The idyllic German village home to 1,000 Chinese
Chinese entrepreneur Zhang Jianxin’s first thought was that he had fallen victim to a fraud scheme when he arrived at the location of his investment in a small German village.
For just over a million yuan each (€125,000), he and 11 other Chinese businessmen were promised apartments in the village and help with navigating Germany’s bureaucracy, including obtaining residency permits and registering a business.
“But when I first got here, the grass was taller than people... I told the ICCN CEO I have the impression that it’s all a scam,” Zhang told AFP, referring to the company in charge.
As it turned out, it was all above board.
Six years on, Zhang is one of 1,000 Chinese who have moved to Hoppstaedten-Weiersbach, total population 3,500, where they have also set up shop.
All of them had been won over by Chinese businesswoman Jane Hou and her German partner Andreas Scholz, who conceived the idea of building the biggest Chinese trading centre in Europe.
Three hundred small and medium-sized Chinese firms now have registered German businesses in the village, tucked within a ring of forests in western Germany’s Rhineland-Palatinate state.
Another 12 buildings are being built over the next five to seven years to accommodate another 500 investors.
Hard to imagine that it all started with a conversation between Hou and Scholz at Frankfurt airport.
Scholz, who was then managing a shop in the airport, said they ‘ chatted and exchanged business cards’.
Two weeks later, Hou told him she was looking to hire a German sales representative who also handles contact with the embassy.
Hou ‘is a very persuasive person’, said Scholz.
“Three weeks later, I packed two bags, gave notice on my job, my apartment, gave away my stuff or sold it and went to China.”
From a little office in Shenzhen, the two embarked on their bid to convince Chinese businessmen to move to Germany.
Their pitch was that a registered German company would be viewed as more trustworthy to do business in the country.
“It is always a bit risky for German companies to do business with a Chinese limited company somewhere in Shenzhen or in Shanghai as there are simply no legal norms,” Scholz said. “There are unfortunately enough examples where money had gone missing or didn’t arrive and the Chinese partner has disappeared, no one is there to answer the phone.”
Hou, through a German contact, learnt of housing blocks left empty in Hoppstaedten-Weiersbach after the US military moved out.
Located around 90 minutes by road from Frankfurt airport, the village had been losing its younger population to big cities. It was therefore to local politicians’ joy when ICCN approached them with a plan to spruce up the blocks and sell them to the Chinese.