Dear CBI members and Partners,
To learn how the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen will be rolling out its Gross Ecosystem Product (GEP) and China's latest policies and thinking on how to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060 please review the latest environmental news digest from China Dialogue below.
Download News digest China Dialogue 19-25 March 2021.docx
With grateful thanks to the team at China Dialogue for so very kindly sharing.
Dear CBI Members and Partners,
Kindly find the latest IP Newsletter produced by the UK IP team based at the British Embassy in Beijing and across the FCDO network in China.
There are helpful insights into China's Patent Law, Anti-Monopoly Law, the city of Shenzhen's plans to further protect intellectual property and much more.
Please access the Newsletter below:
Download China IP Newsletter October 2020
CHINA DIRECT would like to thank Leo Zhuang ([email protected]) and the Intellectual Property Office for kindly sharing these insights.
CBI member, Burberry, has launched a luxury ‘social retail’ store in China in partnership with tech giant, Tencent.
The store opened in Shenzhen last weekend, and while appearing as a traditional brick-and-mortar store at first glance, incorporates Tencent digital technologies to give shoppers a ‘digitally immersive retail experience.’ Burberry announced that it plans to roll out additional stores across China, which accounts for 40% of the designer’s total sales.
Chief Executive, Marco Gobetti said: ““Together with Tencent, we have pioneered a new concept that will redefine expectations of luxury retail […] Burberry’s social retail store in Shenzhen is a place of discovery that connects and rewards customers as they explore online and in store. It marks a shift in how we engage with our customers and we can’t wait to share this innovative experience with the world.”
Burberry’s social retail store works by integrating the virtual store the fashion house has been developing on China’s social media platform, WeChat, with the physical surroundings of the store in Shenzhen. While walking around the store, customers can unlock exclusive content and create experiences that can be shared online, turning the physical space in Shenzhen into a personalised environment.
CBI member, ABB has announced plans to open a new innovation centre in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. The new centre, which will be situated within the main innovation hub of China’s new Greater Bay Area initiative, will open in the second half of this year to provide local solutions for smart building development.
Oliver Iltisberger, managing director of ABB Smart Buildings said, “As China is seeking new ways to promote energy efficiency and minimise carbon emissions to design healthier environments in its cities, ABB is now experiencing fast growth in the areas of intelligent building and related electrical businesses.”
The launch of the new innovation centre is a direct result of the group’s restructuring in 2018, where ABB decided to focus its business on four areas – electrification, industrial automation, motion, and robotics and discrete automation.
The company has been keen to promote its services in China, and opened a new customer experience centre in Beijing on Monday, to highlight the potential for development of smart cities with infrastructure upgrades, carbon free transportation and energy saving.
ABB becomes the latest in a long line of CBI members to have made announcements relating to investment in the Greater Bay Area. To find out more about opportunities for foreign businesses in the area, please follow the link.
CBI member, Foster + Partners has unveiled its design for a 350-metre-tall skyscraper in Shenzhen that will serve as the headquarters for China Merchants Bank. The tower will be the first building in the city’s new ‘Super Headquarters District’, a new economic hub being built in the city to help it reach its goal, as set out in the 13th Five-Year Plan, of becoming a ‘super economic centre’ housing 13,000 banking staff.
Foster + Partners’ design features a tower with structural supports running along the outside on the east and west sides, meaning that every office floor – together amounting to 310,000 square metres – will be open and column free.
Grant Brooker, head of studio at Foster + Partners said: “The tower’s design represents a significant step in the evolution of the workplace, which we have evolved in close partnership with the client to create a highly flexible floorplate that can be adjusted to their fast-changing needs and provide an excellent working environment for their staff. The building will be a symbol of the bank’s premier status in the industry, embodying its strong legacy while looking firmly towards the future.”
Foster + Partners’ design also features a quadruple height glazed atrium at the top of the building, which will be open to customers of the bank, and will house a gallery, event spaces, meeting rooms and dining areas. A separate art gallery and fitness facility for employees will be included in the building’s lower levels.
The design firm is also designed an accompanying 180-metre high hotel and office tower, along with shops and other amenities close to the China Merchants Bank Tower.
Young Wei-Yang Chiu, partner at Foster + Partners said: “The tower forms part of a new complex that will connect with the next phase of the Shenzhen Bay development, featuring a well-connected urban square linked with the metro, retail, cultural spaces and Shenzhen Bay’s amazing waterfront.”
CBI member, Accenture has opened a new innovation hub to pursue research and development in artificial intelligence, robotics and Accenture’s Industry X.0 programme, the consultancy’s initiative to define the digital reinvention of industry. The Shenzhen innovation hub will be home to world-class R&D appliances and professionals, and will bring the company’s latest thinking, capabilities and ability to build prototypes of new solutions to help Chinese technology companies, start ups and academic institutions to drive innovation. The investment has been made by Accenture in support of the developing Greater Bay Initiative, the Chinese government’s plan to link up Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau together to form a global business centre.
Wei Zhu, chairman of Accenture Greater China said, “Innovation is crucial to the sustained growth of all enterprises, and Shenzhen is the epicentre of innovation in the emerging Greater Bay Area. The new Accenture Innovation Hub in Shenzhen demonstrates our strong commitment to building a more robust innovation eco-system for our clients in Greater China and positions us to help clients apply disruptive technologies to accelerate their digital transformation journeys and stay ahead of the game.”
The Accenture Innovation Hub will be located in the high-tech industrial park of the Shenzhen Economic Zone, and will be home to four of Accenture’s business streams: Accenture Research, Accenture Labs, Accenture Ventures and Accenture Liquid Studios – the full capability of Accenture’s R&D work.
Multiple CBI members in China have announced in recent months their intentions to invest in R&D facilities in Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area, including Airbus, DHL and Siemens.
To find out more about the Accenture Innovation Hub in Shenzhen, please follow the link.
CBI member, Airbus has announced that it has opened an innovation centre in south China’s Shenzhen to develop new technologies that will improve the cabin experience of Airbus aircraft for passengers as well as improve the manufacturing process for Airbus and partners.
China Direct subscribers will remember that in December, Airbus announced that it would be partnering with China mobile to upgrade in-flight WIFI services across the Airbus fleet. Shenzhen was chosen as the location for Airbus’ innovation centre because of the city’s rapidly developing innovation advantages, including access to local partners, such as China Mobile and Huawei, talent and local government support for foreign R&D initiatives.
Tom Enders, Airbus CEO said: “Shenzhen is the Silicon Valley of China, with many high-tech companies as well as promising partners […] Shenzhen is famous for its speed, which is certainly good for [Airbus]. We need to be more open to innovation at a faster speed.”
Airbus has also signed an MoU with Shenzhen Municipal Commerce Bureau to cooperate to deliver Urban Air Mobility (UAM) solutions in Shenzhen. Airbus’s UAM initiative aims to create a whole new industry from scratch to make inter-city helicopter travel accessible to the masses by designing and eventually manufacturing small electric ‘helicopter taxis’ which would open up the vertical dimensions of cities for travel.
Its an ambitious task, for an ambitious city, which is set to become central to Airbus’ China operations, as they build on the success the company is having the China market. As 2018 came to a close, 1,700 Airbus aircraft were serving in the China market, while more than 20% of all commercial aircraft manufactured by Airbus had at some point entered China’s airspace.
CBI member, Arup recently completed work on the 392m “Bamboo-shoot’ Building in the Shenzhen Bay Area. Officially known as China Resources Headquarters, Arup’s latest skyscraper stands at 67 storeys tall and is held up by an innovative structural system of external slender columns.
Arup partnered with the US architect KPF on the design of the building, and was directly responsible for the structural engineering, geotechnics, façade design and fire safety strategy.
The building is particularly notable because it is the first time that a building has been built utilising external columns rather than a traditional mega-column within a seismic area.
The building has a sculpted form of 56 external slender columns stemming from the diagrids at the bottom and converging into a crystal cap at the top. This outer-shell is complemented by a core-structure system which does away with strengthened storeys. The result is a system that is more efficient in vertical force transmission, making the ‘bamboo-shoot’ more resistant to typhoons and earthquake. This new method of structural engineering is also more cost-effective and requires a shorter construction period.
Arup tested the new engineering system to ensure that it was sufficiently wind-resistant to be built in a typhoon area. This involved using advanced structural optimisation technologies to test models and running simulations to fine-tune the design and improve the skyscrapers behaviour under different wind loads. This allowed Arup to visualise the steelwork fabrication, identify potential problems during the construction and resolve them all in advance. After rigorous testing, outrigger dampers were added to the steelwork to reduce wind-induced vibrations and create a more comfortable environment for occupants.
The building Is not only innovative in its approaches to structural engineering however, it is also very aesthetically pleasing. By pushing the weight of the building onto external columns rather than rely on a mega-column, the architects have managed to produce a very slender form for the building. This also means that the interior is column free which increases the net floor area.
To read more about Arup’s “Bamboo-shoot Building”, please follow the link.
CBI member, International Hotels Group (IHG) has announced that it has expanded its franchise offer in Greater China with new signings for its brands, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn.
IHG signed 14 new franchise agreements last week at the South China Roadshow, held at the InterContinental hotel in Shenzhen. One new Crowne Plaza hotel and one new Holiday Inn & Suite will open in Chengdu, Longquan Yi.
These signings were accompanied by announcements that a further three new Holiday Inn hotels will open in Daocheng, Qinhuangdao and Suihua, and nine additional Holiday Inn Express properties will open in cities and tourism destinations including Chengdu, Shenzhen, Foshan, Yangjiang, Jiangmen, Jinjiang, Fuxian Lake, Lishui and Nanjing.
Kent Sun, chief development officer, IHG Greater China said: “As a pioneer in the hotel industry, the development of our franchise offer demonstrates our ability to move at pace, continue to innovate and react to the changing needs of the market and owners, based on our global expertise.”
The latest franchise offering is in addition to IHG’s current management model provision, which has enjoyed over three decades of operations in China. IHG began experimenting with a franchise offering in 2016, when it launched its Franchise Plus model for its Holiday Inn Express brand. The Franchise Plus model for Holiday Inn Express was tailored for the China market but based on IHG’s international franchising expertise – where it stands out as one of the largest franchisors in the hotel industry with over 80% of hotels operating under the franchise model globally. The Franchise Plus model transferred well to China, and its success is reflected in the 124 Holiday Inn Express hotels open in the region, coupled with the fact that IHG has another 166 hotels in the development pipeline.
According to IHG, the China market has reached a level of maturity and sophistication that now is the time to expand franchise model catering in-market for evolving owner demand in what is a fast-evolving industry.
IHG has big ambition in China. The brand currently operates 380 hotels, but has a further 334 hotels in the development stage under 10 brands across luxury to mainstream segments. With China anticipated to become the world’s most travelled to tourism destination by 2030, and more and more Chinese people travelling domestically, there is huge un-tapped market potential.
Please find more about IHG’s latest offerings in China here.
CBI member Arup was recognised with the Grand Award in Mainland/Overseas projects category at the HKIE Structural Excellence Award for its work in engineering the Energy Mansion in Shenzhen, China.
Shenzhen Energy Mansion is an office development comprising two towers, 220m and 110m tall, with forms that are sympathetic to the elongated site and plot layout.
Designed by the world renowned architect Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the project features a unique folded façade that both passively and actively reduces the energy consumption of the building. Limited by the long and narrow site layout, the structure is very slim in the east to west direction. To accommodate the aesthetic shape of both towers, the columns follow and incline along the façade envelope. The number and location of the columns were carefully determined to provide maximum floor efficiency and views to the outside.
Arup supported BIG to deliver this landmark building since the design competition, providing structural, MEP, building sustainability and fire engineering services. This has been the fifth consecutive year that Arup has won this prestigious annual award which honours excellence in structural engineering and achievement by structural engineers in Hong Kong.
Please read more here.
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