It was certainly a bold decision of MFN to enter the Chinese market in 2013 with a own publication called MFN CHINA. There was a learning fee involved and some completely unexpected events did let us hold breath for more than one time.

Being in publishing since the year 2000, we though to know what it takes to publish a magazine for surface preparation. We certainly had great respect for China, knew that it was one of the world's largest market and that its importance will be even increasing in the years to come. However, since most of our staff could speak Chinese and were familiar with the Chinese culture, we were confident to be able to make it. But there were lessons to be learned...
First we took a great effort to report news about the Chinese market and its companies. But it was not appreciated. The Chinese readers much more welcomed overseas, but not local news. That was their key interest. Quite different to the subscribers in Europe. However, that made it much easier for us. It was now possible to benefit from MFN INTERNATIONAL. We could select a "Best-Of" list of editorials from yearly almost 500 pages of MFN INTERNATIONAL and distribute the articles to the yearly 240 pages of MFN CHINA.
We implemented the same columns such as "Science Update", "Trainer Column", "Interviews" or "Standard Forum" in MFN CHINA. This concept allowed us to give those authors, which are writing good articles for the international version of MFN, a new interesting platform to have their write-ups published in Chinese language, exclusively for the Chinese market. That has proven to be an additional great benefit for many companies.
Now, after over 6 years, MFN CHINA has its place in the Chinese market. The magazine is published 4 times per year and distributed to thousands of readers within the metal finishing industry!

Andrzej Wojtas (Ph.D.), Chief Editor of MFN, E-mail: andrzej@mfn.li