New challenges

It seemed a flight of fancy at first, but when Zheng Hao was dispatched to Shanghai in September 2002 by a Ukrainian telecom equipment maker as a buyer, the notion of setting up his own export trading firm proved irresistible.

"After seeing a flood of European firms rushing to the country for made-in-China products that year in Shanghai, I reckoned China's export boom was probably set to start," says the 37-year-old Zheng, who took the plunge in December 2003 to establish his own firm, Tuolima, specializing in exporting equipment for fiber optic networks.

China's export boom was largely based on China's entry to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a move that accelerated the nation's economic restructuring and triggered rapid foreign trade growth given Chinese products' competitiveness in the international market.