East is the way to West

"China can be characterized as being a manufacturing base supplying Western economies and that is the same with large parts of central and eastern Europe. The structure of the economies is very similar. As a result many of the managers have a similar mindset," he says.

The Czech, who also runs his own education business aimed at developing new teaching methods, says an attraction for the Chinese is they have the advantage of proximity to Western markets when they set up operations in Europe's former eastern bloc.

"Instead of manufacturing heavy engineering products in China and shipping them to Germany you can do that in the Czech Republic and it is both much easier and cheaper," he says.

"There are many other advantages such as a preponderance of logistics companies in the region geared to transporting goods to western Europe and there is also a good supplier base with a skilled workforce."

Hyl says, however, there is still resistance to Chinese investment in the region that needs to be overcome by companies from the world's second-largest economy.

"When you come to central and eastern Europe the feelings toward China are very mixed, mainly because of the history and the struggles during Soviet times and many do not have a positive feeling to anything labeled Communist," he says.

"Part of our job is to explain the China of today has no associations with this history."

Hyl says Chinese companies wanting to enter the Czech Republic, in particular, have met political resistance from the country's Green Party.

"It is not across the board. I think the major political parties have a rational understanding of the economic benefits of a relationship with China. The Green Party is concerned with China being a major pollutant. I think they have a misconception and base their view on what manufacturing in China may have been like in the 1990s," he says.

One of the largest Chinese investments in the Czech Republic is, in fact, Shanghai Maling, which developed a canned meat processing plant on a brownfield site and now sells own branded canned meats across Europe. It sells to major European retailers such as Tesco and Makro.

"It is a company which had taken full advantage of the distribution possibilities of basing an operation in the Czech Republic and now sells its products around the UK, France and Germany," he says.

Hyl says Chinese managers can bring expertise and experience that is often lacking in the former Eastern bloc, particularly in relation to doing business in Asia.

Many CEE economies are made up of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack both capital and the knowledge of how to expand into other markets.

"What China can often offer is the managerial know-how of how to succeed in Asia. It is often a win-win situation because central and eastern European managers know how to succeed in Europe but have little knowledge of how to do business in Asia. Both parties can learn from each other."