It was October 18th, 2007. As an innovative upper-middle player in the Chinese Dinner segment, the South Beauty Group, with 20 restaurants and two soon-to-be-opened restaurants under three different brands, was dreaming about expanding its scale to 100 restaurants in three years (35 in China and 65 in the international market). To meet this ambitious target,......

China's automobile industry enjoyed dazzling high-speed growth recently, with national production and sales almost doubling in the last three years. Already the world's third largest automobile market and expected to surpass Japan very soon, China was attracting all the major players, domestic and international, to reach for the big pie. But for those in hop......

Founded in 1988, four years later than Cisco, Huawei has quickly emerged as a major competitor for Cisco in the global market. Led by Mr Ren Zhengfei, a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, Huawei has made itself a technology company rather than a typical Chinese enterprise which competes primarily on low cost. Its success should also be attributed to ot......

In 1987 China’s first analogy mobile phone appeared in the southern city of Guangzhou. From this humble start, despite their high prices (RMB 10-20 thousand) and being perceived as a luxury item, mobile phone use continued to grow. By the end of 1994, there were a total of 1.5 million subscribers across the country.

1994 was an important year for the mob......

In 1996, Hangzhou Wahaha Group, the largest food and beverage enterprise in China, signed an agreement with Danone Group to establish five joint venture companies. On 3 April 2007, Mr Zong Qinghou, the Founder and Chairman of Wahaha Group, disclosed to the media that Danone threatened to acquire non-joint venture subsidiaries of Wahaha Group at a price of RM......

Twenty years ago in 1984, when it was a small factory in Xiaoshan, Zhejiang, Wanxiang signed its first export contract. Ten years after in 1994, when Wanxiang America Inc was just registered, the company was headed only by a Chinese overseas student. In 2003, Wanxiang sold its products all around the world, and had acquired dozens of companies in the US and ......

The sales of healthcare supplement in China had declined since 2000, but the outbreak of SARS crisis in the spring of 2003 boosted the market. Among the healthcare products, multi-vitamin has received much attention for its benefit to human immune system. A new multi-vitamin brand, Goldpartner, launched in 2002 by a legendary Chinese businessman, Mr. Shi Yuz......

Health supplement market has started to boom in China since 1980s. During the last two and a half decades, the health supplement market has experienced two ups and downs. Many famous brands come and go. It is a huge market with great potential but is also full of challenge. It is easy to enter the market and quick to grow the brand, however, it is difficult ......

Eli Lilly and Company is a global, research-based pharmaceutical company with a history of over 126 years. Lilly China has more than 50 representative offices and about 500 medical representatives in 2003. Compared with its key global competitors, Lilly’s presence in China is still very small. To facilitate Lilly’s expansion strategy in China, Lilly China en......

The case is set in the first half of 2004 in China. A Swiss banker must decide whether to buy into a Chinese bank which the authorities are putting up for sale. The answer depends largely on whether the Chinese economy is headed for a moderate slowdown or for a severe recession. The case provides a description of economic developments in 2002-2003 and procee......