During 26 – 30 March Team Finland business delegation visited Beijing and Harbin with Mr Sampo Terho, Minister for European Affairs, Culture and Sport, to discover new business opportunities in China’s winter sport development.
China is currently developing its Winter Sports Culture as the Olympic host cities Beijing and Zhangjiakou are preparing for the 2022 Winter Olympic Games. Before the 2022 games China has decided to take this momentum and further develop winter sport activities to the masses targeting 300 million citizens. This offers enormous business opportunities for companies in several sectors throughout China. To achieve these ambitious goals, China needs to develop infrastructure of the winter sport facilities as well as the existing sport education. Also consumer products come into the picture when engaging new sport enthusiasts to winter sports.
To succeed in the highly competitive market, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the Ministry of Education have set up a cluster called ‘Finnish Winter Sport Exports’. This cluster coordinates all governmental level efforts regarding winter sports development in China, and will open several offices with local staff in strategic key locations around China.
During the visit Opening the first Finnish Winter Sport cluster Satellite Office in Harbin, the Winter Capital of China was opened.
Within sports the delegation met the Chinese Sport Federations and different Sport Bureaus to gain better understanding how and where the Finnish offering could benefit the Chinese sport system. Within consumer products participants learned more on distribution channels and how Finnish products can obtain more market share in Beijing and Harbin.
Also within construction there are projects ready for implementation, with the Olympic tendering process about to start. The delegation discussed the content and timelines of the projects, as well as the plans and opportunities opened by the Sino-Finnish Winter Sport Theme Year 2019 collaboration with The General Administration of Sports of China Sport events led by Minister Terho.
Finnish Winter Sport Exports will fully leverage the 2019 Winter Sport Theme Year between Finland and China by series of targeted events. Together with the Ministry of Education, also new collaboration projects engaging Finnish and Chinese will be created. The Finnish Winter Sport Exports cluster actively evaluates and generates winter sport related business leads for the member companies.
On 26 March the Finnish Business Council Beijing Board of Directors was also happy to meet with the visiting Finnish Minister of Sports and Culture Mr. Sampo Terho at Ambassador’s Residence. They had a talk with the Minister about his trip to China and opportunities related to sports in China for Finnish companies.
In addition to winter sports themes, the Finnish minister’s visit to China had a strong cultural and audio-visual emphasis. On 27 March he met with the Chinese Minister for culture, Deputy Minister Zhang Hong.
A seminar was held in a Finnish restaurant, where, in addition to the minister and ambassador, the president of China Film Co-Production Corporation (CFC), Miao Xiao Tian, was a guest. Furthermore, there was a large number of Chinese Directors and producers in addition to the Finnish delegation. Co-production agreements for film and television production and cultural exchanges between countries were discussed.
Also China’s largest film channel CCTV-6 China movie channel participated in the event.
Sources: Embassy of Finland in Beijing, Finnish Business Council Beijing
