New visa strategy in Shanghai!

Back in 2004, my first company started in Shanghai simply because it was a Western city and I felt comfortable there. But the rents and costs were too similar to NYC for my liking. It was great for international business, but terrible for local business.

All of our factories and technology hubs were a two or three hour flight away.

[1]  Quality control monitoring, operations and supervision has to be at the factories, and thus in a industrial area. Shanghai is many things, but it is NOT an industrial area.

[2] The same is true for production and operations. Not to mention certification and agency approvals. It will be very expensive to get a TUV certification out of Shanghai compared to Guangzhou.

[3] Employee rates are substantially higher in Shanghai. In fact, I can confirm that my CS staff today makes one third of what they would make were we to operate out of Shanghai.

After a while for paying for airfare, transport, hotels and the like, we just decided to relocate closer to SZ and settled in Zhuhai.

For someone who is used to paying Western prices, and Western style environments, then Shanghai is perfect. A meal for two is under 500RMB, which is pretty close to other international cities around the globe. You don't need anything else. But, if you are going to work with Chinese factories, Chinese technical hubs, and Chinese schools, then you will need to go where the bulk of your interaction takes place.

I would say that Shanghai is good for soft businesses. Computer programming, IOT, Banking and fiances. And if you have a hard business like automotive transmissions, computer motherboards, internet router manufacture, or drones, then Shanghai would be an absolutely terrible place to locate to.