Rising corporate executives visit China to seek investment chances

An increasing number of multinational executives, fund managers and investors are visiting China, not for sightseeing but engaging in firsthand in-depth investigations into electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous-driving ventures across the country, in what some analysts said a mission "to feel the pulse of Chinese homegrown innovations."

The foreign executives come from all around the world, including India, France, Germany, Brazil, Southeast Asian countries and elsewhere, the Global Times has learned.

Manish Bhandari, founder and portfolio manager of Mumbai-based boutique portfolio management service provider Vallum Capital Advisors, is among them. He just wrapped up a week-long business visit to China on Tuesday. He began in Shenzhen, South China's Guangdong Province, traveled to Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province, and then went to Shanghai and Beijing.

According to an itinerary seen by the Global Times, he visited a number of well-known Chinese high-tech companies including Alibaba, Geely, Sharpa, Hesai, SenseTime and Horizon Robotics, and talked with top executives of Chinese companies.

In explaining his business trip, the organizer said that "across AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and advanced manufacturing, [Chinese] companies are testing, scaling, and commercializing technologies at a pace that is difficult to understand from headlines or research reports alone…the experience will help investors identify where China's hard-tech ecosystem is resilient, where bottlenecks remain, and where future growth opportunities are likely to emerge."

Bhandari told the Global Times on Tuesday that he gained a lot of insights into Chinese tech development through the business trip. After the trip, he might identify some high-quality Chinese companies and, at some point, invest more directly in the Chinese market.

The trip was "expensive," but it "helped me learn about Chinese companies and Chinese entrepreneurs, and to see what is happening on the ground in technology and in other areas. When I go back to India I will read in more detail about Chinese businesses, including the technologies. That will help me judge which companies might become investment targets later after further assessment," he said.

Vallum, the Indian fund management organization he works for, has a multi-asset book that holds Chinese equities through ETFs available in India. Those China bets, together with the rest of the global book, are what he credits for the strategy's recent double-digit return.

Asked which Chinese innovations impressed him most, Bhandari listed Alibaba's data centers built for AI computing and robot hands from Sharpa that put touch and sensing into the gripper. He was also struck by a robot serving ice cream.

"What a robot can do now, what it could do four years ago, and what it will do 10 years later will be very different," he said, highlighting China's ongoing tech revolution as global competition heats up.

Trips like this have helped entrepreneurs to form a complete picture of the innovation landscape in China.

"Chinese tech companies combine hardware and software, while Indian firms are mostly software, so the two can complement each other," Bhandari said. "As a portfolio manager, that helps me see where India is currently absent, and why China is the market leader in so many businesses."

Like Bhandari, more foreign executives and investors are visiting China in droves to witness the ongoing tech wave, with some trips costing thousands of dollars. Reuters reported that other leading investment firms have made similar trips including those from the US such as Dimension, Capital Group and Thrive Capital, as well as tech podcaster Lex Fridman.

A spokesperson from Shanghai-based tech tour agency Glopen told the Global Times that the agency has received over 2,000 overseas visitors since 2023, mostly from European countries including France and Germany, South American countries such as Brazil, as well as Southeast Asia countries.

"Among the clients are entrepreneur associations and industry chambers consisting dozens of visitors who come to China to look at Chinese technology start-ups. Some executives had specific requests — one Brazilian agribusiness client, for example, came to tour a Chinese company that makes pesticide-spraying drones. There are also business-school study tours lasting five to 10 days," the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson noted that those executives care most about on-site visits, which offer them "information they cannot get from books or internet."

According to a report by the Xinhua News Agency, industry forecasts predicted that China's industrial tourism market size will grow by roughly 18 percent annually from 2024 to 2029, surpassing 300 billion yuan ($42 billion) by 2029.