Former South African diplomat Gert Grobler (second from right) takes a tour of the Wenzhou Medical University research center with Brett Lyndall Singh (center), founder and CEO of AOM Group, and his co-workers. Photo provided to China Daily

An enabling environment

Many young foreign business leaders have said that China's enabling environment was another factor that prompted their decision to launch startups in the country.

Gaston Chee, the co-founder and CEO of BeGo, an education firm preparing Chinese students for study abroad, said the nation has always been welcoming to foreign investors, and his company was ready for business immediately after it was set up in Beijing in 2012.

"China has one of the most well-developed investment infrastructures today," he said. "It has created a very welcoming investment environment, a very stable and robust economy, and is perhaps one of the safest countries in the world."

Meanwhile, Chee, from Malaysia, said China has become a melting pot of many nationalities, attracting global talent, and his company had made full use of that.

"We were able to employ diverse nationalities of full-time and part-time staff in Beijing and the United Kingdom who are bilingual and multicultural from virtually every continent in the world," he said.

Thornhill, from Baopals, said one aspect of China's enabling environment is the fact that "the Chinese people tend to be very welcoming and accommodating toward expats".

"They're tolerant of language and cultural barriers, and usually approach these differences with curiosity rather than judgment," he said. "China can also be a very comfortable and convenient place to live, with modern infrastructure, cheap and reliable transportation options, and arguably the best applications in the world for communication, shopping, payments, and more."

Costas Georgiou and Petros Djakouris, co-founders of BeHive, a nonprofit group that organizes workshops and lectures for international students looking for work in China, said they were both greatly impressed with how welcoming and friendly everyone was upon their arrival in China.

Both postgraduate students from Cyprus at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, they said they decided to take an intensive Mandarin course at the university to pursue better employment opportunities in China.

A key motivation for them to launch the platform was to extend career support to international students in the country.

"We decided to create an organization that would bring people facing similar problems together and organize interactive, transferable career skills workshops that would empower us to achieve our professional goals," they said in a joint response to questions.

"We love how supportive and accommodating people and local authorities are to international entrepreneurs. Starting a company in China as a foreigner can be a very straightforward process if you have the right contacts."