What Europe gets wrong about China

For decades, many international companies saw China mainly as a low-cost manufacturing base and fast-growing market. In this interview, Richard Zhang, who leads GEA’s business in China, explains why that view is outdated and why success now depends on combining global expertise with the ideas, talent and expectations emerging from China itself.

When people in Europe talk about China, what do they often get wrong?

From a business perspective, they think of China in ways that were perhaps accurate 15 or 20 years ago. They see a huge manufacturing country, a low-cost production base, an export platform. But if you spend time here, you notice that the conversation has changed. China is still one of the world's largest markets and manufacturing economies. It has also become a place with enormous engineering resources, R&D investment and innovation activity. That's why I think it helps to separate short-term economic headlines from the country's longer-term industrial development. If you do that, you see a market that is evolving in ways that many people outside of China don't fully appreciate.

How is the Chinese market evolving?

The easiest way to explain it is through the customer perspective. Twenty years ago, a Chinese customer might have been satisfied to hear: "This technology already runs successfully in Switzerland, New Zealand, Germany and the U.S." Today that is often not enough. Customers want to know how it performs in China – on their applications, under their operating conditions, with local references. That change reflects a growing confidence in the market itself. Customers no longer assume the best answers automatically come from somewhere else. They want proof that a solution works for them.

GEA has more than a century of engineering knowledge. How far does that carry you in China?

That knowledge is essential, but it is only part of the equation. Our teams in China understand Chinese customers, applications and expectations extremely well. They know how this market operates and what persuades a customer here. The strongest solutions combine the two: GEA’s deep engineering expertise provides the technological foundation; the Chinese team brings the market understanding and validates the solution locally, together with the customer. The answer is not Europe or China. It is both, working much more closely together.

People often talk about "China speed." What does that look like in reality?

The phrase is overused, but there is truth behind it. Customers here move quickly. They expect their suppliers to keep up – with knowledge and decision-making capacity close at hand. Our new organizational structure supports that. Since January 2026, our China organization has reported directly to GEA’s CEO, which shortens decision paths and gives us greater autonomy to respond to the market.

You can hear why that matters in our daily work: When will we get the quotation? When can somebody solve this problem? Such questions come from customers, and our teams carry them into the organization. Many customers simply don't understand why an answer should take a week if the decision can be made tomorrow. That is probably the simplest definition of China speed: Customers talk about today and tomorrow, not next week.

What surprises international visitors when they walk into a GEA plant in Suzhou or Tianjin?

How mature the operations are. We have been manufacturing in China for many years, in some areas close to two decades, with highly trained employees, experienced engineering teams and facilities running to the same GEA standards as anywhere in the world. Many visitors arrive expecting to see a lower-cost manufacturing operation. What they find is an established industrial organization with highly capable teams, substantial production and more than 200 electrical and automation engineers who put their local experience to work on new solutions.

You describe China as an innovation ecosystem rather than simply a market. Why?

Because of the sheer scale. China accounts for roughly one-third of global manufacturing output. More than five million students graduate in STEM fields every year. Annual R&D investment runs into hundreds of billions of euros.

When you combine manufacturing capability, engineering talent, suppliers, software developers, universities and technology companies at that scale, innovation happens quickly. China is no longer simply following technological developments elsewhere; in a growing number of fields, it helps shape them. So, companies should not think of China only as a place where products are sold or manufactured. It can also serve as an engineering and innovation hub where new solutions are developed, validated and prepared for wider use.

What does that look like in practice?

Take robotics. We recently visited a large Chinese robotics manufacturer to understand where robots could be useful for GEA – not only in manufacturing, but in service activities and in environments that are difficult or dangerous for people. Years ago, an industrial company exploring a technology like that would have looked elsewhere first. But China installs more than half of the world’s industrial robots. Being close to such significant developments matter: We see emerging technologies early, talk directly to the developers and judge where they might solve a real industrial problem. That is one example of why companies should watch not only what China manufactures, but what China develops.

GEA is not exactly a household name in Germany. What about in China?

It depends on who you ask. Stop someone on the street and they may never have heard of us. Among the leading Chinese companies in dairy, food processing or beverages, though, GEA is very well known – we have worked with many of them for decades. Our visibility has also grown through local channels such as WeChat. Sometimes our customers even advertise the fact that they use GEA technology. I once saw an online ad for yogurt that showed a GEA separator and pointed to the German equipment used in production. I found that remarkable: a separator normally sits hidden deep inside a factory, and here it was, in an advertisement for an everyday food product, because the producer associated it with quality. A small example – but it shows how industrial technology can become part of the story behind a consumer product.

Which customer relationships best illustrate GEA’s position in China?

The dairy industry offers many good examples. Yili and Mengniu are among China’s largest dairy producers and long-standing GEA customers. In one customer's visitor center, guests follow the journey from raw milk to the finished product – and see along the way where GEA technology is at work throughout production.

What I find even more telling is the level of trust. Some customers are willing to move forward with a project on the basis of a memorandum of understanding or a letter of intent, while the commercial details are still being worked through. Trust like that is built over many years, through continuous exchange, technical cooperation and regular visits in both directions. It is one of our greatest strengths.

Is sustainability a purchasing criterion for customers in China?

For many of our leading customers, yes. They have their own sustainability targets, and we see the subject becoming increasingly important. That is also one of GEA’s strengths: our technologies can help customers reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions while improving production. These are important considerations for customers here.

Where do you see the greatest opportunities in the coming years?

Food processing remains a broad field with room to grow – China has 1.4 billion people to feed, and expectations for food safety and quality keep rising. The area I watch most closely, though, is pharmaceuticals. China is becoming a major player in pharmaceutical innovation and drug development, and Chinese pharmaceutical technologies increasingly reach Europe and the United States. Over the next decade, that will create significant opportunities for companies supplying technology and process expertise to the sector – and it will favor those who understand both the global technology landscape and the specific needs of the Chinese market.

Is there anything that could slow this down?

China remains one of the world’s largest markets, and many opportunities are still untapped. The one factor no company controls is geopolitics. Industrial development follows a long-term trajectory, while political decisions can change the conditions very quickly. So, we concentrate on what we can shape: our technology, our products, our investments, our customer relationships. Artificial intelligence will also change how we develop and validate new products, and China’s fast-moving innovation ecosystem gives us an opportunity to learn and move quickly. My hope is simple: that cooperation remains possible and markets stay open. Then I am very optimistic about the future.

If you could leave one message for colleagues and business leaders outside China, what would it be?

Stay curious. Stay confident. China has changed enormously and continues to change, yet many people still see the country through assumptions formed years ago. Don't rely on them. Come and see what is actually happening. China spent decades learning from Europe and the United States. Today there are many fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics and digitalization in which the rest of the world can learn from China. If we combine GEA’s global expertise with China’s speed, talent and market understanding, we can develop solutions in China that benefit customers around the world.