by Trevor Metz

 

The British Columbia Government and the City of Prince George have sent a delegation to Beijing in the hopes of getting a larger piece of the 1.4 billion person pie that is China. When many British Columbians and Prince Georgians look at the prospect of doing business in China it seems like a no-brainer. Who wouldn’t want our commodities like wood, coal, and copper? China is thirsty and we have the resources to slake its seemingly insatiable appetite for resources. Northern BC has millions of hectares of beetle wood ready to be loaded on the ships and sent off to the Middle Kingdom, but the question is do they want it? Right now the answer is no.

 

To suggest there is no future for BC resources in China is naïve, but to suggest that there is a new massive market just waiting for us to send over our wares is equally as naïve. Take wood for example. We have plenty of useful, relatively cheap timber that can be used for anything from paper to energy, but the biggest use is probably to build homes. Here is the rub; they don’t build their homes in China with wood. They would not know what to do with it.

 

There are no building codes to speak of, as the parents of the children crushed in the Sichuan Earthquake can attest to. Wood has historically not been a natural resource for home building so the Chinese know nothing about wood framing, siding, and roofing. It would be like giving boxing gloves to a ballerina; she probably knows what they used for but don’t expect her to knock out Mike Tyson.

 

The other problem with building with wood is that most people that can afford to own their own homes live in cities where there are no or very few detached homes. The hutongs (traditional Beijing alley and courtyard homes) are literally hundreds of years old and are made of bricks. The new high end residential buildings are made with concrete and steel. There just isn’t much of a market for wood framed home building.

 

If the BC government is serious about opening up this massive market to BC wood products then it will have to take the same attitude that many multinational corporations do when they first enter the Chinese market. Corporations like GE or Anheuser Busch don’t come to China to turn immediate profits; they come to establish a market presence. They often lose millions of dollars in the process of trying for a slice of the action in the hopes of recovering their money over the long term. BC would have to think about training programs and years branding before any real progress is made.

 

What will probably sell here is transportation and technology. Transportation Minister Kevin Falcon is doing his best to sell the Gateway Project in Prince Rupert which has concrete benefits for Prince George. If there is one thing Chinese businessmen do understand it’s making and saving money and if you show them how the Prince Rupert port will save them time, energy, and most importantly money, I am sure they will use it.

 

People have been building homes in China for millenniums, they don’t need our help with that, but they do crave our modern technology and creature comforts. The mistake many people in North America make is that they assume the Chinese mass produce everything anyway so why would they need our everyday products. The truth is foreign brands are considered to be luxury items and are almost always of better quality. This goes from products such as light switches to rabies shots. If you think I’m kidding I’m not. I recently had to get rabies shots because my puppy nipped the hand that feeds it and at the hospital I was given a price list for rabies shots. The most expensive shot was one from Germany. The nurse explained that they all work the same but the one from Germany was the best. Her sales pitch worked for my Chinese wife so we ended up with a top of the line German rabies shot. Foreign products often equal prestige in China. So the lesson is; there is a market for high quality foreign made brands in China.

 

If the citizens of Prince George were expecting immediate returns on their tax dollars from these trips to China then they should prepare themselves for disappointment. If the province and the city are serious about opening up China as a new market for wood and fiber products then they need to take a long term branding approach. Tax payers also need to understand that when trying to do business with China it’s a marathon, not a sprint.