The Governator is in Beijing to lobby for Californian business interests, and he has brought along retinue of executives who hope to ride his coat tails to success in China, which let’s not forget, has a population of 1.3 billion people.
Have a look at this excerpt from a report in The San Francisco Chronicle called ‘Members of Schwarzenegger’s delegation paid thousands’:
Beijing — They are the chief executives of Fortune 500 companies, the leaders of big energy firms and major retailers — and they are farmers and folks who have created their own small family-run businesses.
And they have come a very long way as members of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s trade delegation for — they hope — a very big payoff.
That’s why Californians like Mike Gallagher, founder and president of Napa-based City Pass — a tourism venture that offers one-price tickets to major attractions in nine U.S. cities — has brought his company’s materials and plenty of business cards, and is literally running from seminars in hotel meeting rooms to meet-and-greet receptions to fancy dinners for the next five days in three Chinese cities.
For Gallagher, the $10,000 he paid to be part of the group being lead by Schwarzenegger is more than a bargain. It is a valuable ticket into the sometimes exotic, sometimes confusing universe of doing business in China, where vast consumer markets hold the promise of equally vast profits.
…Gallagher is just one of a varied crew of 75 business executives who make up the California delegation traveling alongside Schwarzenegger…
To tour China with Schwarzenegger is to be part of the exclusive gaggle gaining entry into the country’s most lavish venues – marbled hotels and trade centers, and normally inaccessible historic places such as the Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, where President Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong held their historic toasts. There, seated in a cavernous hall dominated by an idyllic portrait of Mao leading his happy people, the delegates on Tuesday were hosted to a lavish seven-course banquet where, along with the dim sum, they were served rounds of endless speeches about the value of California-Chinese relations…
Now let’s not dwell on the fact that these people paid good money to hear the kind of mind-numbing speeches that are aired every day on CCTV 9, but simply consider the phrase ‘normally inaccessible historic places such as the Great Hall of the People’:
The phone number of the Great Hall of the People is (+8610) 6309 6156. It is open almost every day between 8:30 am and 3 pm for tourist visits, and parts of it are available for rental for events.
Good luck signing the contracts and selling to the 1.3 billion consumers out there fellas!
- San Francisco Chronicle: Members of Schwarzenegger’s delegation paid thousands