California businesses eager to export to China despite trade conflict

For California local businesses struggling to cope with the US government’s ratcheted-up protectionist tactics against major trade partners, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

“You can export to China but you need to have a coherent China strategy,” Shenling Yang, head of NetEase Kaola North America, told a rapt audience at the Export and Trade Round Table in Duarte, California, on Thursday.

Kaola.com is a subsidiary of China’s giant online retailer NetEase.

“Use all the resources available to you to understand the Chinese consumer. They want quality American products,” Yang emphasized.

Along with other importexport trade specialists from China and the United States, Yang was attending the conference hosted by US Democratic Congresswoman Grace F. Napolitano and Duarte Councilman Samuel Kang.

It was packed with local business owners, manufacturers and entrepreneurs vocal in their concerns about the growing impact of the US-China trade conflict on their businesses. Many of them use Chinese raw materials to manufacture their products or have seen marked increases in their costs.

They had gathered in the hope of learning how to save their businesses by exporting to China. Despite being in his 80s, veteran California wine producer Gaetano D’Aquino is eager to expand into the China market. Other entrepreneurs, such as Campbell McAuley, a stylist for Hollywood stars and CEO of a company which making beauty products, also plan to export products to China.