Chocolate in China: the Cadbury experience

Since 1979, China's Open Door policy has attracted increasing foreign investment. To maintain global competitiveness, the British confectioner, Cadbury, authorised its Australian subsidiary to develop a chocolate plant in China. This paper details the decisionmaking processes that eventually led to a new factory on a greenfield site near Beijing. It also illustrates some of the adaptations that Cadbury has had to make in its product and production procedures in order to match its own standards for dairy milk chocolate and yet accommodate guo qing (the special situation in China).