La Tiens è stata al centro di uno scandalo riguardante la vendita di medicinali dai dubbi effetti in Uganda. Dietro alla storia di quello che è stato definito il “miglior capo del mondo” ci sono una grande multinazionale e una scaltra iniziativa di marketing.
To organize travel and overnight stays for 6,000 of its employees, Jinyuan booked 7,600 train tickets, 84 plane flights, and around 30,000 nights in 140 hotels between Nice and Paris, for a total travel cost of around 15 million euros.
The trip was followed and covered by the main international information sites. More than a gift to its employees, according to many (especially Chinese) media, Jinyuan has implemented a perfect commercial operation. A Chinese newspaper, theBeijing News, he spoke of "military tourism"; The New York Times commented: «The mass spectacle greatly embarrassed Chinese observers, who saw in the holiday a plan, a scheme, to achieve a typical goal of today's China with a Maoist-style campaign: making money».
Jinyuan's initiative has certainly been effective from a media point of view and perhaps also financially. While his employees visited the Côte d'Azur and the monuments of Paris, Jinyuan was received by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, was officially thanked by the French government and even succeeded, according to Chinese sources cited by the New York Times, discussing business, preparing what is thought to be an expansion of Tiens into the French cuisine, wine, fashion and art markets.
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