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Interview: Swiss film director says Chinese-style entrepreneurship booming

Xinhua, April 15, 2016 Adjust font size:

Swiss film director Juerg Neuenschwander told Xinhua Thursday in an exclusive interview that the environment in which innovation and development was taking place in China was creating products which were starting to compete in qualitative terms on the global market.

"When I came to China in 2008, it was surprising how many people I found that were trying to do new things, to develop things, to build up start-up companies," recalled Neuenschwander, director of the documentary The Chinese Recipe: Bold and Smart.

The fruit of 15 months of shooting, Neuenschwander's work follows three generations of Chinese entrepreneurs whose success stories and current endeavors reflect an ambition and work ethic which is quintessentially Chinese.

"It was interesting for me to put together these three stories because I covered a long period of manufacturing and development in China," he said.

He noted that the youngest generation of entrepreneurs in China was the most impressive group, estimating they shared a lot of similarities with Swiss youth of the same age.

"Their ideas, or their focus points are almost the same, they know the same people worldwide, they are linked through the Internet with each other," he explained.

"Their idea is to share knowledge, to develop through sharing knowledge," he added.

Compared to the stereotype image of "Made in China," which shows mostly a mass-production factory, he also noticed the gradual development and prosperity of smaller sized companies in China.

"In China there are millions of very skilled and capable small and medium-sized enterprises that can produce very good quality products," he explained.

"They adapt themselves fast to the clients' need. They customize their products to the different market," he added.

He admitted that shooting the documentary was also for personal research. "I had no understanding about the state of huge possibilities of Chinese companies and productions before I started the film. The change is now I have a differentiated picture of Chinese production," he concluded. Endit