China has many different cities that people move to and from, and in each city, customs has different interpretations on regulations for the import and export of personal effects. Generally, customs regulations for household goods shipments in China are very regulated and strict. For example, there are restrictions on how many books you can import, how many luxury handbags you can import, how many golf clubs you are allowed in your shipment and other things. It is therefore very important that we fully brief each of our clients on the customs regulations for the city they are relocating to.

For this reason, in our industry, effective communication between our staff and our clients is critical. This effective communication requirement is included in our staff training programs. We also conduct regular cross-cultural training classes with our staff, so they can better understand the mindset and expectations of our expatriate clients. We try hard to leave a long-lasting impression of Asian Tigers with our clients. This includes helpful Asian Tigers publications for new arrivals, client lunches and dinners, regular newsletters and updates on our social media.

Setting clients’ expectations of shipping time and costs is also very important. Although China has the largest and fastest growing high-speed rail network in the world, rail is primarily used for the transportation of people rather than goods. Mainland China is vast in size, 6.6 million square miles, so to service our clients all over China, we need to rely exclusively on trucking.

Though our transportation choices are limited, we actively monitor our environmental footprint, including emissions, and have launched several programs to help mitigate those, such as energy efficient lighting, use of solar panels, using electric vehicles, use of recycled materials, just to name a few. Our efforts resulted in Asian Tigers China being awarded a Silver Medal by the world’s largest and most trusted ESG rating agency Ecovadis for outstanding performance in sustainability.

Moreso than in many places in the world, the recent pandemic presented serious obstacles and difficulties. The period of 2020 to 2022 was especially challenging here in mainland China due to the government’s zero-COVID policies. This resulted in extensive lockdowns, restrictions on travelling between different cities and so forth. These restrictions are no longer in place, so it is back to business as usual thankfully!

I believe to be successful in this industry you need to feel genuine joy from having happy clients. In Shanghai I attend many social and networking events, and often bump into our clients. They will always share their opinion on how we performed and, pleasingly, they nearly always tell me how happy they were with our services. We were even awarded ‘People’s Choice – Relocation Service Provider of the Year’ award recently.