Dear Members and Friends

Have you during the pandemic sometimes felt like a hamster, running in its wheel and making no progress at all? Improvement is in sight. Recent observations indicate that steady progress was made on all fronts in the past few week. In Switzerland, a significant number of citizens are now vaccinated. The same is true for China, and foreigners are now also entitled to be vaccinated. At the same time, we read about the horrific situation in Brazil, India, and many other countries. Global efforts to relieve these hotspots are under way, the world needs to cooperate and prepare for swift actions.

In the past few weeks, our board and back-office members have been involved in providing information and intelligence to stakeholders in the Swiss export industry. This is part of our basic daily activities and has been the «raison d'être» of SCCC for 41 years. However, we note that with the ongoing travel restrictions, the number of challenging business situations have increased. Looking into that phenomenon, we observe that language and culture barriers create formidable challenges. After all, video conference calls are not able to replace personal interactions. The time limitation of these calls does often not leave enough space to really make sure that there are no misunderstandings in briefing business partners, management members, and/or lawyers. It does not help that China is no more than ten hours flight time away. Currently, management members traveling to China require up to four weeks to reach their destination in China.

In March 2021, the P.R. China discussed and approved the 14th five-year plan, in short «145». It will influence all major decisions for the next few years. It consists of 19 chapters, and 65 sub-chapters; the current version is addressing the national level only. In the coming months the provinces, autonomous regions and SOE’s will draft their own version of «145». All these different versions will then be the guidelines for setting the performance targets for millions of government officials. It is therefore of utmost importance that your organization obtains a copy of their relevant «145». It provides crucial insights on how your industry sector(s) will be affected by the new government policies – allowing you to select the right partners for your business endeavors and helping you to identify new market competition or disruptors.

In preparing our AGM and Swiss China Summit event, we decided to focus on some of the points I mentioned above. The hybrid nature of the event will allow discussions and insights from experts around the globe.

The event will take place on June 25 – please sign up, the registration will start soon. For each of the sessions, work groups are already in place, working rigorously to make it a memorable event that will support you, our members, in the business environment of today and tomorrow.

I wish you a beautiful month of May, and please stay healthy.

With best regards,

Felix Sutter

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Sān gè héshàng méi shuǐ hē.

Three monks have no water to drink. – Too many cooks spoil the broth.