With a certain amount of luck and what Mr Gilbertson calls 'a clear focus on its core business' Ericsson has ridden on the crest of the wave of the mainland's cellular boom that has seen subscribers double in number every year during the mid to late 90s.

'1998 will be the most successful year for Ericsson in China both in terms of the cellular infrastructure business and in the mobile handsets,' Mr Gilbertson said.

The company is clinging to number one position in the mainland's handset market (under fierce pressure from Finland's Nokia) and remains the clear leader in selling cellular systems.

Ericsson's cellular equipment has been taken up in 18 of the mainland's 33 provinces.

Mr Gilbertson probably has about as much negotiating experience with the notoriously tough and demanding mainland telecommunication authorities as anyone in the business.

He laughs, as he does on many occasions, when I put the proposition to him.

'Remember Rudyard Kipling. He said, 'I have measured my life in tea cups,' when he was in India. Similarly I have measured my life in negotiations.' His experience in selling telecoms equipment inside and outside Ericsson for nearly 40 years has taken him to most Asian countries, but doing business in the mainland is very different.

'Normally in our business it has been based on the old principles of the tender process. A bunch of engineers write the specifications, go out to tender and you go out and give presentations and do a bit of lobbying - but it is basically on the result of your tender. But not in China,' he said.

'There is a specification of course, but not normally a tender process. You get one specification, somebody else gets another.' Other equipment manufacturers have complained if they give a price which they think will win, the authorities simply take that to a rival and ask for a better price and it goes round in descending circles.

So big is the market, and the eagerness to stay in it, that officials can wring out the best equipment prices anywhere in the world.

The key to the mainland, according to Mr Gilbertson, is the relationship. And in the early days the 'top down' method of getting to know the top cadre first was the one that opened doors into the provinces.

'Once you'd worked on that and you became trusted and showed them respect, then business started to flow,' he said.

Of course, none of this is particularly new but something the company needs to foster in its approach, where in other countries it may matter less.

'I tell the young sales staff that the relationship is like a water cylinder,' he said.

'When you heat it up it takes a long time to heat but once it's hot it is easy to keep hot, you just keep pumping in a little bit of energy. But if it goes cold then you've got to spend an awful lot of time and effort to reheat it.' This means giving good after-sales service.

'If you can keep the troops [clients] happy it flows naturally upwards to the top and makes you look good,' he said.

Though lacking Mandarin language skills, Mr Gilbertson's own contribution to keeping the water on the boil is to maintain contacts with the heads of all the provincial telecom authorities and ministerial officials.

It is a process carried out by paying visits to the officials or bringing them to Hong Kong, Beijing or to Sweden.

'The personal chemistry is very important, the least little thing could upset the balance,' Mr Gilbertson said.

One old China business hand commenting on doing deals with mainland officials once said: 'They like the grey hairs, it gives a company gravitas.' Just short of 60 years old and silvery grey-haired himself, Mr Gilbertson agreed.

Age, he believed, gave him an edge when dealing with the old-school officials controlling the powerful telecom authorities.

'They don't like dealing with young people. It is a fact they don't like young superstars. It is going to change though because the new generation is coming through,' he said.

'These are guys much more open and used to dealing with people of their own age group.' In part to capitalise on this, Ericsson has set up its own education facility in Beijing where it offers higher education courses in telecoms to both its own and outside staff.

'We specifically created the Ericsson Academy to target these people and they're actually our students now. It's about building relationships early,' Mr Gilbertson said.

This changing of the guard also dictates a change of deal-making methodology, one where the 'bottom-up' approach is coming to the fore as lower-ranking officials are increasingly gaining control of purchasing decisions.

'You have to get out into the municipalities, in the counties, to influence the bottom-up,' Mr Gilbertson said.

The bulk of Ericsson's negotiations, which often pit it against five or six rival manufacturers, are conducted by locally recruited staff.

Mr Gilbertson comes in when agreements, which are typically more than US$100 million, are nearing a conclusion.

It is at this point when the local authority brings out its important officials to match.

'If the ground work has been done properly it goes very smoothly - you've only got maybe an hour of friendly discussions [to finalise the deal],' he said.

'But sometimes it can be very protracted over a numbers of days and it gets quite difficult.' The difficulties are not always over price but can be over contractual terms.

One buyer wanted a lifetime guarantee on the equipment.

'I think that's rather difficult to promise,' Mr Gilbertson said wryly.

In other cases the manufacturer has signed on the dotted line and the purchase still never materialises.

'We've actually signed deals that we know are never going to stick. You have a big signing ceremony with the bands playing and everything and then you have to go back and finalise the thing later on,' he said.

Mr Gilbertson has a more than a passing resemblance to another Scot well known in Hong Kong circles, Sir William Purves, the recently departed chairman of HSBC Holdings.

But Mr Gilbertson's tone, however, is more of a sympathetic uncle than the hectoring elder statesman perfected by Sir William.

Though born in Edinburgh, Mr Gilbertson has spent most of his life in New Zealand, where he emigrated in 1960, caught up in the great wave of British people leaving home for a new life in the former colonies.

He decided on New Zealand after reading a book about the country.

'It really excited me,' he said.

Studies in science started at University in Scotland were finished in New Zealand and he started work as an engineer for the New Zealand Post Office, which also ran the country's telephone network.

After a couple of stints in other companies in the telecoms engineering and sales areas, Mr Gilbertson became a partner in his own business selling instrumentation and transmission technology.

In 1983 the business was bought by Ericsson and his career with the Swedish company began.

By 1987 he was head of Ericsson New Zealand.

'We were very successful and became the number one selling IT company in New Zealand, bigger even than IBM,' he said.

The focus of the business had been traditional switching technology for large, fixed-line networks. In 1985 the first cellular network started to be built.

In 1992, about the time digital cellular technology started to emerge, Ericsson asked Mr Gilbertson to come and take care of the mobile markets in Hong Kong and the mainland.

His arrival as area managing director caused a 'big shock' among the Swedish community used to having their own country folk in senior positions.

Ericsson had always enjoyed a good position in the analogue market for infrastructure but its handsets were not well known.

In three years they went from 'relative obscurity to number one in the market', Mr Gilbertson said.

At the same time, by regulating supply tightly through Hong Kong, the company also managed to ensure that handset prices were not forced down.

The mainland's mobile market recently passed the 24 million user mark, with estimates that it will hit 50 million before the end of 2000.

Given the huge investments necessary to support this large consumer base, Beijing is increasingly showing signs of wanting to cut back on foreign equipment sales.

In the past two months, officials have mounted what effectively is a 'buy local' campaign aimed at aiding domestic cellular producers.

First officials said foreign imports of GSM equipment (the dominant technology used on the mainland) were to be stopped, then it went a step further saying new joint ventures involving foreign companies producing GSM products would not be allowed.

Ericsson like the other big GSM vendors, Nokia and Motorola, produces most of its handsets and network infrastructure for the mainland market in local plants.

Base stations are manufactured in Beijing and Nanjing, while the Beijing plant also makes handsets.

While Ericsson still imports some handsets, next year it expects to rely solely on local production.

Far from viewing the recent official comments as a threat to Ericsson's lucrative business, Mr Gilbertson said it presented an 'opportunity'.

'We've already established ourselves and taken great care to get into the industry through joint ventures and through the relationship-building process,' he said.

Foreign GSM manufacturers also have the advantage of knowing local companies have yet to produce saleable rival equipment - they have only reached the trial stage.

Mr Gilbertson, however, agreed it was inevitable that Ericsson would be working more closely with local companies.

The mainland as the third-largest mobile market in the world - and probably the largest early in the next century - would play its part on the world stage in terms of technology, he said.

For Ericsson, this year's record sales, do not represent a peak.

'There's still a long way to go because the penetration of mobile services is still low,' said Mr Gilbertson.

John Gilbertson, president of Ericsson China, was born in Edinburgh in 1938. He began studying science at Heriott Watt University in the city but half way through emigrated to New Zealand, where he completed the course at Victoria University. His first job was as an engineer at the New Zealand Post Office, which oversaw the country's phone service. He joined Ericsson in 1983 and became New Zealand head in 1987. In 1993 he was appointed Ericsson's managing director in Hong Kong and was made president of Ericsson China last year. He is now based in Beijing and regularly visits Hong Kong.

Remember Rudyard Kipling. He said, 'I have measured my life in tea cups,' when he was in India. Similarly I have measured my life in negotiations