In April 2011 Ms. Alexandra Voss was appointed as Delegate and Chief Representative of the Delegation of German Industry and Commerce Beijing and Executive Director and Member of the Board of the German Chamber of Commerce in China. She is responsible for overall strategic design, planning and implementation of the SWITCH-Asia project. In particular, Ms. Voss leads the project’s Policy Advisory Committee and supervises the liaison with project partners and associate partner Deutsche Telekom. As the previous Delegate of German Industry and Commerce in Guangzhou, Ms. Voss is already well connected with public and private stakeholders in China and the project’s key target region Pearl River Delta.

How are business and institutional partnerships between Europe and China supported through SWITCH-Asia?
EU-funded programmes have great potential in fostering business activities and in supporting cooperations with Chinese partners. In the past, I had the opportunity to work on the Asia Invest and Asia Pro Eco programmes of the European Commission in order to support SMEs in China. SWITCH-Asia is integrating best practices and lessons learnt from past regional programmes. This initiative particularly aims at engaging industry associations as well as business partners of SMEs and is therefore especially suitable for our organization that is mainly driven by SMEs. While the activities of our SWITCH-Asia project are contributing to the environment protection efforts in China, they also facilitate the establishment of stronger business partnerships. Through supporting sustainable production patterns in China, the project at the same time provides improvements to supply chains between European and Chinese companies. Due to the export oriented characteristics of the electrical and electronics sector, German and European enterprises of this industry are interested in upgrading the quality of their Chinese suppliers in order to be able to guarantee the safety and environmental sustainability of sourced components. Through training and promotion of compliance with green supply chain requirements, the project fosters strengthened partnerships. Moreover, the project offers business opportunities for companies that can feed the demand of Chinese SMEs for state of the art machinery, clean technology and related services needed to achieve environmental targets. Within the next two years, we will organize two Business Facilitation Conferences in Beijing and Shenzhen in order to allow European companies to identify qualified Chinese suppliers and find potential cooperation partners.

What are the key challenges for Chinese SMEs of the electrical and electronics sector and how can their standards be upgraded?
The Chinese electrical and electronics sector is characterized by high levels of local competition among SMEs. Representing one of the most important production centers for electrical and electronics products, the Pearl River Delta is one of the main SME clusters in China. During my time as Delegate in this region I experienced that a large number of SMEs only devote limited resources to address perceived non-core business requirements. However, these companies would strongly benefit from support to implement environmentally compliant production methods and from improving their processes in order to meet international standards. Through our project’s training programme developed by European and Chinese experts, SMEs can effectively upgrade their environmental and safety performance leading to cooperation with European enterprises that are looking for qualified Chinese suppliers.

What are your expectations for the upcoming National Launch Event in Beijing?
With the planned attendance of high-level delegates from Chinese and European authorities and representatives from the electrical and electronics industry, the National Launch Event will consolidate support and interest from target beneficiaries and wider stakeholders. Through the event, the project and its key outputs, such as the Conformity Model and the E-Learning Platform for SMEs, can be further promoted among Chinese and European public and private sector decision makers. I am confident that this event will serve as a useful platform for mobilizing a large number of enterprises for the upcoming capacity building and business facilitation activities.