Factory Visits and Sourcing Trips in China for Business Groups

• The organiser sends the product, the purpose and, if there is one, a list of target companies.
• PreeChina checks which sites can receive a foreign group and in which weeks. Usually arrangeable — contact PreeChina to confirm and book.
• Companies that look like trading companies are flagged before the trip, not on the factory floor.
• The programme is then drawn: two sites a day at most, with travel and rest planned in.

• The factory is a trading company. This is the most common mistake in sourcing from China.
• The certificates are for a different model, have expired, or come from a body with no standing.
• The quotation is vague. A sample price and a mass-production price are not the same thing, and the difference appears after the buyer is home.
• A key process is subcontracted, so the supplier does not control its own quality.
• The day is overloaded. Two sites in a day is a visit; five sites is five hurried walk-throughs.
• The interpreter cannot follow the technical terms, and at the critical point begins to paraphrase.
• Two hundred business cards are collected at a fair and none is followed up at home.

A programme is planned against this list. It is not a promise that none of these will occur.

General interpreting fails at the moment it matters: terms for a harmonic reducer, a frameless torque motor or an injection mould are not ordinary vocabulary. PreeChina arranges technical interpreting for the sessions that need it. It is not part of the ground fee and is quoted for each session.

PreeChina can provide a written summary of the trip: what was seen at each site, the points to follow up and the warning signs noticed. The scope is agreed when the programme is agreed.

An industry tour follows one product category through its cluster: the raw material in one street, the cutting in the next, the assembly in the third, and a wholesale market at the end of the road. Ten suppliers can be compared in a morning there. The markets page explains how such a market runs, and the industry clusters page lists the regions and the towns.

A South American business association travelled to China with PreeChina two years in a row, to supply chains from denim and electronics to mini excavators, rattan and caviar. See the case study.

• PreeChina does not recommend suppliers, assess their quality or promise a purchasing result.
• A formal audit report with signed findings is outside the work. Inspection companies do that.
• Company names are not published here and no company is promoted.

• What China Makes, and Where. The cluster map: which region and which town makes which product, and what is visitable.
• Chinese markets. Why a market is a time and not a place, and what the wholesale hall looks like.
• Shopping in China. The wholesale floor, Huaqiangbei, the Guangzhou supply chain and the factory towns.
• China Now. The contemporary industrial landscape, from robots to electric vehicles.
• Digital China. Mobile payment and the apps that sit on top of every visit.
• Getting around China. Distance is measured in hours: how to move between clusters.

Factory visits are planned city by city. These are the main manufacturing cities, their provinces and the routes between them.

• Cities: Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, Shanghai, Suzhou, Wuxi, Hangzhou, Yiwu.
• Provinces: Guangdong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang. All regions are on the province map.

Routes and day trips that fit between these cities, from the experience guides:

• Guangzhou to Shenzhen: sights along the route
• Shanghai to Suzhou: sights along the route
• Hong Kong to Guangzhou: sights along the route
• Shanghai to Hangzhou: sights along the route