Hofstra focus on doing business in China

The approximately 50 Hofstra University graduate students from China who turned out Tuesday at a business conference at the Uniondale college were all dressed the same: in dark suits.

The session, however, was anything but funereal.

According to Anoop Rai, director of Hofstra's Center for International Financial Services and Markets, the students who attended the event -- "U.S.-China: Opportunities for New Business Partnerships" -- represented the new China: businesslike, prosperous and competitive.

Rai said that virtually all of the approximately 400 Chinese business graduate students attending Hofstra are doing so without scholarship assistance. They constitute about 40 percent of the roughly 1,000 students enrolled in Hofstra's Zarb School of Business. While the grad students were invited to the event, Hofstra held the session to help acquaint Long Island companies with doing business in the world's second-largest economy, Rai said.

In an interview, Rai noted recent U.S.-China political and diplomatic struggles. But, he said, "we know that trade benefits all countries, and trade benefits business."

The morning keynoter, Brian McNally, president of Arrow Electronics Inc.'s Global Components' specialty businesses, spent years living and working in China. McNally -- whose company swapped its Melville base for a Denver suburb last fall -- and others said there are opportunities in China, but plenty of difficulties as well. Among them, he said, are bureaucracy, corruption, wage inflation, and language and cultural differences.

His advice for small Long Island companies who want to do business there: Find a partner who knows China.

Jeffrey Nagel, chief executive of Ronkonkoma-based vitamin company NBTY Inc., and Ellen Deutsch, a senior vice president of Melville-based organic food company Hain Celestial Group Inc., said their companies had achieved success in China over the years. But, Nagel said, "the playing field is incredibly dynamic and incredibly competitive."