companies

During the afternoons of the week of the Business Study Tour we were able to visit the ABN AMRO bank and the HUAWEI telecommunications company.

The first visit was to ABN AMRO at its headquarters located in Gustav Mahlerlaan. We were welcomed by Zijian Wang, Head of the Learning Partners Office. ABN AMRO is a personal bank in the digital age, allowing you to be closer to your customers. Likewise, it is a bank committed to playing a serious role in society, focused on inclusion, social entrepreneurship, sustainability and innovation. In addition, its history goes back more than 300 years where acquisitions, spin-offs and mergers arose. ABN AMRO started as such in 2010 with the merger with Fortis Bank Nederland, becoming the Dutch leader in corporate banking and Europe’s leader in private banking. Finally, as a fun fact, ABN AMRO is to this day the main sponsor of the World Tennis Tournament in Rotterdam, continuing the tradition that ABN had started since 1973.

The second visit was to the HUAWEI company at its headquarters located in Rijswijk. The Chinese representative presented us with what the company has been doing, its business units, its social responsibility and its plans for the coming years. Huawei is a leading global information and communications technology solutions company. Whose goal is to build an intelligent and fully connected world. The company was founded in China in 1987 and is currently an international company that integrates the best of each of the countries where it has a presence. Additionally, during the last 30 years it has provided services and products to around 3B end users and 1,500 telecommunications providers in 170 countries. With respect to its activities in the Netherlands, Huawei provides digital solutions to businesses and consumers to support the objective of the Dutch government, which wants to remain a leader in fast, secure and affordable telecommunications infrastructure. Finally, we were able to access their showroom, where they showed us the gallery of solutions that Huawei has for the industry, wireless technology for companies, cloud and data centers. Plus industry-leading products like CloudEngine, the data center switch, and OceanStor 18800F, the leader in fast storage.

In short, this experience has allowed us to learn more about China, both in its history, culture and language, as well as in the important presence of its business market inside and outside of it. And, above all, we want to highlight that the experience was even more enriching because we lived it together with colleagues from the 4 ESIC MBM branches, thus generating bonds of friendship and networking.