“As they are all in quarantine now, and with suppliers coming back online now in China, they are trying to keep their production timelines moving forward smoothly,” Central Studios’ CEO Rodney Evans said.

Elsewhere in Shanghai, CDI Global’s mergers & acquisitions consultant, Dan Senger, has also been busy. He has been receiving calls from banks in the US and Europe looking to co-partner with his firm on existing merger deals with Chinese biotech and chemical companies.

Senior managers trapped in the US have also been calling asking him to oversee operations in their factories in China.

“I had one guy ask me if I could take a look at his factory operations in central China, and then I realised it was in Wuhan,” he said. “In short, people are outsourcing to China because it’s open.”

Outsourcing aside, shoring up local Chinese operations has been a top priority, especially after China placed an interim ban on foreigners entering the country in an effort to block the spread of the coronavirus through imported cases. 

This isolated many from their companies in China, according to managing partner Natalie Lowe from marketing agency, The Orangeblowfish.

The demand for “stand-in chief operating officers (COOs)” has been ramping up, especially for her clients who left China during the onset of Covid-19 in January, and now find themselves stuck in their home countries, Lowe said.

“Suddenly, my clients were contacting us to be their COO for the day, to steer the company for them,” she added. “However, this won’t be a long term, maybe about six to 12 months, a short term play.”

Lowe’s experience was echoed by PTL Group, an international management company specialising in running operations for 20 years, who has seen its business increase markedly since the outbreak.

General manager Arie Schreier said that many of his clients with businesses spread across Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou are unable to return to China. They were either China-based entrepreneurs or managers of Chinese branches of global companies based in the US, Britain, Israel, Australia and Europe.

They requested a stand-in CEO or COO to handle logistics support, sales and invoicing, rental negotiations, warehousing of goods and even to negotiate lower salaries for employees in an effort to cut costs, Schreier said.

“We also moved those remaining employees to our offices so that we can manage them to give them the feeling that there is a manager for them in China,” Schreier said.

“Some of them have noted a drop in sales domestically since restrictions were placed on Chinese tourists coming into Australia … and are now looking at exporting those products to China because they can’t afford to wait for the tourists to return,” he said.

“Other Australian companies are just looking for new markets as they brace themselves for a slowing of the Australian economy because of our response to the coronavirus.”

In an effort to sustain exports to China and other Asian countries, last week, the Australian government spent A$110 million (US$66 million) on chartered flights to distribute locally produced seafood, meat, dairy as well as fruit and vegetables, with the flights then returning with medical supplies.

“Even during Covid-19, China proves to be the go-to market,” said Senger at CDI Global. “But it also means the world must find new ways to work with each other.”