I spent the Chinese New Year's Eve in New York at, of all places, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York. There was an event put on by the Foreign Press Association in New York, so there was a mishmash of journos from all over the world. I learned nothing new at the event, and stayed long enough for only a few glasses of wine and a few namecard exchanges with the "diplomats-who-are-not-recognized", but it was still an interesting juxtaposition for me, as I have never visited Taiwan and that was the closest I had ever been on Taiwanese soil.

I was interested to attend the event because we've been focused on Taipei for a few months and we plan to start an office there soon. We're going to setup that office in the same way we started our Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Dalian operations: first find a couple people (or a reputable company) to work part-time as sales agents; then when things start rolling, upgrade to full-time staff; and then when a need for contracts and fapiaos to be issued from that particular city arises, upgrade to a licensed branch office.

I guess this is similar to how many domestic and foreign service companies expand in China — it certainly diminishes financial risk — and is a good template to test the local market and maybe good info for other people looking to expand in China.

We first had someone working for us part-time in Shanghai in 1998 and then moved to full-time staff around 2002. We then setup the legal branch office entity owned by BDL Media in Shanghai in 2003. We then saw a greater need for more services and invested capital to start a separate advertising business in Shanghai (though still owned/managed by BDL Media).

For Shenzhen, we first had a part-time person working for us in 2000 for a few months, but things didn't work out — either they couldn't identify good prospects or there was just not a mature market for our services. But we tried again around 2003 with part-time staff and found a great woman to handle sales work and content creation for our services (primarily for our Xianzai.com service). That office then took off and two years ago when she departed, we hired a woman from one of the top media companies in Shenzhen to run our Shenzhen operations and we started a legal branch office entity.

For Dalian, at the same time in 2003 that we started Shenzhen, we wanted to only focus on our English-language services, so we identified an expat woman in Dalian who was very well known in the expat community and also ran a successful trade business in China's northeast. She has been working part-time in both a sales and content creation capacity for us (again, primarily for our smaller Xianzai.com service), but we now see a need in the near future to setup a branch office. A couple weeks ago in Shanghai I met with David Mao, the Chief Representative of the Dalian Hi-tech Industrial Zone. David has been great with providing information, press releases, and statistics to our editors at ChinaTechNews.com and ChinaSourcingNews.com, and with the booming tech business opportunities in Dalian, now is a good time for us to look at doing more with David by developing more of our products around Dalian's tech sector.

So we plan to slowly build in Taipei in the same way we have done so in the mainland Chinese cities. We are in touch with a few prospects, but if you know of anyone else that can help in Taipei, please do contact us here.