There are more than 30 provinces in China, which include several autonomous regions and municipalities. Hence, when we plan to do business in China, we can't treat China as 'one' market, but instead as more than 30 markets. Each province is big in market size and may have different set of ways of doing business.

We should consider exploring other markets or cities in China. As mentioned earlier, big markets like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangdong are already saturated and highly competitive.

There are thousands of cities in China; some of them are categorised as 2nd tier (very fast growing) and some of them are 3rd tier cities (least developed markets but economy is gradually improving). Many of us probably never heard of the cities but a lot of things have happened that made these cities develop very fast.

Some of 2nd tier cities include Nanjing, Dalian, Qingdao, Yantai and Chengdu and 3rd tier are like Urumqi, Xinjiang and Yinchuan, Ningxia. The 2nd tier economies are growing rapidly with increasing inflow of foreign investments. These cities are not only big in size but also offers good infrastructure facilities for doing business. The competition in 2nd and 3rd tier cities is also not as intense as in the 1st tier cities though we can see growing competition in the 2nd tier. There are therefore still ample business opportunities in these 2nd and 3rd tier markets.