Balance the Equation
China international import expo set to help balance China-africa trade
on the morning of July 2, at the Sandton Convention Center in Johannesburg, Kobus van der Wath was addressing dozens of South African suppliers and buyers about the changes of China’s role in the global supply chain.
Wath is a South African who has worked in Asia for 17 years. His company The Beijing Axis specializes in providing international business consultation and procurement services to foreign companies coming to China and to Chinese companies going overseas. The Beijing Axis holds similar symposiums three times a year in South Africa, mainly to introduce the Chinese market to suppliers and exporters in South Africa and find ways to expand exports to China.
It’s this kind of raising awareness that Charles Manuel, Economic Counselor of the South African Embassy in China, says is needed if South Africa wants to expand its exports to China.
“South African companies have limited knowledge on what’s going on in China and the Chinese market. For example, South African companies may still have doubts about China’s intellectual property protection, but as a matter of fact China has taken a lot of measures to regulate and punish violations of intellectual property rights,” he told Yicai, a Chinese language financial magazine, in July 2018.
Experts believe that the lack of resource and capacity makes market development a major shortcoming for emerging markets and developing countries like South Africa to export to China; but once it is addressed, huge potential can be unleashed, as evidenced by the exports of South African wines to China over the past eight years.
According to Siobhan Thompson, CEO of Wines of South Africa, wine exports to China increased significantly from about 5.5 million liters in 2013 to more than 17.5 million liters in 2017. Despite the promising growth, however, South Africa currently owns only a negligible share of the Chinese wine market, less than 2 percent based on sales volume. “The potential for growth is huge,” said Thompson.