Chinese advantages

China enjoys a number of advantages in building its partnership with France, according to Gao.

Chinese production capacity and manufacturing output lead the world, while France has advantages in terms of innovation, research and design.

Coupled with this has been a change in perceptions, Phan says. The image of Chinese brands and products has been transformed in the past 10 years. French consumers considered Chinese products cheap in price and also low in quality, but they now enjoy better reputation with obvious quality improvements and increasing technology giving added value. This has led to a major shift in European consumer sentiment.

As the world's biggest telecommunication equipment provider, China's telecommunication giant Huawei has been present in France since 2003. Song Kai, general director of Huawei France, says that at the outset, when selling Huawei's smartphone in France, local telecom carriers were not willing to let the Chinese company print its logo on phones as they thought it might hinder sales.

"Now we have our logo front and back," says Song. "After we built up our brand base on good quality and services, local consumers recognized our brand, and are willing to pay a premium for our products." In 2014 the company became the only Chinese brand to enter the French International Brand Rank.

Huawei is not the only Chinese company to have witnessed the change in perceptions. Sichuan Changhong Electric Co Ltd manufactured China's first TV sets in 1972.

But when the company established its European office in 2005 it encountered a negative brand perception.

"In the early stages when French customers were buying our products, they asked us to remove our logo, because they thought it would be embarrassing having a Chinese brand in front of their friends in their living room," recalls Ning Ken, general manager of the company in Europe.

So we tested the market with our 32-inch set, which can be put in the bedroom and that was more readily accepted by customers. Now our brand is welcomed by customers and can be found at many electronic equipment stores.