Canada-China Panda Acquisition Negotiations
"How your family is going?"
That was the first question asked by the Canadian zoos representers. Being a part of Chinese team in that game it was a good start for me because our opponents were very thoughtful for Chinese culture in which the family is an important subject to discuss even during a business meeting.
Anyway, the last roleplay was about giant panda acquisition and I played a role of MA Zhong, Deputy Secretary General of Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens (CAZG). So, my main goal was the well-being of the giant pandas and related research and conservation. I was responsible for delivery, duration of the contract and, of course, safety of giant pandas. I had many conditions to our Canadian friends. According to my role Chinese staff should accompany the panda and stay with them for at least three months and so on.
Honestly, after one hour’s preparation of our strategy, the negotiation meeting was very hard. Indeed, one of the Canadian Zoos (Calgary Zoo) had a really bad reputation due to the death of 214 animals in 2009. So I had a strong reservation about sending pandas there. Moreover, neither zoo had much money to offer for pandas loan per year. Our reservation price was $1 million, but the Canadians found this amount huge. Actually they did not understand that pandas for us were a national item and we could not rent it easily. We discussed a lot about loan price.
The next misunderstanding was duration of the contract. Time for the Chinese is a very important thing, so we wanted the contract to last for 10-12 years. Of course, the Canadians wanted 8 years. Moreover, they wanted to share the term. Actually, we did not really care about this deal, so we were quite reserved in reference to our conditions. Moreover our BATNA was much stronger and we were in high-power position. Indeed, who does not want to get a panda ? Nobody! We had many other countries and zoos pretending to our giant pandas and which would be ready to pay even more than $1 million. After 30-40 minutes of our negotiation, my team wanted to make no deal. But we did not and at the end we agreed on 10 years and $1 million fee per year.
That was our deal, but it was hard. ;)
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