Review: Berlin in China #1 - Berlin-Brandenburg - The Region for Future Mobility
Not only during our daily work in the last couple of months, but also during our Berlin in China event yesterday in the German Centre, we could feel and recognize a new spring in the economic relations between Berlin and China. Especially in the automotive sector, there is a lot of excitement and eagerness to learn from each other.
With our focus on “Berlin Brandenburg – The Region for Future Mobility“, we mainly covered recent market developments in the new mobility sector as well as cooperation opportunities between Berlin and China. Yiran Li, Chief Representative of the state of Berlin in China, highlighted future-oriented projects in the fields of intelligent connected vehicles and autonomous, driving such as BeIntelli, and the location factors which made Berlin a major test region for new mobility and smart city solutions in Europe.
Harald Bleimeister (automotive Berlin Brandenburg e.V.) and Michael Bose (CeCAN), our first delegation from Berlin since three years, expressed their admiration and great acknowledgment of the Chinese automotive market, where the future of mobility already takes place, with many technologies implemented conveniently in real live applications, such as hydrogen battery bikes and autonomous driving taxis.
In his welcome address, Hendrik Barkeling, Head of the Economic Department of the German Embassy in China, emphasized the continuously huge potential and great meaning of the Chinese market for German automotive companies. At the same time, the German and European market is also getting more and more important for Chinese car OEMs. On the one hand, this creates increased competition, but there are also opportunities. Both, Mr. Bleimeister and Mr. Bose expressed their believe that Chinese OEMs are going to establish new supply chains in the Berlin Brandenburg region, similar as German OEMs in China.
In the panel discussion session, Sandra Schulze from Berlin Partner explained the location advantages of Berlin in more detail, and Dr. Xueming Ju (LiangDao) and Jian Li (Tsing Standard) shared their success stories with Berlin and described the challenges they faced during their expansion to the German market. Furthermore, Martin Krill from Hager Executive Consulting outlined his experiences with his Chinese customers in Germany. Mr. Krill was recruiting staff for large Chinese companies in Germany and he knows which kind of gaps there are in the expectations between Chinese employers and employees in Germany.
The key take-away has been that there is a lot of untapped collaboration potential on both sides and that it is a matter of communication and exchange to create a bright future for everyone. In the second half of 2023, in the context of the 7th Sino German Automotive Congress, Mr. Bleimeister and Mr. Bose are going to lead a company delegation to China and introduce some of the 400 automotive suppliers from their organization to potential cooperation partners in China.
We are very much looking forward to accelerating the cooperation between Berlin and China in the automotive sector and to leveraging the good contacts we made during our event and in the meetings together with our experts from Berlin.
Stay tuned, and get back to us for further information about new mobility solutions in the German Capital Region,
Your Berlin in China team
