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Weekday Industry Tracks

• Robotics & AI Executive Tour in collab with Caixin Data, Beijing, Oct19-23 (5days)

• Advanced Manufacturing, Foshan/Shenzhen, Oct 26-30 (4.5 days)

• Next Energy & Industrial Cycle, Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzhou, Nov 2-6 (4.5 days)

Weekend Immersion Tracks

• Datong: where China became China, Oct 24-25

• Yiwu: Hidden Engine of Global Commerce, with David Fishman, Oct 31 - Nov 1

• Nanjing: A People-First Weekend in the “Southern Capital”, Nov 13-14

For pricing and discounts, click here.

If you are unable to join us on this autumn series of tours, feel free to email Baiguan_ChinaTour@bigonelab.com with your interests. We also offer bespoke study tours and board retreat services tailored to your needs.

Learn more about the tours and tour leaders

• How would Chinese technology look like five years from now?

• After solar and EV, what’s next for China’s energy sector?

• What does the “most capitalist” city in China tell about the future of globalization

WHY BAIGUAN CHINA TOUR

Click here to read a Q&A of regularly asked questions

Navigating China’s complex economic landscape requires more than just a standard itinerary. The Baiguan China Tour is designed to deliver three core pillars of value:

• Deep-Diving Engagement, with Curation: We move beyond surface-level observations into the engine rooms of industry. Through structured dialogues with C-suite executives curated by Baiguan and our sector specialist partners, and through on-the-ground audits of companies, smart factories, AI labs, and supply chain hubs, we unpack the operational realities and technological breakthroughs that underpin China’s new economic trajectory.

• Unfiltered Access and Crucial Context: We strip away the corporate PR and political spin to reveal the ground truth. Of course, the relationships and senior access matter. But a company visit on its own is only one data point. Every company has a story it wants visitors to hear. Our job is to explain how that story fits into the broader industry, what the company did not say, where its incentives lie, and which claims deserve more skepticism.

• High-Quality Community: You won’t be touring with tourists. Our groups are intentionally kept small and selective, comprising global investors, entrepreneurs, multinational executives, and scions of business dynasties. This ensures a high-trust, peer-to-peer learning environment where insights are enriched by diverse perspectives, forging lasting connections with like-minded global leaders.

Some of the past participants of the Baiguan China Tour include:

• Founder of one of Germany’s most successful technology companies

• Head of corporate venture capital at a major US industrial company

• Singapore-based Chief Investment Officer at a large family office

• American investing family rooted in China and early backer of Alibaba

• Research Analyst at a top Europe-based hedge fund

• Former Senior Researcher at a leading high-frequency trading house

• Member of a prominent Latin American business family and entrepreneur

• Former board director of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

• Silicon Valley venture investor in the fintech field

• Influential Thai family member with years of experience across VC, PE, and investment banking in Southeast Asia

• Malaysian Founder of a multi-billion Asia-based investment fund

• Senior Engineer at a major US Mag7 company

• Former APAC Payments Analytics Lead at a major global payment company

• Singapore-based private Investor with years of experience and ongoing interest in China’s capital markets

• Business Consultant to Fortune 500 company

• Researcher at an Australia-based long-only investment fund

Disclaimer

Weekday Industry Tracks

🤖 Robotics & AI Executive Tour | Oct 19-23 | Beijing

Curated by Baiguan and Caixin Data, this tour cuts through the noise to take you deep into the industrial value chain—from mass-production lines for core hardware and R&D hubs for foundational models to the frontlines of national standard-setting and advanced application testing. Rather than assessing technologies in isolation, we help you decode the underlying infrastructure and economic logic driving this transformation, equipping you with the hard-edged judgment needed to distinguish where capital is truly flowing from where the headlines merely suggest.

A key highlight of this tour that you won’t easily find anywhere else is that, leveraging Caixin’s deep network, tour participants can have closed-door meetings with C-level executives and founding team members of AI and robotics enterprises, including Moonshot (Kimi) and Zhipu AI (GLM). Beyond AI and robotics, participants can also enjoy a rare glimpse into China’s commercial space industry.

⚙️ Advanced Manufacturing & Supply Chain Tour | Oct 26-30 | Foshan → Shenzhen

This journey reveals Chinese manufacturing not as a static cost center, but a dynamic engine of reinvention. From Foshan’s industrial titans to Shenzhen’s deep-tech disruptors, we trace how legacy giants and frontier startups share the same supply chain soil—driving the national “New Quality Productivity” agenda across smart home appliances, biotech, humanoid robots, and AI. This is not a site visit to assembly lines; it is an investigation into the strategy that allows China to scale from home appliances to humanoid robots with unmatched speed.

This tour is uniquely curated by Family Office Insight, the same partner in our very first, and highly successful Baiguan China Tour last year.

♻️ China’s Next Energy & Industrial Cycle: Power, AI & How China Builds | Nov 2-6 | Shanghai → Suzhou → Hangzhou

China has already reshaped the global economics of solar, batteries and electric vehicles. In 2025 alone, it added roughly 430 GW of wind and solar, taking total installed capacity to around 1.84 TW. But the more interesting question is no longer how China scaled the last energy cycle, but what comes next, how China builds the next energy system, and what durable industry moats and investment opportunities could emerge?

Over five days across Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, we will go inside the frontier of China’s energy by meeting senior executives and C-level founders, seeing operating assets and technologies firsthand, and speaking directly with the investors and institutions deciding what gets built, funded and scaled next.

Taken together, the program will move across:

• an established renewable-energy champion defending and extending its moat

• frontier nuclear fusion technology

• EV infrastructure becoming part of the power system

• state capital allocating into new industries

• a local government ecosystem that has repeatedly scaled companies

• hidden thermal-management and critical AI infrastructure layers

• AI-driven electricity demand

• and the next generation of frontier startups.

Weekend Immersion Tracks

🚄 A Weekend in Datong: Where China Became China | Oct. 24-25 | Datong, Shanxi

Datong isn’t on most itineraries. That’s the point. In the 5th century, Datong was the capital of the Northern Wei — a dynasty founded by the Xianbei, a non-Han nomadic group from China’s northern frontier, who chose to assimilate into Chinese civilization rather than rule over it as outsiders. That choice, and the century of upheaval and reinvention it triggered, is carved directly into the cliffs at Yungang Grottoes.

But history is never just history here; it is an economic lifeline. Beneath the ancient cliffs runs a second, more urgent story: Datong itself. Once a coal powerhouse that hit an economic wall, the city gambled its survival on a controversial bet—tearing down the new to rebuild the old. Today, that gamble is being stress-tested by a surge in domestic “heritage tourism,” accelerated by a surprise catalyst: a hit video game, Black Myth: Wukong. We won’t just admire the temples; we will sit with the tension between preservation and progress, examining how a controversial mayor’s vision is playing out on the ground.

Datong is a miniature of the Chinese model: resilient, contradictory, and constantly rewriting its future by reclaiming its past. It is a perspective no boardroom or briefing deck can replicate.

This tour is led by Steven Xiao, who would be no stranger to the participants of our second tour. Steven was born and raised in Beijing, and somewhere along the way to a decade-plus career in finance across New York and Shanghai, picked up a second, far more consuming interest: the Buddhist art carved into cliffsides and caves centuries before anyone thought to build a spreadsheet. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University, which he has never once used to explain any of this. History and Buddhist art are his real vocation, pursued not from an armchair but from the caves themselves, tracing early Buddhist civilization across the furthest reaches of the Silk Road. This October, he trades the boardroom for a cliffside in Datong, leading the tour’s extension there.

🎁 The Hidden Engine of Global Consumption-How Small Commodities Move the World | Oct. 31-Nov 1 | Yiwu, Zhejiang

Yiwu is the pulse point of global micro-multinationals. Often overlooked by traditional investors, this city in Zhejiang province supplies over 80% of the world’s Christmas decorations, 70% of Christmas trees, and a dominant majority of the small commodities found in dollar stores from Ohio to Oslo. It is the physical manifestation of China’s supply chain dominance—where a $0.10 hairclip can move across continents with algorithmic precision. Yet, beneath the surface of “low-end” goods, Yiwu is undergoing a radical transformation into a high-efficiency, digital-first logistics and new-energy export hub.

This tour is led by David Fishman, a Principal at The Lantau Group (TLG), a leading Asia-focused energy consultancy based in Shanghai. Having lived and worked in China for 15 years, David specializes in China’s energy sector, industrial development, trade, and political economy. His work has included advising multinational corporations, financial institutions, and industrial clients on topics ranging from power markets and manufacturing competitiveness to supply chains and regional development.

Beyond his professional work, David has traveled extensively throughout China and has a longstanding interest in economic geography, local development, and social ethnography. His research and writing explore how Chinese communities, businesses, and institutions interact with broader trends in globalization, industrialization, and international trade. Combining policy expertise with extensive firsthand experience, he offers a grounded perspective on how China’s economy functions beyond the major coastal cities and financial centers.

🍷Curious China: A People-First Weekend in China’s Southern Capital | Nov 13-14 | Nanjing, Jiangsu

Nanjing served as the capital of six dynasties, the Republic of China, and remains a regional center today. Its city walls, lakes, Republican-era neighborhoods and everyday street life reveal how different layers of Chinese history continue to shape contemporary life.

Rather than moving through a checklist of landmarks, this weekend is designed around people, conversation and a slower rhythm. Shared meals, local encounters and thoughtfully paced walks create space to understand the city through those who live there.

The experience is led by Michelle Wei, a Nanjing native who spent 17 years living and working across the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Germany. Cornell-trained in hospitality, with a professional background spanning private equity, real estate investment and cross-border capital raising, Michelle brings both local roots and an international perspective. She will introduce participants to a curated circle of local thinkers, practitioners and friends, turning the city itself into a setting for exchange.

Pricing and Important Details

To maintain the quality of dialogue and ensure meaningful interactions among investors and industry leaders, participation is by application only (you may fill in the application form here), with each tour limited to 20 seats.

Pricing & Discounts

Each tour offers three pricing tiers:

• Standard Rate

• Early Bird Discount: 10% off-Valid through 11:59 PM Beijing Time on September 13, 2026

• Returnee Discount: 20% off-Available for previous Baiguan tour participants

Discount Policies:

• Early Bird and Returnee discounts are non-combinable. Both are calculated on the Standard Rate; in cases of dual eligibility, the lower of the two rates applies automatically.

• Multi-Tour Savings: Register for two or more tours to save even more. This deduction applies to your post-Early Bird or post-Returnee total:

  • Total < $10,000 USD → Deduct $500 USD

  • Total $10,000–$20,000 USD → Deduct $1,000 USD

  • Total $20,000–$30,000 USD → Deduct $2,000 USD

  • Total $30,000–$40,000 USD → Deduct $3,000 USD

  • Total >$40,000 USD → Deduct $4,000 USD

Illustrative Example:

Scenario: You are a Returnee registering for two tours during the Early Bird window.

1. Base Discount: Two tours at standard rate (2,500 +15000 = $17,500). We apply your 20% Returnee discount: $17,500* ( 1 - 20% ) = $14,000

2. Multi-Tour Credit: Your adjusted total qualifies for a $1,000 deduction.

Final Fee: $14,000 - $1000 = $13,000

What’s Included:

• Five-star Hotels (eg., Sheraton, Westin, InterContinental) or character-filled equivalent stays on weekend immersion to enhance the local experience (if you select the accommodation-inclusive package)

• Travel insurance

• All scheduled company visits and seminars

• All breakfast, lunch and some dinners

• All ground transportation during the tour

What’s Not Included:

• International/domestic flights to/from the destination city

• Chinese visa application fees

• Personal expenses

• Certain dinners are not included in the standard program and will be clearly marked in the final detailed itinerary.

Applications, Refunds & Cancellations

• Cancel ≥30 days prior to the tour start date: Full Refund

• Cancel between 15~30 days (inclusive of Day 15) before the tour start date: 50% Refund

• Cancel <15 days before the start date (any reason, including visa issues): No Refund

• All time references shall be based on China Standard Time (Beijing Time, GMT+8)

• Requests must be sent in writing to Baiguan_ChinaTour@bigonelab.com

• Refunds will be processed minus a non-refundable administrative/service fee, the exact amount of which is subject to the applicable payment platform’s charges.

To apply, please click or scan to fill out this form: Baiguan China Tour Application Form - Autumn 2026

What to expect next:

• Upon reviewing your application, we will notify you of the outcome within 3 business days. If accepted, we will contact you to arrange payment and discuss next steps.

• We understand that emails can sometimes end up in your spam folder. If you don’t hear from us within 3 business days, please check your spam folder.

• Once your payment is processed, your seat will be officially secured. We will follow up with an email to gather additional details to enhance your experience, such as arrival information, dietary restrictions, or any special accommodation needs.

• About one week before the program begins, we will reach out with the exact daily schedules, meeting spots, and an introductory brochure about the companies we will be visiting. We will also create a designated WeChat group for participants and invite you to join.

This post highlights some of the most important questions. Part 1 covers the tour’s content, and Part 2 addresses practical and logistical concerns.

Part 1: the questions that matter most

1. There are already many China tours. Sellside banks also organize tours. What makes Baiguan’s different?

The simplest answer is that access is only the raw material, but interpretation is the product.

Baiguan did not begin as a tour company. We began as a data and research company serving institutional investors and global companies that needed to understand the Chinese market. This newsletter came later, and the tours grew out of readers asking us to take them into the companies, industries, and cities we had been writing about.

That unique background shapes your experience. Of course, the relationships and senior access matter. But a company visit on its own is only one data point. Every company has a story it wants visitors to hear. Our job is to explain how that story fits into the broader industry, what the company did not say, where its incentives lie, and which claims deserve more skepticism.

Some of the best parts of our previous tours happened between formal meetings: on the bus, over dinner, or after a factory visit, when participants and the Baiguan team debated whether the company we had just seen was telling the whole truth. That layer of context is difficult to reproduce on a standard tour, especially the ones that are organized by investment banks.

“Baiguan” in Chinese means “100 perspectives.” The purpose is not to give you one approved view of China. It is to give you enough perspectives to construct your own.

Another unique aspect of our tour that you don’t easily find on investment bank tours is the strong bonding among our participants. More on this in the question here.

2. How do you stop the trip from becoming a sequence of polished corporate presentations?

We treat what a company says as evidence, not as a conclusion. Before and after visits, the Baiguan team and our specialist partners frame the industry, identify key questions, and debrief on what we heard.

We also design the itinerary around bottlenecks rather than spectacles. In robotics, for example, we are not interested in taking participants around Beijing merely to watch humanoid robots dance. We want to look at the hard parts: dexterous hands, mass production, cloud infrastructure, standards, deployment and data. In energy, we want to ask a fusion founder which technical milestones have been demonstrated and which remain aspirational. In manufacturing, we want to understand why one ecosystem can automate soy sauce bottling and scale advanced robotics at the same time.

The tour is not designed to show off China’s strengths, nor do we avoid its weaknesses. The point is to see the system closely enough to form an informed judgment.

3. How senior and unusual is the access?

On the industry tracks, most planned meetings are with senior managers, C-level executives, or founders. On the Beijing Robotics & AI track, our collaboration with Caixin Data gives us access to senior management and founding-team members at leading foundation-model companies such as Moonshot AI (Kimi) and Zhipu AI (GLM). The planned itinerary also goes down the robotics stack, including companies working on dexterous hands, and into commercial space, an area that is rarely accessible to foreign visitor groups.

The same principle applies elsewhere. The manufacturing track includes senior dialogue with established industrial leaders and younger deep-tech companies. The energy track brings participants into discussions with operators, investors, industrial parks and a controlled nuclear fusion startup.

Any planned meeting can be affected by last-minute scheduling or security changes. Where necessary, we will provide alternatives of equivalent caliber. But the level we design for is decision-maker access, not showroom access.

4. Who typically joins the tour?

We cap every track at 20 people, and our previous groups have usually had between 15 and 20. That is small enough for everyone to ask questions, get to know one another, and continue discussions outside the formal program.

Roughly half of participants come from investment backgrounds: family-office principals, institutional investors, and private investors with existing or prospective exposure to China. The other half are entrepreneurs, corporate executives, senior managers and engineers from large and small companies.

Geographically, past cohorts have been genuinely international, with substantial participation from Southeast Asia, the Americas and Europe, along with guests from India and elsewhere. The common denominator is not nationality or job title. It is intellectual curiosity and a willingness to engage seriously.

A good cohort is one of the three main sources of value, apart from access and curation. Participants not only learn from the companies and from us; they also learn from each other’s questions, disagreements, and professional experience.

5. Is this a business-development or sourcing trip? Will this be like, for example, Canton Fair?

It is a study tour. It is designed to help you understand how an industry works, how a company fits inside it, and how China’s broader economic machinery operates.

That makes it a very different animal from the Canton Fair. A sourcing trip begins with a product or supplier requirement. Our trip begins with a question: What is actually happening in this sector, and why? If a commercial relationship emerges naturally, that is excellent, but the program is not built around transactions.

This distinction also changes the conversation inside a company. We are not there simply to ask for a quotation or a product catalog. We can ask about strategy, technology, margins, bottlenecks, capital allocation, global expansion and the assumptions behind management’s story.

6. China’s robotics sector looks bubbly right now. Why make Robotics & AI the flagship?

Chinese robotics may be in a bubble, but it may be, in Robert’s words, a “necessary bubble”.

Getting from impressive prototypes to genuinely useful, general-purpose robots requires enormous investment, manufacturing scale, real-world deployment and data collection. A great deal of capital will be wasted along the way. That does not mean the process is meaningless. It means investors need a better way to distinguish technical progress and industrial capability from staged demonstrations.

The Beijing track, curated with Caixin Data, is designed around that distinction. Following the above-mentioned meeting with foundation-model founders, participants will inspect the embodied-intelligence supply chain, closely examine bottlenecks such as high-DOF dexterous hands, and examine the infrastructure for deployment, including cloud systems, autonomous driving, and industrial standards.

The program also extends into commercial space, a sector often off-limits to most foreign visitors. China is moving quickly in private launch, reusable rockets and space commercialization, but foreign visitors rarely get to see the industry up close. Putting AI, robotics, mobility and commercial space together makes Beijing the clearest window into how China is trying to turn frontier technology into an industrial system.

7. What does the advanced manufacturing track show that a factory tour cannot?

The central question is not whether China can manufacture a particular product, but how the Pearl River Delta turns manufacturing itself into a general-purpose capability.

That is why the Foshan-Shenzhen track spans both traditional and frontier sectors. At Haitian, a century-old condiment company, participants can see how a consumer-staples business applies automation, logistics and digital production at enormous scale. At Midea, the story moves from home appliances into industrial robotics, building technology and overseas acquisitions. In Shenzhen, the itinerary reaches sensors, collaborative robots, AI drug discovery, gene sequencing and other deep-tech fields.

Huaqiangbei brings the system together. A decade ago, the district was internationally notorious for counterfeit electronics. The same ability to disassemble, copy and source components has evolved into an extraordinary rapid-prototyping network. A hardware team can arrive with an idea, return within days with a working model, and then find suppliers capable of scaling it.

This is why the track is not simply about “advanced manufacturing companies.” It is about how manufacturing logic spreads across industries, from soy sauce to healthcare to humanoid robots.

8. China already dominates solar, batteries and electric vehicles. What is left to learn on an energy tour?

The interesting question is no longer how China scaled the last energy cycle. It is what comes next, who will finance it, and which capabilities will become durable moats.

The Next Energy & Industrial Cycle track follows several layers of that answer. At GCL, participants will see how an established renewable-energy group survives multiple cycles while investing in next-generation perovskite solar technology. At a controlled nuclear fusion startup, we will press the founders on the milestones, bottlenecks and financing needed to move from frontier science to industry. The itinerary also looks at battery-swap infrastructure as a power asset, thermal-management components, state capital, Suzhou’s industrial ecosystem and the physical energy demands of AI infrastructure.

This is intentionally a frontier-oriented program. We will not spend five days repeating the familiar story that China is large in solar panels and EVs. We want to understand how companies, capital, and local ecosystems are positioning for the next curve, including the bets with very high upside and very high uncertainty.

9. Why visit Yiwu if I am not in the import-export business?

Because Yiwu is one of the clearest places to see how global commerce works from the bottom up.

It is officially a smaller Chinese city, yet its skyline and commercial infrastructure surprise almost everyone. An enormous share of the world’s everyday light-manufactured goods pass through its markets and trading networks. The city also has a remarkably international social fabric, shaped by merchants from the Middle East, Africa, South Asia and elsewhere who have spent years sourcing and doing business there.

Yiwu is useful even if you never intend to place an order. It shows how Chinese private enterprise coordinates factories, logistics, payments, traders and overseas demand at street level. , an American energy consultant and writer who has lived in China for many years, will lead this weekend tour. He is unusually good at translating the fine-grained mechanics of Chinese cities for a Western audience.

In Beijing or Shanghai, one can easily mistake China’s largest companies for the whole economy. Yiwu is an antidote.

10. Why spend precious weekends in Datong and Nanjing instead of adding more company visits?

Because industry meetings explain only part of China. Cities, history and social memory explain the rest.

Datong sits at the meeting point of the Chinese heartland and the northern steppe. Its Buddhist art and surviving wooden architecture show how Chinese identity was built through centuries of exchange and absorption. Its modern history offers a very different case study: a coal city that hit an economic wall and tried to reinvent itself through an aggressive, controversial reconstruction and a turn toward heritage tourism. The city is a compact lesson in energy transition, urban policy, culture and the Chinese state’s capacity to remake places.

Nanjing offers another layer. It was a capital under several dynasties and the capital of the Republic of China before 1949. Ancient walls, Republican history, contemporary neighborhoods and ordinary urban life sit unusually close together. The weekend is designed to be people-first, with cultural sessions and local encounters, not a procession through monuments.

These weekends are softer than the industry tracks, but they are still study tours. They provide the cultural and historical context that helps an investor or executive interpret what they hear in a boardroom.

Part 2: practical questions

11. Do I need prior knowledge of China?

No. We have had participants whose tour was their first experience of China, and others who had visited repeatedly or lived in the country. Both groups found value.

A first-time visitor benefits from the structure and the explanations around each meeting. A China veteran benefits from access, sector depth, and the chance to compare existing assumptions against new evidence.

What matters is curiosity. We will provide participants with background materials and frame the key questions so that participants with different levels of prior knowledge can contribute to the same discussion.

12. How will language and translation work?

The Baiguan team is bilingual, and many founders and senior managers in the technology tracks speak strong English.

Where a meeting is conducted in Chinese, we will supplement it with real-time written AI translation via dedicated hardware and software solutions we have tested.

There is a fitting Huaqiangbei story here. A participant from an earlier tour had tried several well-known translation devices without being satisfied. While visiting Huaqiangbei, he bought an obscure, unbranded device that turned out to work better than all of them. He recommended it to us, and after testing it ourselves, we like it too.

That small anecdote captures the ecosystem surprisingly well: an apparently nondescript product, discovered in a chaotic electronics market that used to be the counterfeit center of the world, can embody a great deal of practical manufacturing intelligence.

13. Should I book one track or combine several?

The program is modular. You can join a single weekday industry track, add the adjacent weekend immersion, or combine several programs into a longer China learning journey.

If your schedule allows, I strongly recommend pairing at least one industry track with a weekend. The weekday program gives you sector depth; the weekend gives you social, historical, or commercial context. The contrast makes both more valuable.

A participant interested in frontier technology might combine Beijing Robotics & AI with the Datong weekend. Someone focused on supply chains could join Foshan-Shenzhen and then continue to Yiwu. An investor considering energy and consumption could shift from Shanghai-Suzhou-Hangzhou to a weekend in Nanjing.

Multi-tour discounts are available. The Nanjing weekend is offered twice, with substantially the same program, to make combinations easier.

14. How are travel and accommodation handled?

Connections between adjacent modules will be coordinated according to the fastest practical route. Beijing to Datong is about two hours by high-speed rail and offers a striking ride from the capital toward the northern plateau. For a longer connection such as Shenzhen to Yiwu, flying is more practical than spending many hours on the train.

For weekday tracks, participants can choose a package with accommodation or arrange their own hotel, provided they can reach the designated meeting points on time. Weekend immersions are built around selected local stays and a more integrated group experience.

Full inclusions, exclusions and current prices are listed on the tour page.

15. How do I apply, and when does a track close?

All tracks are application-only. We review applications and normally respond within three business days. If accepted, your seat is secured once payment is completed.

The hard cap is 20 participants per track. Once a track reaches 20 confirmed and paid participants, we close it. We do not expand the group to squeeze in additional seats because the small cohort is central to the experience.

Early-bird pricing is available through 11:59 pm Beijing Time on September 13, 2026. If you are seriously considering a track, apply early rather than waiting until the final weeks.

Ready to see China for yourself?

The Autumn 2026 program runs from October 19 to November 14. Early-bird pricing ends at 11:59 pm Beijing Time on September 13, 2026.

Full program and pricing: 2026 Autumn Baiguan China Tour ‘Marathon’

Application: Baiguan China Tour Application Form

Questions or bespoke group requests: Baiguan_ChinaTour@bigonelab.com

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Aug 21 update: Click here to read a Q&A of regularly asked questions

We are witnessing a paradigm shift in global interest around China.

For many years, China was only understood through the lens of a “big market.” Tales and books were written about how foreign executives came to China seeking the adventure of “one billion consumers.”

Today, after a brief shutdown of communication channels during the COVID years, China has suddenly emerged as something else — a technologically advanced, economically alternative, and socio-politically complex entity that defies any single line of definition.

Most importantly, for the first time in many hundreds of years, China once again appears to be somewhere that the world can learn something from.

To learn, does not mean to follow blindly. Learning about something unfamiliar involves understanding it in its own terms and reflecting on which parts of it will apply, or not apply, to one’s own condition. In China, we have an exact concept about it, called 借鉴 Jiejian: using someone else as a mirror to look at oneself.

This is what we thought about when we launched the Baiguan China Tour last year. It is not about showing off China’s strength, nor do we shun its many weaknesses. But to really use China as a mirror - to reflect on yourself - you have to see it with your own eyes, listen to it with your own ears, and touch it with your own hands. (Not to mention, Chinese food also smells and tastes great!)

Since then, several successful previous tours have built our confidence in our ability to deliver unfiltered, on-the-ground realities of China to the global audience, and we are constantly amazed by the level of interest shown by past participants.

This is why, for Autumn 2026, we have decided to partner with several specialist partners and vertical experts to try something that has never been attempted before: a month-long menu of modularized, vertically intensive learning expeditions throughout October and November, spanning AI, robotics, energy, advanced manufacturing, premium consumption, and, of course, culture.

Our new architecture seamlessly integrates Weekday Industry Tracks with Weekend Immersion Tracks to decode the underlying logic of the Chinese economy:

• Weekday Industry Tracks (Hard Logic): Tightly sequenced thematic weeks targeting the frontiers of new quality productivity—covering Beijing (Robotics & AI), Foshan-Shenzhen (Smart Manufacturing), and Shanghai-Suzhou-Hangzhou (Energy).

• Weekend Immersion Tracks (Soft Power Decoded): Exclusive, customized experiences in three unique cities from cultural, social, and economic perspectives: Datong (Shanxi), Yiwu (Zhejiang), Nanjing (Jiangsu), designed to provide critical context. From Datong’s energy transition and cultural renaissance to Yiwu’s global SME trade networks and private economic mechanisms, and onward to Nanjing’s ancient city walls, these journeys decode the social fabric and consumer psyche underpinning today’s China.

The Autumn 2026 Baiguan China Tour offers flexible, modular options. You are free to pick whichever items on the menu. The Baiguan team, alongside our partner institutions and featured experts, stewards each expedition from initial design and curation to on-the-ground execution, delivering continuous, end-to-end accompaniment.

Clearly, this is not just any tour. It is a marathon of tours. It is ambitious. But we invite you to help us fulfill this ambition.

Join us to validate assumptions on the ground, build your own informed conviction about where China is heading next, and judge for yourself which knowledge you would like to “distill” from China’s experience.

BAIGUAN CHINA TOUR MENU — AUTUMN 2026

Weekday Industry Tracks

• Robotics & AI Executive Tour in collab with Caixin Data, Beijing, Oct19-23 (5days)

• Advanced Manufacturing, Foshan/Shenzhen, Oct 26-30 (4.5 days)

• Next Energy & Industrial Cycle, Shanghai/Suzhou/Hangzhou, Nov 2-6 (4.5 days)

Weekend Immersion Tracks

• Datong: where China became China, Oct 24-25

• Yiwu: Hidden Engine of Global Commerce, with , Oct 31 - Nov 1

• Nanjing: A People-First Weekend in the “Southern Capital”, Nov 13-14

If you are unable to join us on this autumn series of tours, feel free to email Baiguan_ChinaTour@bigonelab.com with your interests. We also offer bespoke study tours and board retreat services tailored to your needs.

WHY BAIGUAN CHINA TOUR

Navigating China’s complex economic landscape requires more than just a standard itinerary. The Baiguan China Tour is designed to deliver three core pillars of value:

• Deep-Diving Engagement, with Curation: We move beyond surface-level observations into the engine rooms of industry. Through structured dialogues with C-suite executives curated by Baiguan and our sector specialist partners, and through on-the-ground audits of companies, smart factories, AI labs, and supply chain hubs, we unpack the operational realities and technological breakthroughs that underpin China’s new economic trajectory.

• Unfiltered Access and Crucial Context: We strip away the corporate PR and political spin to reveal the ground truth. Of course, the relationships and senior access matter. But a company visit on its own is only one data point. Every company has a story it wants visitors to hear. Our job is to explain how that story fits into the broader industry, what the company did not say, where its incentives lie, and which claims deserve more skepticism.

• High-Quality Community: You won’t be touring with tourists. Our groups are intentionally kept small and selective, comprising global investors, entrepreneurs, multinational executives, and scions of business dynasties. This ensures a high-trust, peer-to-peer learning environment where insights are enriched by diverse perspectives, forging lasting connections with like-minded global leaders.

Some of the past participants of the Baiguan China Tour include:

• Founder of one of Germany’s most successful technology companies

• Head of corporate venture capital at a major US industrial company

• Singapore-based Chief Investment Officer at a large family office

• American investing family rooted in China and early backer of Alibaba

• Research Analyst at a top Europe-based hedge fund

• Former Senior Researcher at a leading high-frequency trading house

• Member of a prominent Latin American business family and entrepreneur

• Former board director of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange

• Silicon Valley venture investor in the fintech field

• Influential Thai family member with years of experience across VC, PE, and investment banking in Southeast Asia

• Malaysian Founder of a multi-billion Asia-based investment fund

• Senior Engineer at a major US Mag7 company

• Former APAC Payments Analytics Lead at a major global payment company

• Singapore-based private Investor with years of experience and ongoing interest in China’s capital markets

• Business Consultant to Fortune 500 company

• Researcher at an Australia-based long-only investment fund

Disclaimer

Weekday Industry Tracks

🤖 Robotics & AI Executive Tour | Oct 19-23 | Beijing

Curated by Baiguan and Caixin Data, this tour cuts through the noise to take you deep into the industrial value chain—from mass-production lines for core hardware and R&D hubs for foundational models to the frontlines of national standard-setting and advanced application testing. Rather than assessing technologies in isolation, we help you decode the underlying infrastructure and economic logic driving this transformation, equipping you with the hard-edged judgment needed to distinguish where capital is truly flowing from where the headlines merely suggest.

A key highlight of this tour that you won’t easily find anywhere else is that, leveraging Caixin’s deep network, tour participants can have closed-door meetings with C-level executives and founding team members of AI and robotics enterprises, including Moonshot (Kimi) and Zhipu AI (GLM). Beyond AI and robotics, participants can also enjoy a rare glimpse into China’s commercial space industry.

Official Partner

As China’s most influential and independent financial media outlet, Caixin is recognized as an unrivaled producer of investigative journalism and an indispensable source of information for business leaders, investors, and policymakers. Caixin has been ranked ninth worldwide in the newly released 2026 Global Digital Subscription Report, with 1.2 million paid subscribers, confirming its position as one of the largest subscription-based news organizations outside the U.S. and U.K.

Caixin Data leads Caixin’s data operations and AI technology development. As a registered financial information service provider in China, it supplies data to major global financial information platforms and provides proprietary financial, corporate, industry and macroeconomic datasets. Its products also include macroeconomic indices and AI-powered investment research. Caixin Data works with leading Chinese AI and technology companies, including Zhipu AI, Moonshot AI and Volcengine.

The Caixin Data Platform serves financial institutions, investors and AI applications through APIs, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and agent-ready Skills, providing flexible access to data and analysis on China’s economy, industries and financial markets.

Core Highlights

• Foundation Models & Cloud Infrastructure:

  • Moonshot AI (Kimi) & Zhipu AI (GLM): Closed-door strategy session with senior management of two of China’s most consequential foundation-model players.

  • Volcengine (ByteDance) & Tencent Cloud: Benchmark the tech stacks fueling China’s AI surge with divisional leaders from the country’s two most consequential cloud powers: Volcano Engine, the fast-rising inference-and-MaaS backbone behind Doubao and the default AI cloud for ByteDance’s private-market juggernaut, and Tencent Cloud, the top IaaS/PaaS incumbent.

• Embodied Intelligence & Hardware Scale-Up:

  • Galbot: Debrief with the C-levels of the industry leader in wheeled dual-arm humanoids. Discuss their “Embodied Brain” roadmap and securing thousands of pre-orders from CATL, Bosch, and Toyota.

  • Linkerbot: Examine the “hands” of the robot revolution. Visit the startup claiming >80% market share in high-DOF dexterous hands and witness their mass production scaling from 10k units shipped in 2025 to 4k units in a single month (April 2026).

  • Noetix Robotics: Debrief with the founding team on corporate strategy and the bipedal–bionic dual-product matrix, followed by a deep dive into multi-base capacity expansion and scaled delivery.

• Future Mobility & Space Commercialization:

  • Yizhuang L4 Autonomous Driving Demo Zone: Experience a live Robotaxi ride in China’s most advanced driverless zone. Participate in a closed-door discussion on the “Vehicle-Road-Cloud” integration architecture.

  • CAS Space & Galactic Energy: Site visits to China’s leading mixed-ownership commercial space firms. Review solid/ reusable rocket technologies and the suborbital space tourism commercialization prospects.

• National Strategy & Industrial Ecosystem:

  • Beijing Humanoid Robot Innovation Center: Understand national standardization efforts (led by Xiaomi, Jingcheng Machinery Electric, & UBTech) and the fast-track policy for foreign investment in embodied AI.

  • Yizhuang Robotics Park: Explore a ~250,000 sqm industrial hub. Unlock end-to-end foreign JV landing services, IP localization, tax incentives, and ecosystem synergy with 300+ firms.

⚙️ Advanced Manufacturing & Supply Chain Tour | Oct 26-30 | Foshan → Shenzhen

This journey reveals Chinese manufacturing not as a static cost center, but a dynamic engine of reinvention. From Foshan’s industrial titans to Shenzhen’s deep-tech disruptors, we trace how legacy giants and frontier startups share the same supply chain soil—driving the national “New Quality Productivity” agenda across smart home appliances, biotech, humanoid robots, and AI. This is not a site visit to assembly lines; it is an investigation into the strategy that allows China to scale from home appliances to humanoid robots with unmatched speed.

This tour is uniquely curated by Family Office Insight, the same partner in our very first, and highly successful Baiguan China Tour last year.

Official Partner

Founded in January 2021, Family Office Insight is a leading think tank and community serving China’s family office sector. Through high-quality research, original content, and closed-door exchanges, it has built in-depth connections with more than 400 Chinese family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals in China and abroad, offering services including research, study tours, and curated events.

In 2025, Family Office Insight launched the Insight Circle, a membership initiative designed to foster learning, collaboration, and long-term relationships among Chinese family offices and has served nearly 50 members, supporting Chinese family offices and ultra-high-net-worth individuals in making wiser long-term decisions and building enduring legacies.

Core Highlights

• Foshan: The Legacy Giant’s Reinvention

  • Midea Group HQ (300.HK): Deep dive into one of China’s most globally successful appliance makers. Beyond the showroom, we dissect Midea’s transformation into an industrial AI and building-tech conglomerate—from robotic arms and HVAC intelligence to overseas M&A strategy—via a closed-door exchange with senior management.

  • Haitian Flavoring Factory (3288.HK): A rare look inside the world’s largest condiment plant. Observe how a century-old FMCG brand runs fully automated bottling, AGV logistics, and digital twin production—a masterclass in scaling traditional manufacturing.

  • HeYou International Hospital – Proton Center: Visit a privately funded, top-tier medical infrastructure project backed by Midea’s founder. Understand how Chinese industrial capital is flowing into high-end healthcare and what “manufacturing-grade precision” means in oncology.

  • Art & Taste Interlude: A Museum of Art (和美术馆) tour, and a Chateau Mihope wine tasting—designed to show how Guangdong’s industrial bourgeoisie blends craftsmanship, philanthropy, and lifestyle. A Shunde garden restaurant and a Michelin-advisory meal showcase local flavor meets curated Chinese aesthetics.

• Shenzhen: Frontier Deep-Tech & Robotics

  • RoboSense (2498.HK): On-site at the LiDAR leader powering autonomous driving and robotics. We walk the production line to benchmark China’s sensor ecosystem on cost curves and automotive-grade reliability, decoding its competitive moat against global peers.

  • Huayan Robotics: Formerly Han’s Robot, spun out of Han’s Laser and now HKEX-listed (1021.HK), is a Foshan-based full-stack collaborative-robot maker spanning 3–35 kg cobots, humanoid joint modules, and core motion components for industrial, medical, and logistics automation.

  • Huawei HarmonyOS Intelligent Driving: Hands-on trial drive at a flagship experience store. Assess Huawei’s “non-car-maker” strategy—how it licenses autonomous driving stacks to automakers and reshapes the EV supply chain without building a single factory.

  • XtalPi (2228.HK): Tour the quantum-physics + AI drug-design company’s R&D and automated lab. Decode how “silicon-to-molecule” platforms compress R&D cycles from years to months.

  • Salus Bio: Visit a 2020 Shenzhen-born deep-tech pioneer developing fully domestic gene sequencers (Salus Pro / Saluseq Nimbo), sub-micron spatial-omics platforms, and gene chips. By breaking Illumina’s long-standing monopoly on upstream tools, it enables broad applications across clinical diagnostics, precision oncology, and agricultural genomics.

  • Yiyuan Longevity Tech: Experience hyperbaric oxygen capsule manufacturing—where wellness, aging, and industrial design converge in a Shenzhen-style garage factory.

• Shenzhen Ecosystem Immersion

  • Huaqiangbei: A guided “component safari” through the world’s densest electronics bazaar. See how prototype-to-mass-production happens in 72 hours, and why this matters for hardware startups globally.

Huaqiangbei

♻️ China’s Next Energy & Industrial Cycle: Power, AI & How China Builds | Nov 2-6 | Shanghai → Suzhou → Hangzhou

China has already reshaped the global economics of solar, batteries and electric vehicles. In 2025 alone, it added roughly 430 GW of wind and solar, taking total installed capacity to around 1.84 TW. But the more interesting question is no longer how China scaled the last energy cycle, but what comes next, how China builds the next energy system, and what durable industry moats and investment opportunities could emerge?

Over five days across Shanghai, Suzhou and Hangzhou, we will go inside the frontier of China’s energy by meeting senior executives and C-level founders, seeing operating assets and technologies firsthand, and speaking directly with the investors and institutions deciding what gets built, funded and scaled next.

Taken together, the program will move across:

• an established renewable-energy champion defending and extending its moat

• frontier nuclear fusion technology

• EV infrastructure becoming part of the power system

• state capital allocating into new industries

• a local government ecosystem that has repeatedly scaled companies

• hidden thermal-management and critical AI infrastructure layers

• AI-driven electricity demand

• and the next generation of frontier startups.

Official Partner

2060 Advisory is a leading China-based climate and industrial investment advisory firm connecting global capital with Chinese technologies, companies and market opportunities. It works across climate technology, energy transition, AI infrastructure, advanced industry and cross-border capital, advising investors, corporates, public-sector platforms and growth companies.

This tour will be led by its founder, Yijing Wang, who also writes at .

Core Highlights

• Half a Day Inside One of China’s Leading Renewable-Energy Groups: GCL Group + GCL Energy Technology(002015.SZ) + GCL Perovskite

  • One of the most distinctive parts of the program: approximately four hours across three businesses inside the GCL ecosystem. Instead of looking at one technology in isolation, we will use GCL as a deep case study in how a Chinese renewable-energy champion evolves through multiple industry cycles. How do you build and defend a moat in an industry where technologies, margins and competitive positions change so quickly? How do you keep finding the next growth curve? How do you turn China scale into global advantage?

  • We move from group strategy and senior-management dialogue → energy services, storage and emerging energy networks → next-generation perovskite solar technology. In one half day, participants see how an established energy company defends the present while building the next.

• Lotus (Nasdaq: LOT): Luxury EV, Chinese Industrial Power—and Yes, You Get to Drive It

  • Lotus, part of the Geely ecosystem (0175.HK), is one of the most enjoyable ways to understand Chinese industrial globalization: a legendary global performance brand, Chinese ownership and capital, one of the world’s deepest EV technology and supply-chain ecosystems, and the challenge of building a differentiated global luxury electric-performance brand.

  • We will meet senior management to discuss how Lotus is positioning itself inside China’s fiercely competitive EV market and internationally. Then we leave the meeting room to get behind the wheel and experience the product yourself.

• Dongsheng Fusion: C-Level Access to China’s Fusion Race

  • Nuclear fusion is rapidly becoming one of the most closely watched frontier-energy investment themes in China, attracting leading technology investors and significant new capital.

  • We will meet C-level leadership at Dongsheng Fusion to understand what is actually happening behind the headlines: Why now? What technical milestones matter? Where are the real bottlenecks? And how could China’s manufacturing capabilities accelerate the path from frontier science to an entirely new energy industry? A rare look at one of the highest-upside, highest-uncertainty bets in the future of energy.

• NIO Power: When EV Infrastructure Becomes a Power Asset

  • We start at a NIO delivery center and experience one of China’s most distinctive EV innovations firsthand: battery swapping. Then the story gets more interesting. We will meet the General Manager responsible for NIO Power’s electricity business to understand how battery-swap infrastructure can increasingly participate in virtual power plants, electricity trading and grid services as China’s power market evolves. The question shifts from:“Is battery swapping a good EV experience?” to “What happens when a mobility network also becomes a distributed energy asset?”

• SIIC Capital / SIIC Venture Capital: How Chinese State Capital Actually Invests

  • China’s state capital is enormously consequential, and often poorly understood from outside the country.

  • Participants will have a General Manager-level dialogue with the investment side of SIIC Group to ask how a major Shanghai state-owned investment platform actually thinks about technology, commercial returns, strategic priorities, emerging industries and global expansion: What gets funded? What does not? And how does state capital see the next generation of energy and industrial technology?

• Suzhou Industrial Park: How China Builds an Industrial Ecosystem

  • If GCL shows how a company builds a moat, Suzhou Industrial Park shows how an entire ecosystem builds one.

  • Through senior-level dialogue and an on-the-ground visit, we will examine how government, infrastructure, capital, industrial platforms, multinational companies and start-ups combine to create one of China’s most internationally oriented innovation and manufacturing clusters. This is the machinery behind “how China builds.”

• Sanhua Intelligent Controls(002050.SZ)(02050.HK): The Hidden Infrastructure Behind Electrification and AI

  • Some of the strongest industrial moats sit inside components most consumers never see.

  • Sanhua provides a window into the thermal-management layer behind EVs, HVAC, energy systems and increasingly AI infrastructure—an increasingly strategic bottleneck as electrification and compute density rise.

  • A chance to understand how Chinese industrial companies build global leadership in the less-visible but mission-critical layers of the technology stack.

• Alibaba Cloud: When AI Becomes a Megawatt Problem

  • AI is normally discussed through models, chips and applications. But at scale, AI becomes physical: data centers, cooling, electricity, grid capacity and infrastructure CAPEX.

  • Alibaba Cloud gives us a way to follow the AI boom all the way down to the energy system and asks: What does AI look like when translated into megawatts?

• Meet the Startups: 2060 Advisory × I4C × Climate KIC

  • A curated session bringing together 5–7 selected frontier startups, program participants, investors and local ecosystem guests.

  • No generic demo day. The discussion will focus on the questions that actually matter for investment: What has been validated? Who is paying? What needs to happen before scale? Where are the real bottlenecks? Who finances the next stage? Can the company build a durable moat—and can it travel beyond China?

  • It gives participants a compressed view of the companies that could become the next generation behind the industrial leaders visited throughout the week.

Program institutions, speakers, test-drive arrangements and sequencing remain subject to final scheduling. Where necessary, equivalent-caliber institutions or experiences may be substituted.

Weekend Immersion Tracks

🚄 A Weekend in Datong: Where China Became China | Oct. 24-25 | Datong, Shanxi

Datong isn’t on most itineraries. That’s the point. In the 5th century, Datong was the capital of the Northern Wei — a dynasty founded by the Xianbei, a non-Han nomadic group from China’s northern frontier, who chose to assimilate into Chinese civilization rather than rule over it as outsiders. That choice, and the century of upheaval and reinvention it triggered, is carved directly into the cliffs at Yungang Grottoes.

But history is never just history here; it is an economic lifeline. Beneath the ancient cliffs runs a second, more urgent story: Datong itself. Once a coal powerhouse that hit an economic wall, the city gambled its survival on a controversial bet—tearing down the new to rebuild the old. Today, that gamble is being stress-tested by a surge in domestic “heritage tourism,” accelerated by a surprise catalyst: a hit video game, Black Myth: Wukong. We won’t just admire the temples; we will sit with the tension between preservation and progress, examining how a controversial mayor’s vision is playing out on the ground.

Datong is a miniature of the Chinese model: resilient, contradictory, and constantly rewriting its future by reclaiming its past. It is a perspective no boardroom or briefing deck can replicate.

This tour is led by Steven Xiao, who would be no stranger to the participants of our second tour. Steven was born and raised in Beijing, and somewhere along the way to a decade-plus career in finance across New York and Shanghai, picked up a second, far more consuming interest: the Buddhist art carved into cliffsides and caves centuries before anyone thought to build a spreadsheet. He holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Columbia University, which he has never once used to explain any of this. History and Buddhist art are his real vocation, pursued not from an armchair but from the caves themselves, tracing early Buddhist civilization across the furthest reaches of the Silk Road. This October, he trades the boardroom for a cliffside in Datong, leading the tour’s extension there.

Core Highlights

• Yungang Grottoes — The Evolution of Identity:

  • Spend a full day at this UNESCO site to witness 60,000 Buddhist statues. We decode the visible stylistic shift—from Central Asian and Gandharan forms to distinctly Chinese aesthetics—which serves as the clearest physical record of how Chinese identity was built through absorption, not purity.

• History Becomes Tactile

  • Studio Simulation: Within a working studio, observe masters tending fragile heritage. Guided by their hands, we attempt careful brushwork on replica surfaces, feeling our pulse sync to the quiet rhythm of history.

• Architectural Continuity — Liao-Jin Dynasty Temples:

  • Walk through history at Shanhua Si and Huayan Si, two of China’s best-preserved wooden structures from the Liao and Jin dynasties. These sites anchor Datong’s status as a millennium-long nexus of religious and architectural innovation.

• The Economic Pivot — Coal to Culture:

  • Investigate Datong’s fraught transition from a declining coal hub to a heritage tourism hotspot. We analyze the legacy of controversial urban reconstruction and the “video game dividend”—the surge in domestic tourism driven by pop culture—to understand the risks and rewards of betting a city’s future on its past.

• Unscripted Local Life & Gastronomy:

  • Eat as Datong eats. Start with hand-pulled Shanxi noodles and mutton shaomai at a bustling morning wet market, then wander the old city’s night market. With ample unstructured time, engage directly with residents to grasp the human dimension of this industrial and cultural metamorphosis.

🎁 The Hidden Engine of Global Consumption-How Small Commodities Move the World | Oct. 31-Nov 1 | Yiwu, Zhejiang

Yiwu is the pulse point of global micro-multinationals. Often overlooked by traditional investors, this city in Zhejiang province supplies over 80% of the world’s Christmas decorations, 70% of Christmas trees, and a dominant majority of the small commodities found in dollar stores from Ohio to Oslo. It is the physical manifestation of China’s supply chain dominance—where a $0.10 hairclip can move across continents with algorithmic precision. Yet, beneath the surface of “low-end” goods, Yiwu is undergoing a radical transformation into a high-efficiency, digital-first logistics and new-energy export hub.

This tour is led by David Fishman, a Principal at The Lantau Group (TLG), a leading Asia-focused energy consultancy based in Shanghai. Having lived and worked in China for 15 years, David specializes in China’s energy sector, industrial development, trade, and political economy. His work has included advising multinational corporations, financial institutions, and industrial clients on topics ranging from power markets and manufacturing competitiveness to supply chains and regional development.

Beyond his professional work, David has traveled extensively throughout China and has a longstanding interest in economic geography, local development, and social ethnography. His research and writing explore how Chinese communities, businesses, and institutions interact with broader trends in globalization, industrialization, and international trade. Combining policy expertise with extensive firsthand experience, he offers a grounded perspective on how China’s economy functions beyond the major coastal cities and financial centers.

Core Highlights

• The Commodity Matrix: Yiwu International Trade City

  • The World’s Largest SME Showroom: Navigate the sprawling 5.5 million sqm marketplace, and experience the immense scale of the world’s top wholesale market in person.

  • New Energy Products Hall: Conduct impromptu interviews with exporters shipping solar panels, lithium batteries, and EV components to emerging markets, gauging real-time export sentiment and margin structures.

  • Mock Sourcing: A mock sourcing exercise across the vast halls of the Yiwu International Trade City. You’ll walk the floor, pick products, ask questions about pricing and lead times, and experience the thrill—and the pressure—of making sourcing decisions on the spot.

• Next-Gen Commerce: Yiwu Global Digital Trade Center (GDEC)

  • The Physical-Digital Nexus: Exclusive access to Yiwu’s flagship “city of the future,” launched last year. We tour the integrated complex where physical showrooms meet the Digital Trade Hub. Understand how the integration of physical showrooms, the Digital Trade Hub, and AI-powered matchmaking compresses transaction cycles for millions of SMEs.

• Logistics Under the Lens: The Bonded Zone & China-Europe Railway

  • Bonded Zone Deep Dive: Enter the world’s busiest cross-border e-commerce trade zone. Analyze Customs Innovation—specifically the “bonded display and trade” model—and dissect the cold-chain and high-value logistics chains that fuel Yiwu’s import-export flywheel.

  • Continental Railhead: Stand atop the China-Europe Railway Terminal to witness the “iron camel caravans.” Observe container sorting at scale and decode the multimodal (rail-sea-air) transport strategies.

• Production Reality Check

  • The Factory Floor: Step inside a Yiwu factory floor to trace the product journey from raw materials to finished goods, gaining firsthand insight into China’s export engine.

🍷Curious China: A People-First Weekend in China’s Southern Capital | Nov 13-14 | Nanjing, Jiangsu

Nanjing served as the capital of six dynasties, the Republic of China, and remains a regional center today. Its city walls, lakes, Republican-era neighborhoods and everyday street life reveal how different layers of Chinese history continue to shape contemporary life.

Rather than moving through a checklist of landmarks, this weekend is designed around people, conversation and a slower rhythm. Shared meals, local encounters and thoughtfully paced walks create space to understand the city through those who live there.

The experience is led by Michelle Wei, a Nanjing native who spent 17 years living and working across the United States, Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and Germany. Cornell-trained in hospitality, with a professional background spanning private equity, real estate investment and cross-border capital raising, Michelle brings both local roots and an international perspective. She will introduce participants to a curated circle of local thinkers, practitioners and friends, turning the city itself into a setting for exchange.

Core Highlights

• Welcome Dinner

  • The weekend begins with an intimate dinner bringing together participants and selected local guests. Over a warm, unhurried meal, conversations introduce Nanjing through personal stories, lived experience and different perspectives on the city.

• A Layered Immersion in Nanjing

  • Walk along the City Wall and Xuanwu Lake, where monumental history meets the routines of contemporary urban life.

  • Explore the Qinhuai River and its surrounding neighborhoods in the evening, encountering the waterways, architecture, food and social traditions that have shaped the city for centuries.

  • Stroll the sycamore-shaded boulevards of Yihe Road, where Republican-era villas whisper the quiet elegance of old Nanjing.

  • Discover Nanjing’s gold-leaf tradition through a hands-on cultural session. Participants will learn how this highly refined craft has been preserved and adapted, and create a personal keepsake connected to the city’s living heritage.

• Reflection and Connection

  • Unstructured time, shared meals and moments of reflection are deliberately built into the itinerary. These pauses allow conversations to develop naturally—about history, identity, cultural difference and the changing rhythms of life in China.

  • This is not simply a weekend of sightseeing. It is an invitation to experience Nanjing as a living city, through the relationships, memories and everyday practices that give it meaning.

Pricing and Important Details

To maintain the quality of dialogue and ensure meaningful interactions among investors and industry leaders, participation is by application only (you may fill in the application form here), with each tour limited to 20 seats.

Pricing & Discounts

1Each tour offers three pricing tiers:

• Standard Rate

• Early Bird Discount: 10% off-Valid through 11:59 PM Beijing Time on September 13, 2026

• Returnee Discount: 20% off-Available for previous Baiguan tour participants

Discount Policies:

• Early Bird and Returnee discounts are non-combinable. Both are calculated on the Standard Rate; in cases of dual eligibility, the lower of the two rates applies automatically.

• Multi-Tour Savings: Register for two or more tours to save even more. This deduction applies to your post-Early Bird or post-Returnee total:

  • Total < $10,000 USD → Deduct $500 USD

  • Total $10,000–$20,000 USD → Deduct $1,000 USD

  • Total $20,000–$30,000 USD → Deduct $2,000 USD

  • Total $30,000–$40,000 USD → Deduct $3,000 USD

  • Total >$40,000 USD → Deduct $4,000 USD

Illustrative Example:

Scenario: You are a Returnee registering for two tours during the Early Bird window.

1. Base Discount: Two tours at standard rate ($2,500 + $ 15000 = $17,500). We apply your 20% Returnee discount: $17,500* ( 1 - 20% ) = $14,000

2. Multi-Tour Credit: Your adjusted total qualifies for a $1,000 deduction.

Final Fee: $14,000 - $1000 = $13,000

What’s Included:

• Five-star Hotels (eg., Sheraton, Westin, InterContinental) or character-filled equivalent stays on weekend immersion to enhance the local experience (if you select the accommodation-inclusive package)

• Travel insurance

• All scheduled company visits and seminars

• All breakfast, lunch and some dinners

• All ground transportation during the tour

What’s Not Included:

• International/domestic flights to/from the destination city

• Chinese visa application fees

• Personal expenses

• Certain dinners are not included in the standard program and will be clearly marked in the final detailed itinerary.

Applications, Refunds & Cancellations

• Cancel ≥30 days prior to the tour start date: Full Refund

• Cancel between 15~30 days (inclusive of Day 15) before the tour start date: 50% Refund

• Cancel <15 days before the start date (any reason, including visa issues): No Refund

• All time references shall be based on China Standard Time (Beijing Time, GMT+8)

• Requests must be sent in writing to Baiguan_ChinaTour@bigonelab.com

• Refunds will be processed minus a non-refundable administrative/service fee, the exact amount of which is subject to the applicable payment platform’s charges.

To apply, please click or scan to fill out this form: Baiguan China Tour Application Form - Autumn 2026

What to expect next:

• Upon reviewing your application, we will notify you of the outcome within 3 business days. If accepted, we will contact you to arrange payment and discuss next steps.

• We understand that emails can sometimes end up in your spam folder. If you don’t hear from us within 3 business days, please check your spam folder.

• Once your payment is processed, your seat will be officially secured. We will follow up with an email to gather additional details to enhance your experience, such as arrival information, dietary restrictions, or any special accommodation needs.

• About one week before the program begins, we will reach out with the exact daily schedules, meeting spots, and an introductory brochure about the companies we will be visiting. We will also create a designated WeChat group for participants and invite you to join.

Testimonials from Previous Tours

“About halfway through the tour, we went out to dinner, and it was a notable turning point where everyone loosened up. One great aspect of this tour is that the interest and domain is specific enough to draw out a diverse set of backgrounds, all of whom you’re interested in getting to know, and beyond getting the opportunity to pick everyone’s brains, you can become friends as well.” — Tech industry expert

“Came with intention to learn more about China, ended up with not only succeeding the original intention but also meeting new friends with diverse backgrounds.” — Family office 2nd generation leader

“Robert and Amber were awesome hosts. The trip is extremely insightful regardless if it’s your first time in China, a China-curious repeat visitor or even an an investor living in Shanghai.”— Investor, VC

I just want to thank Robert, Amber and both the Baiguan + FO Insights team for organizing this China Tour. It has been such a wonderful experience for me. One memorable experience was visiting Yowant’s X27 mall. Just mind-blown by the sheer scale of livestreaming in China. This is unlike any other “investor trip” and I really got to meet many interesting companies, analysts and other financial experts on the ground. Thank you so much! :)— Investor & entrepreneur

Deep Robotics demonstration of their robots, visitng Alibaba cloud center and Xi hu university

It was an incredible opportunity to gain first hand exposure to the Chinese consumer market and witness how homegrown tech companies are playing a crucial role in AI/robotics space. The Baiguan and FOI team deep connections and expertise in the market definitely helped contextualized some of the market nuances. — Fintech Senior management, personal investor

Baiguan’s tour has provided independent, objective and insightful perspectives for global investors. — CIO private wealth

The Baiguan China Discovery Tour provided a unique opportunity to meet with a number of businesses from different industries. The presentations and discussions gave a good idea about the business models and how they deal with the current situation in the Chinese market. It was an action packed program that gave us many new insights.

But the best was how the group spirit evolved, fueled by the hosts’ organizing skills and hospitality. We came as individual professionals interested in getting to know China on the ground. We left as a group of friends sharing an exceptional experience. — Founder, AI-based cloud solution

Amber and Robert were incredible hosts and curated a great tour of uniquely chosen companies and a gathering of diverse attendees with whom there was truly great chemistry. I would love to do this conference again next year. — Managing Partner, PE

For more details about our previous programs and field trip notes, visit here

19 investors, family offices, and entrepreneurs from the US, Germany, South Korea, Malaysia, and Australia (including one returnee from our first tour) joined us for a 2.5-day, event-packed tour that included conversations with founders and C-suite of:

• Minimax (0100.HK), one of China’s leading AI players

• Black Lake Technologies, China’s leading manufacturing AI company (a day before they officially announced their Unicorn-status Series-D fundraise)

• Fourier Robotics, a leading robotic maker with roots in healthcare exoskeleton

• A conversation about the future of autonomous driving with an angel investor of Pony.ai, one of China’s leading L4 robotaxi companies, followed by a test ride

• A frank presentation by Baiguan’s tech lead on the pros and cons of various domestic and foreign AI models from a user’s perspective.

• A visit to the Shanghai Foundational Model Center (SMC), a leading incubator of Chinese AI startups, with presentations by Cyber Partner (robotics implementation specialist), IO-AI Tech (robotics data collection), Nieta (AI-native virtual characters), and Investmate (AI-native personal finance tool)

There are many takeaways from our participants. Here are the top 5 common ones I find.

#1 A new generation of entrepreneurs and local talents has finally arrived

Most of the participants are very impressed by the startup founders we have met. One participant, who used to work as a senior executive at a Mag7 firm, told me this cohort of Chinese founders was very different from what he was used to.

One unique feature this time was that every founder we met this time spoke fluent English, so we didn’t even bother with translation software or hiring a translator. Perhaps this was because we limited this tour to Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, but I promise this was not by design.

Being English-speaking does not mean China is relying more on overseas talents, though. One participant was concerned that recent US restrictions on foreign college students would stifle innovation in China, only to find that, in fact, most of the talent (and founders) in China’s leading AI companies (Minimax, Moonshot, DeepSeek, and Zhipu, etc.) are locally educated and trained.

Therefore, speaking English or not is not the real differentiator of this generation of talents. A senior executive from Minimax commented that the unique feature of this new generation of founders is their self-confidence, which stems from their having read and studied the same things at the same pace as their global peers.

#2 Autonomous driving: technology is ready, but policymakers are balancing the medium and long-term

We invited an early investor of Pony.ai and received a comprehensive review of the past and future of autonomous driving in China. The core conclusion was the same as ours 2 weeks ago: the technology is ready, yet Beijing is juggling between the short-term policy pressure arising from unemployment and the long-term necessity coming from a rapidly aging population.

As a result, Beijing is adopting a “do but don’t shout” approach, encouraging localities to keep rolling out pilot zones, preserving an overall supportive environment for the industry while also deliberately putting a lid on mass media coverage and debates.

Some US guests found this conclusion counterintuitive. One private investor who came from Miami, where Waymo already had a big presence, expected China to be pursuing robotaxis aggressively and was thus surprised by the apparent conservative attitude.

This conclusion was also corroborated by our own test ride experience.

In a slightly laughable episode, our group started hailing robotaxis at a location that was too remote and too sparsely populated. Consequently, on average, we waited around 10 minutes for a robotaxi, which took another 15-20 minutes to arrive and pick us up.

This was a major embarrassment for the us the organizers, but our wonderful participants, laughing and lively chatting with each other while standing by the roadside, found it an informative footnote to the authentic state of robotaxis in China.

#3 Robotics: solving the data bottleneck

By now, it’s common knowledge that despite the hype about humanoids in China, we haven’t really solved the “big brain” problem yet. The robots can perform specific, pre-designed tasks, but their capabilities are not sufficiently generalized.

In short, the body has outpaced the brain.

A key bottleneck to achieving the “big brain” problem is the lack of training data, and a “bottleneck”, in the context of today, represents opportunities.

That’s why we were amazed by a presentation by IO-AI Tech, a startup that’s laser-focused on collecting human-centric data for its clients.

Moreover, at the data collection center in one of the robotics firms, where we were not allowed to take photos, we saw an army of engineers physically train robots to do housework (such as picking up fruits and closing wardrobes) by repeating the action over and over again using remote grippers. We debated among ourselves whether this type of training is efficient and whether simulated training is obviously a better way to collect data.

On the other hand, we also wondered whether this inefficiency can actually be “good,” and whether human trainers for robots are the present-day assembly line workers, providing a crucial employment cushion.

#4 Manufacturing is China’s key strength

If data is the key to achieving the big robotics brain, then China, with its strong manufacturing base, clearly has an advantage in mass-producing robots to collect more data.

A key highlight of this trip was our visit to Black Lake Technologies, which specializes in cloud-based manufacturing execution systems and collaborative platforms for the manufacturing sector. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Shanghai, the company is often cited as a pioneer in bringing “consumer-grade” internet technology to the traditional factory floor.

The company was co-founded by Yuxiang Zhou, a former Wall Street banker. His leadership story is well-known in the Chinese tech scene. After an initial startup failure, he famously spent time working on factory floors to understand the real-world pain points of manufacturing workers before launching Black Lake.

Last year, Yuxiang became one of the very few CEOs of a medium-sized company to attend Premier Li Qiang’s symposiums. To be sure, Black Lake is not Xiaomi or BYD, and there are tens of thousands of startups of a similar size in China, so its presence at such a high-profile symposium is living proof of the importance of manufacturing to China’s decision-makers.

#5 A new private-public partnership is emerging

This brings us to the role of the state, a subject no tour to China can bypass.

The relationship between the private and government sectors is an implicit theme in this tour.

On one hand, as seen in the autonomous driving sector, shrewd and conservative regulatory policies have acted as a bottleneck for mass commercialization.

On the other hand, the state-run SMC incubator in Shanghai demonstrated an aggressive pro-growth stance, providing free rent, subsidized AI compute tokens, and streamlined regulatory 'concierge' services.

As the economic engine pivots from a government-centric real estate model toward private-sector-led innovation, we are witnessing a 'new normal' for governance: the most successful local authorities will be those that act as support platform providers rather than central planners that meddle.

Future tours

After two successful tours, we at Baiguan are now confident in our ability to deliver in-depth, highly memorable business-themed study tours for a global audience.

In the future, we plan to partner with more vertical experts and host more specialized theme tours across sectors such as biotech, energy, manufacturing, and high-end consumption.

Our ultimate vision for this is that whenever you come to China for something else (such as a business conference), you would consider checking Baiguan’s event calendar to see whether you can fit an enriching tour into your itinerary.

Stay tuned!

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The global investment community is witnessing a massive resurgence of interest in China’s “Hard Tech” sectors—specifically Generative AI, Humanoid Robotics and Driverless L4 Robotaxi. However, headlines and research reports only tell the surface-level story. To truly grasp the scale, velocity, and real-world integration of these technologies, you must experience them on the ground.

This tour offers a rare look into the “vibe” of China’s innovation engine, through:

• Deep-dive networking: We skip the standard corporate walkthroughs. Engage in candid, closed-door conversations with C-level executives, founders, and industry pioneers.

• Insider investment perspectives: We will travel alongside seasoned investors who have backed China’s leading AI and robotics ventures. Gain raw, unfiltered insights into market trends and valuation realities.

• Experience real-world applications: We move beyond the pitch deck. Ride in Robotaxis, witness industrial robots in action, and explore AI-native consumer communities.

You will gain a clear, actionable understanding of:

• How Chinese AI startups bypass theoretical bottlenecks to rapidly deploy cutting-edge models into high-value commercial use cases.

• A firsthand look at the new paradigm where a new generation of entrepreneurs and government sectors co-evolve to de-risk frontier innovation.

• Why China’s massive manufacturing base is no longer just a “factory floor,” but a critical R&D partner that accelerates the prototyping and scaling of high-tech hardware.

• A realistic assessment of China’s positioning in the global tech landscape, identifying where the ecosystem remains most resilient and where the next growth “inflection points” lie.

English service: The entire program is tailored for international professionals. All members of the Baiguan team and all guest speakers from the companies we’ll visit can converse in English to ensure seamless communication.

Itinerary Overview

This is a 2.5-day immersive program. The detailed daily schedule will be shared with registered participants approximately one week before the tour.

Day 1

Location: Xuhui Riverside (West Bund), Shanghai

About Xuhui Riverside: Known as the core cluster of China’s AI industry, Xuhui Riverside houses nearly 90% of Shanghai’s AI startups. It operates under a unique “Double A” strategy (AI + Art), blending high-tech innovation with a modern, sophisticated lifestyle. The area integrates diverse elements such as art, finance, technology innovation, and sports. Participants will also learn how Shanghai attracts and nurtures tech talent through government policy support for the AI and hard-tech industries.

Welcome Meeting & Ice-breaking

Seminar by Baiguan Team:

• Current Landscape of China’s AI and Technology — Strategic policy, the AI ecosystem, and an introduction to the program, including the companies we will be visiting.

• Investment Themes, Ideas, and Opportunities — A discussion on sectors driving structural growth in China.

Welcome Dinner

Day 2 & Day 3

Inside China’s AI Incubator: Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center (魔速空间), Xuhui Riverside

About Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center: A premier, government-backed incubator where 80% of resident startups are in Pre-A stages. Covering LLM applications and Industrial AI, it is considered a “living laboratory” for early-stage AI projects in China. Access is typically restricted to industrial and strategic capital; this tour provides an exclusive gateway.

We will conduct in-depth visits to 2-3 representative startup companies, engaging in direct discussions with the founders on key issues such as technological barriers, China’s startup ecosystem, and commercialization paths.

• Incubator Walkthrough: Meet startups and experience live demos of the latest robotics, AI, and other cutting-edge technological products and developments.

• Cyber Partner Technology (魂伴科技): Implementation layer is getting more and more important, and will be ultimately responsible for translating robotics hardware into actual commercial usage. Cyber Partner Technology is a leading robotics integrator. Its “large robots + AI algorithms” integration solutions have been implemented in over 20 industries, including automotive and 3C manufacturing. We will visit the production line-level robotics dispatch site and engage in a conversation with the founder about pathways for “AI + robotics.”

• Nieta Art (捏Ta): Founded by a Meta veteran, Nieta is China’s largest AI-native content community. Meet the CEO to discuss the shift in Gen-Z digital culture and company’s global expansion strategy.

Visits to China’s leading AI and robotics company

• One of China’s leading, globally recognised LLM companies. Meet with the team to discuss the latest developments in foundation models and commercial applications.(Exact identity of the company will be shared upon request.)

• JAKA Robotics (捷卡机器人): A leading manufacturer of collaborative robotics (cobot). Learn about China’s rapidly growing industrial robotics sector and the automation revolution in manufacturing.

• Pony.ai (NASDAQ: PONY): Experience a Robotaxi ride firsthand.

  Seminar: Steven Xiao, who invested in Pony.ai’s Series B round in 2018, will share exclusive perspectives on Pony.ai and China’s broader robotaxi development, the current status of the autonomous driving technology, the path toward robotaxi commercialization, investment impacts, as well as the social implications.

Optional experiential activities

This is also your opportunity to experience the vibrant (AI + Art) “Double A” ecosystem in the Xuhui Riverside area, and get a sense of the trendy lifestyle, consumer AIs, and other consumer trends in China. We invite you to optionally join us and explore the lively nightlife, restaurants, fashion, and other experiences this region has to offer. April is also an ideal time to enjoy a walk with a breezy wind and beautiful riverside landscape in Shanghai.

Who will you meet: C-level executives, founders, experts, and industry leaders from startups. We will also meet the Chief Ecosystem Officer of Shanghai Foundation Model Innovation Center, who will provide us with an extensive network and unmatched, direct access to the founders and executives of these high-growth startups.

*All of our visits on day 1 will be within walking distance in the Xuhui Riverside area. Please wear comfortable shoes. We recommend booking a hotel close to Xuhui Riverside.

*Shuttle rides will be arranged for Day 2 and Day 3.

Pricing & Signup

To maintain the quality and focus of this program—and to ensure meaningful interactions among investors and industry leaders—we are accepting participants by application only. Limited to 20 seats.

• Standard Tour Price: $3,000 USD per person for the 2.5-day event

• Early Bird Discount: $2,860 USD per person for registrations completed by March 20

• Baiguan Tour Returnee Discount: $2,100 USD per person for participants who have previously joined a Baiguan tour

What’s Included:

• All scheduled company visits and seminars

• All lunch and dinners

• All ground transportation during the tour

What’s Not Included:

• International/domestic flights to/from Shanghai

• Chinese visa application fees

• Travel insurance

• Personal expenses

• Breakfasts

• Hotels

To apply, please click or scan to fill out this Google form: RSVP: 2026 Shanghai AI & Robotics Innovation Tour

What to expect:

• After receiving your response, our team will get in touch within 1 business day to schedule your payment process and discuss the next steps.

  We understand that emails can sometimes end up in your spam folder. If you don’t hear from us within 1 business day, please check your spam folder.

• Once your payment is processed, your seat will be officially secured. We will follow up with an email to gather additional details to enhance your experience, such as arrival information, dietary restrictions, or any special accommodation needs.

• About one week before the program begins, we will reach out with the exact daily schedules, meeting spots, and an introductory brochure about the companies we will be visiting. We will also create a designated WeChat group for participants and invite you to join.

Logistics & Accommodation

Accommodation: Participants should book their own accommodation.

Recommended Stays: We strongly recommend booking at either the Urcove by HYATT Shanghai Xuhui West Riverside Hotel or the MGM Shanghai West Bund Hotel. These hotels are within comfortable walking distance of our primary visit locations and are also located in a vibrant area that blends the AI + art lifestyle and experiences.

Transportation:

• Day 1: All activities will be within walking distance.

• Day 2 & 3: We will arrange shuttle rides. The shuttle will stop at the recommended MGM Shanghai West Bund to pick up participants on Day 2 & 3. If you choose to stay at a different hotel, please plan on meeting the group in the lobby of the recommended hotel before the program begins.

Testimonials from Previous Tours

“About halfway through the tour, we went out to dinner, and it was a notable turning point where everyone loosened up. One great aspect of this tour is that the interest and domain is specific enough to draw out a diverse set of backgrounds, all of whom you’re interested in getting to know, and beyond getting the opportunity to pick everyone’s brains, you can become friends as well.” — Tech industry expert

“Came with intention to learn more about China, ended up with not only succeeding the original intention but also meeting new friends with diverse backgrounds. “ — Family office 2nd generation leader

I just want to thank Robert, Amber and both the Baiguan + FO Insights team for organizing this China Tour. It has been such a wonderful experience for me. One memorable experience was visiting Yowant’s X27 mall. Just mind-blown by the sheer scale of livestreaming in China. This is unlike any other “investor trip” and I really got to meet many interesting companies, analysts and other financial experts on the ground. Thank you so much! :)— Investor & entrepreneur

Deep Robotics demonstration of their robots, visitng Ali baba cloud center and Xi hu university

It was an incredible opportunity to gain first hand exposure to the Chinese consumer market and witness how homegrown tech companies are playing a crucial role in AI/robotics space. The Baiguan and FOI team deep connections and expertise in the market definitely helped contextualized some of the market nuances.

— Fintech Senior management, personal investor

Baiguan’s tour has provided independent, objective and insightful perspectives for global investors. — CIO private wealth

The Baiguan China Discovery Tour provided a unique opportunity to meet with a number of businesses from different industries. The presentations and discussions gave a good idea about the business models and how they deal with the current situation in the Chinese market. It was an action packed program that gave us many new insights.

But the best was how the group spirit evolved, fueled by the hosts’ organizing skills and hospitality. We came as individual professionals interested in getting to know China on the ground. We left as a group of friends sharing an exceptional experience. — Founder, AI-based cloud solution

For more details about our previous programs and field trip notes, visit:

2025 Program

2025 Field Trip Highlights

Important Policies

Refunds & Cancellations:

• Cancel ≥7 days before the tour start date → Full Refund

• Cancel <7 days before the start date (any reason, including visa issues) → No Refund

• Requests must be sent in writing to baiguan@bigonelab.com

Visa Application: We strongly urge all non-Chinese passport holders to begin their visa application process immediately upon registration. Participants are responsible for securing valid passports and visas. Failure to obtain a visa is not an exception to the refund policy. To be eligible for a full refund, you must cancel before April 14, 2026. Please plan your visa application accordingly.

Travel Insurance: Strongly recommended to protect against unexpected events (medical emergencies, cancellations, lost luggage, etc.).

Perks

All participants will receive a free 1-year Baiguan subscription. Already a paid subscriber? We’ll extend your subscription by 12 months.

About Baiguan and BigOne Lab

Baiguan Newsletter is owned by BigOne Lab, a data-driven market research and information services company. Founded in 2016, BigOne Lab leverages alternative data to provide clients with insightful, objective, and actionable solutions.

Our data solutions currently cover more than 10 industries and 200,000+ businesses, spanning hundreds of business metrics. Our clients include 100+ investment funds, sovereign wealth funds, PE/VC investors, leading consulting companies, consumer companies and internet companies, among others.

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Why is this tour different?

The dominant narrative in global media is that China is facing deflation and deep structural challenges—and long gone are the days when every sector posted double-digit growth. In this new phase of the Chinese economy, identifying structural investment opportunities requires a sharper lens and a deeper presence on the ground.

While the macro picture feels uncertain, specific sectors are thriving—driven by generational shifts in behavior, demand for domestic cultural identity, and a new wave of tech innovation. But these are not always the trends you’ll find in boardrooms or equity research reports.

We believe that the best way to deepen your strategic understanding of China is to come and see it for yourself. Meet the founders and operators of tomorrow’s Pop Mart and Deepseek. Hear directly from the companies shaping China’s next growth cycle.

This tour takes you beyond glossy surfaces. You’ll meet both listed and pre-IPO companies, dine with local founders and investors, and visit the spaces—both digital and physical—where real consumer behavior takes shape.

If your investment thesis depends on understanding where China is going, not where it was, this trip is for you.

Program Updates

We’ve also been working to make this itinerary even more impactful, and we're thrilled to announce a few key updates:

• 1 Upgrade: On the last day in Hangzhou, we will now visit Deep Robotics (云深处) instead of ROKID AI. Deep Robotics is one of Hangzhou’s famous “Six Little Dragons” tech startups — a grouping that also includes DeepSeek, Unitree, and Game Science. The company develops quadruped and humanoid robots that have already been commercially deployed in sectors such as power & energy, emergency response, security patrol, and education & research. We think Deep Robotics offers a strong lens for understanding China’s AI, robotics, and hardware supply chain. We have been eager to confirm a visit with one of Hangzhou’s “Six Little Dragons,” as it offers a rare view into Hangzhou’s innovation ecosystem, private business, and start-up culture — arguably the most important takeaway from the city and what sets it apart from other affluent Chinese cities. We’re thrilled to have this visit confirmed.

• 1 Addition: We are also adding Westlake University (西湖大学) to our Hangzhou agenda. Westlake is a pioneering private research university that aims to build a world-class research hub. During our visit, we will meet with research teams, tour labs, and see cutting-edge scientific work in action. Westlake University is significant for two key reasons: it offers a window into China’s future innovation ecosystem, showcasing how science and technology are advancing beyond tech giants and commercial sectors, and it represents a bold experiment in China’s higher education system as a private, research-focused university that emphasizes science, medicine, and engineering while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. This visit provides a rare opportunity to understand both Hangzhou’s role as a hub for innovation and China’s broader efforts to reform education and cultivate its next generation of innovation talent.

• 1 Change: Instead of visiting NetEase Games, we will now visit FunPlus in Shanghai — a leading global game studio with teams across multiple Chinese cities and a strong overseas presence. FunPlus is behind blockbuster titles such as King of Avalon and is a great case study of how Chinese companies are building locally but competing successfully worldwide.

✈️ Tour Itinerary

Throughout the program, you will have the opportunity to experience firsthand and gain a deep understanding of four important themes that highlight key social changes and future opportunities in China:

• Understanding the Daily Life of China’s Young Consumers: How a typical urban professional in their 20s–30s works, eats, and shops in 2025 China.

• Digital Culture and Entertainment in Transition: How content, entertainment, and commerce intersect in a rapidly evolving consumer landscape.

• Culture, Identity & Chinese Brands’ Global Ambition: Explore how Chinese brands fuse heritage and product innovation to succeed at home and expand globally.

• Tech and Innovation: China’s AI and robotics landscape, and how her education and research system is cultivating innovative talent for the decades ahead.

Day 0 Oct 26: Shanghai - Welcome Dinner

We will host a complimentary welcome dinner on the evening of the 26th, giving everyone a chance to get to know each other. We’d love to see you there if your travel plans allow!

Day 1 Oct 27: Shanghai

Atour Hotels (NASDAQ: ATAT): Atour is one of the most loved hotel chains among Chinese in their 20s to 40s. Beyond being a reliable choice for both business and leisure travel, Atour has successfully expanded into retail, with its household product line now contributing ~39% of group sales. It’s one of the first hotel brands in China to transform into a "lifestyle brand." A visit to Atour offers insights into how young Chinese consumers think about travel, home, and lifestyle.

Lunch @ Super Bowl: Super Bowl is a popular healthy fast-casual chain among China’s young office workers. Its grain bowls, lean proteins, and app-based ordering reflect a rising awareness of health and convenience, localized for Chinese tastes. Lunch here highlights how “clean eating” concepts are evolving into scalable restaurant models. We’ve invited an early investor in Super Bowl—who has also backed several successful consumer startups—for a conversation on the evolving dynamics of China’s consumption landscape.

M&G Stationery (SHA: 603899), founded in 1997, is etched into the childhood memories of nearly every Chinese student. Once known simply as a trusted stationery maker, it is now reinventing itself into a creative, globally-oriented brand. From IP collaborations to ESG initiatives—such as launching China’s first carbon-neutral stationery—M&G exemplifies how China’s “time-honored” companies are innovating and building brand power to stay competitive.

FunPlus, founded in 2010, has left its mark on millions of players with its globally popular strategy games. Once part of a new wave of ambitious Chinese tech startups, it is now a proven leader on the international stage. With blockbuster titles like King of Avalon topping charts in overseas markets, FunPlus is an excellent case study of how Chinese companies can build locally while competing successfully worldwide.

Transport: Private coach transfer to Hangzhou (~2.5 hrs)

Lunch and dinner will be provided today.

Day 2 Oct 28 Hangzhou

Foshan Yowant Technology (002291.SZ): Livestreaming is one of China’s most influential retail formats, blending product discovery, trust-based marketing, and instant conversion. Yowant remains the industry leader, with top celebrity hosts, collaborations with 25,000+ brands, and the highest number of livestreams surpassing RMB 100 million in single-session sales. We will step inside a livestreaming room to see how it works in practice, and explore how new technologies—AI-powered content and digital marketing—are reshaping creator-led commerce.

Westlake University (西湖大学): Westlake is a pioneering private research university that aims to build a world-class research hub. During our visit, we will meet with research teams, tour labs, and see cutting-edge scientific work in action. Westlake University is significant for two key reasons: it offers a window into China’s future innovation ecosystem, showcasing how science and technology are advancing beyond tech giants and commercial sectors, and it represents a bold experiment in China’s higher education system as a private, research-focused university that emphasizes science, medicine, and engineering while fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. This visit provides a rare opportunity to understand both Hangzhou’s role as a hub for innovation and China’s broader efforts to reform education and cultivate its next generation of innovation talent.

JNBY Group (3306.HK): JNBY is a prime example of how a Chinese designer brand tells the story of China’s fashion. It blends modern taste with subtle Chinese design elements, cultivating loyal followers both at home and abroad. The brand exemplifies the rise of Guochao (“China Chic”) brands that balance product innovation with cultural identity.

Lunch will be provided today. Once you arrive, we’ll give you some dinner suggestions featuring local flavors.

Day 3 Oct 29 Hangzhou

Saint Bella (2508.HK): If you follow China’s news, you’ve likely seen headlines about declining birth rates. A key question is how consumer brands continue to adapt and stay competitive in this environment. We will visit Saint Bella, the largest postpartum and family care group in China and Asia, to see how it builds a strong portfolio of both services and retail products, domestically and overseas. More importantly, this visit offers a chance to explore how Chinese mother & baby brands are responding to changing demographics and what this signals for the industry’s future.

Lunch@Home Original Chicken 老乡鸡 (HK Pre-IPO): Home Original Chicken is one of China’s most recognizable fast-casual chains, famous for its homestyle chicken dishes and grassroots brand image. It thrives on a uniquely Chinese formula: down-to-earth marketing, approachable prices, and comfort food rooted in local traditions. Now preparing for its IPO, Home Original Chicken raises an intriguing question—could it become China’s own version of KFC or McDonald’s? Experiencing it firsthand in China offers an authenticity and scale that no overseas case study could replicate.

Proya Cosmetics (603605.SH): Proya is a leading example of a domestic beauty and skincare brand successfully shedding the “cheap, low-quality” stereotype. Through strong R&D, effective digital marketing, and culturally resonant products, Proya competes head-to-head with global giants while driving the localization and upgrade of China’s cosmetics industry.

Private Welcome Dinner with Family Offices & Founders An English-friendly gathering with founders, second-generation leaders of family businesses, and local investors. This is a unique opportunity to network and exchange perspectives on brand-building, challenges, and investment trends in China.

Lunch and dinner will be provided today.

Day 4 Oct 30 Hangzhou

Alibaba AI (NYSE:BABA): Visit Alibaba’s AI Labs to learn about their cutting-edge AI developments, including China’s leading large language model, Qwen, which uniquely integrates AI capabilities directly with e-commerce operations. Gain insights into how Alibaba’s foundational research supports commerce, logistics, and cloud services, and understand where China is innovating or diverging in the AI landscape.

Deep Robotics (云深处): Deep Robotics is one of Hangzhou’s famous “Six Little Dragons” tech startups — a grouping that also includes DeepSeek, Unitree, and Game Science. The company develops quadruped and humanoid robots that have already been commercially deployed in sectors such as power & energy, emergency response, security patrol, and education & research. Deep Robotics offers a strong lens for understanding China’s AI, robotics, and hardware supply chain, and a rare view into Hangzhou’s innovation ecosystem, private business, and start-up culture — arguably the most important takeaway from the city and what sets it apart from other affluent Chinese cities.

Lunch will be provided today. Last day will conclude before dinner time, around 4pm to 5pm.

Cultural & Experiential Stop

In addition to company visits, we will also include curated cultural and experiential stops in Hangzhou—designed to give participants a first-hand feel of China’s unique cultural environment. The exact activity will be confirmed closer to departure.

Who exactly will we meet?

What sets the Baiguan China Tour apart is the quality of our access. Our itinerary is curated to ensure you go beyond the standard corporate pitch.

Throughout the tour, you will engage directly with: founders & C-level executives, key division heads who are directly responsible for business units and product strategy, and second-generation family office leaders.

We bypass the PR teams to connect you with the individuals driving the business, ensuring you receive unfiltered insights into their strategies, challenges, and vision.

*A quick logistical note: While we have confirmed these visits, the final company list, company representatives and hour-by-hour schedule are subject to minor changes depending on the final availability of our hosts. A detailed handout will be provided prior to departure.

💳 Registration & Fees

This tour is strictly limited to 20 seats to ensure an interactive and high-value experience. Spots are confirmed only after successful payment and are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

👉 To begin your registration, please fill out this google form.

(The RSVP form will close once all seats are filled.)

Our team will send you a secure payment link via Stripe within 1 day, which accepts all major credit cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or Link.

• Standard Price: $4,280 USD

*Please note that the international airfare and accommodation will be at your own expense.

We do realize that sometimes our email can get into your spam box. Please help us check if that's the case if you don't hear from us within 1 day.

*If you are traveling with others, each participant must register and complete payment separately to ensure accurate details for everyone.

✅ Confirmation Process and What to Expect Next

Once your payment is successfully completed, here’s what you can expect:

Upon successful payment, you will receive an immediate payment receipt from Stripe. This confirms your seat and registration.

Within 24–48 hours: You will receive a personal welcome email asking for the following information:

• Personal information: Legal name, phone number, dietary restrictions/allergies, arrival & departure flights, a short personal introduction (optional, for cohort networking), and emergency contact.

• Private group access: We’ll invite you to a WeChat group for timely communication and a more personal connection before and during the tour.

• Recommended hotel: Local transportation will be arranged throughout the trip. Please note that while shuttles will be provided, pickup will only be available from the recommended hotel each morning before the day’s activities begin. If you choose to stay elsewhere, please plan to meet the shuttle at the recommended hotel each morning.

  • Shanghai: Atour Hotel Shanghai Hongqiao Shuicheng Road (view on booking.com).

    • Instead of a 5-star hotel, we recommend Atour Hotel—a lifestyle brand and hotel chain that has become one of the most popular among young Chinese consumers. It is known for its smart and modern room design. This particular location is close to Hongqiao Railway Station, making it convenient if you are arriving by train.

    • If you are arriving at Shanghai Pudong International Airport on Oct 26, please let us know your flight details, and we will assist with pickup and transfer to the recommended hotel.

  • Hangzhou: Sheraton Grand Hangzhou Wetland Park Resort (View on booking.com).

    • This hotel is recommended because it sits close to companies that we will visit (Alibaba AI, Rokid, Yowant etc.). It is also located next to the Xixi National Wetland Park and inspired by traditional Chinese architecture, offering landscape views of the signature gardens of Hangzhou.

Follow-up communications:

• Mid-to-late September: A dedicated newsletter will feature company hosts, guest highlights, and itinerary details. You’ll find out who you’ll meet at each company, along with early insights into the discussion topics and key business highlights.

• Mid October: You’ll receive the detailed hour-by-hour schedule and join a pre-tour Zoom briefing to meet fellow participants and the Baiguan team, and to have any questions answered.

📌 Important Policies

• Refunds & Cancellations:

  • Cancel ≥30 days before the tour start date → Full Refund

  • Cancel <30 days before the start date (any reason, including visa issues) → No Refund

  • Requests must be sent in writing to baiguan@bigonelab.com

• Urgent Action Required for Visa Application: We strongly urge all non-Chinese passport holders to begin their visa application process immediately upon registration. Participants are responsible for securing valid passports and visas. Failure to obtain a visa is not an exception to the refund policy. To be eligible for a full refund, you must cancel before September 26, 2025. Please plan your visa application accordingly.

• Travel Insurance: Strongly recommended to protect against unexpected events (medical emergencies, cancellations, lost luggage, etc.).

• What’s Not Included: International airfare, accommodation, meals (except those noted in itinerary), visa fees, and personal expenses.

🎁 Perks

All participants will receive a free 1-year Baiguan subscription. Already a paid subscriber? We’ll extend your subscription by 12 months.

We look forward to welcoming you to China in 2025!

Warm regards, The Baiguan Team baiguan@bigonelab.com

Other FAQ

🧾 Invoice Requests

If your organization requires an invoice, simply email baiguan@bigonelab.com after completing your payment. We’ll issue a Stripe invoice (example attached).

Alternative payment methods

If your organization needs a different payment arrangement (such as bank/wire transfer), please contact us at baiguan@bigonelab.com with the subject line: “China Tour Payment Request.” Please note that it may take up to 24 business hours for us to process and respond to your inquiry.

Will there be English translation?

Yes, all company visits and official sessions will have English translation available.

What if I don’t stay at the recommended hotel?

Shuttle service will only operate from the recommended hotel. If you choose to stay elsewhere, please plan to meet the shuttle at the recommended hotel each morning before the day’s activities.

When does the program end on Oct 30?

Last Day October 30 will be a full-day experience, concluding before dinner (around 4:00–5:00 PM, depending on how company visits go).

Will transportation be arranged from Hangzhou back to Shanghai on Oct 30?

We recommend taking the high-speed train, which is much faster than driving (about 1 hour versus 2–3 hours by car, especially during rush hour). Trains run frequently between Hangzhou and Shanghai—about every 15 minutes until around 22:30pm. But we are collecting details from participants and can arrange a group ride for those who prefer that option. Once you have your flights booked, please let us know so we can coordinate any assistance if needed.