Experts opinions about perceptions related to the Chinese market. An useful presentation to know more about Chinese consumers behaviour

1. Prof. Zhang Guangrui , the Director of Tourism Research Centre of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences will make a presentation with focus on the perception of the world by the Chinese Ms Berenice Aceves , General Manager of the China Outbound Tourism Research Institute will present her research on the perception of the Chinese in the world Moderator Adam Wu , Chief Operating Officer of China Business Network incorporating World Travel Online and CBN Travel Service , will share experiences of studying, working and living in different parts of the world with people of many different cultural backgrounds The Perception of Chinese in the World and the Perception of the World by the Chinese

2. Prof. Zhang Guangrui is one of the earliest and active tourism researchers in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences . He published many books, over hundred academic papers, and participated and chaired a dozen of major projects sponsored by the national and CASS grants and made many field studies and policy recommendation reports to the central and local governments. He has provided consulting service for local governments in tourism planning. Since 2000, Prof. Zhang has been the editor-in-chief of the annual Green Book of China's Tourism entitled China's Tourism Development: Analysis & Forecast . His major interests of research include international tourism policies, tourism planning and development.

3. Berenice Aceves , is from Mexico but currently doing her PhD in Germany (where COTRI is based) with the dissertation topic: the Chinese Outbound Tourism - Imaginary geography in a collective society . Prior to, Berenice Aceves worked as an Economic Analyst in the Economical and Commercial Section of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Mexico and developed a Chinese Outbound tourism project in Beijing (2007 - 2008) supported by the Mexico City government. For more than 4 years she's been devoted to the international tourism and intercultural topics, with a main focus on China Outbound Tourism to Mexico and worldwide. Berenice has been a visiting lecturer in different institutions with subjects as international tourism, management, inter-culturalism and languages.

4. Being a Chinese I never feel easy talking about myself but I am happy to share my experiences of studying, working and living in different parts of the world with people of many different cultural backgrounds. I was privileged (not by birth though) to be selected to study overseas after high school graduation (over 20 years ago) when going abroad was really still confined to official delegations and sponsored students or scholars like Prof. Zhang at similar time I believe. Although one of the main reasons of sending very young students overseas was to study foreign languages faster and supposedly better (not English though which I learnt only many years later and still trying － hence the slide) however, being young we embraced foreign culture also much faster that includes deciding your own career by yourself rather than being dictated or 分配 “ allocated” Ever since my university years I was keen on cultural comparison as part of the International Relations and my favorite subject was Social Psychology – which looks at a wide range of social topics, including group behavior, social perception , leadership, nonverbal behavior, conformity, aggression and prejudice . This is one of the fitting parts of today’s seminar

5. The other parts that I feel easier to introduce is the China Business Network as our slogan says "brings the world to China and takes Chinese to the world ". The slogan summarizes the activities of CBN which is a consortium of organizations specializing in business consultancy and facilitating services for a large number of Chinese and foreign authorities, commercial companies as other organizations. Indeed, CBN has been involved in advising foreign tourism authorities and travel related businesses with targeted marketing activities and promotional supports via our unique and awards winning outbound travel portal called World Travel Online ( www.lvyou168.cn or www.travel168.net ) at the same time CBN Travel Service has been supporting Chinese official delegations, business groups going to other parts of the worlds often with special events that catch the world attention such as Olympic Torch Relay and CCTV‘s most popular program called “ 同一首歌－ The Same Song " when it was first time staged in London. Hence I am happy to share some professional experience in organising MICE events for Chinese clients between 12-13pm tomorrow . You are welcome to attend if you wish to gain this types of business from China or for those Chinese corporate travel organisers and outbound tour operators too. Now I hand the floor to Prof. Zhang.

6. Conclusion to succeed in dealing with China i.e. either to organize your events in China or to organize Chinese events overseas it is important to know more about China and Chinese people especially how Chinese perceive others; the same applies to Chinese MICE professionals who need to know more about how the world perceives Chinese people and China so that we do not cause offense or unnecessary misunderstanding