China Venture Capital Forums Influence Policy

Filed in archive Conferences on January 19, 2006

The China venture capital story is still unfolding and it is largely attributed to the quanxi-like steps and internationalization measures taken by the articulate Dr. Gongmeng Chen, the director of the China Venture Capital Research Institute located in Hong Kong.

Chen, a widely published academic with a Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Texas at Dallas, has been conducting for several years, top-level policy forums with China's key ministries, including Mr. Xu Guanhua, Minister of Science and Technology, Mr. Zhang Jingan, Director of Department of Policy, Regulation and Reform of the Ministry of Science and Technology, Silicon Valley's top tier VCs including senior partners from Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia and Accel and numerous Chinese entrepreneurs in his quiet and steady efforts to expand the influential policy-shaping role of the institute.

An engineer by training, the youthful academic with more than 22 years experience in IT industry, investment, and finance research in China, US, and Hong Kong, is now actively planning their upcoming 8th Annual Venture Capital Forum scheduled in April in Shenzhen with over 1000 attendees expected.

"The role of the CVCRI is to help the government shape VC related policies and to assist both the domestic VCs and international VC firms in China," stated Chen in a telephone conversation yesterday.

Chen is an academic evangelist for the new China VC roadmap and his institute publishes several key publications including a distinguished quarterly, China Venture Capital Journal, now only in Chinese, but expected to be published in English later on in 2006.

For sure, Chen believes that there are many convergent factors which has brought China into the American or international venture capitalist spotlight: China's income per capita has risen sharply over the past decade, giving rise now to nearly 300 million consumers. Half the 1.2 billion population now have mobile or landline phones, compared with only 1 percent in 1990. An increasing number of U.S.-educated Chinese entrepreneurs and engineers have come back to their homeland with valuable experience.

Even the Ministry of Commerce is jumping on the innovation bandwagon with yesterday's announcement encouraging new technology development.

All this adds up to a promising Chinese entrepreneurial landscape where the needs for capital are now being met by domestic VCs and a surplus of Sand Hill road veterans.