This is the last call for the 2026 Autumn Baiguan China Tour early-bird discount (10% off all tour programs), valid only until 11:59 PM Beijing Time on September 13, 2026. After that, standard pricing applies and remaining seats will be released on a first-come, first-served basis.
Don’t miss out — claim your early-bird discount and secure your spot now.
Still open for registration
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”, 13-14
For pricing and discounts, click here.
To ensure the quality of our cohorts, all of our tours are application-only. You may fill in the Application Form to apply.
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
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
Note: All itineraries are tentative and subject to adjustment. The finalized schedule will be issued one week prior to departure.
Moreover, the planned visit is subject to force majeure factors including geopolitical conditions and security considerations, and we cannot guarantee that all of them will take place as scheduled. Our team will work very hard to prepare back-up plans of equivalent value for planned visits, but there is no guarantee.
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.
Base Discount: Two tours at standard rate (2,500 +15000 = $17,500). We apply your 20% Returnee discount: $17,500* ( 1 - 20% ) = $14,000
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.
English Service: All programming is designed for international professionals. The Baiguan team and most guest speakers are fully bilingual. We further deploy supplemental translation methods to bridge any linguistic gaps, ensuring seamless, English-native fluency at all times.
Accommodation Arrangements for Weekday Tracks: Please note that all group assemblies and dismissals will occur exclusively at our pre-booked hotels or official itinerary venues. If you opt to arrange your own accommodation, you are responsible for ensuring punctual arrival at these meeting points. Failure to do so may result in missed site visits, and you will be responsible for any additional transportation costs or forfeited program segments.
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.
