One early morning in the Amazon rainforest, a ray of sunlight shined into my cabin waking me up quietly and peacefully. I quickly dressed, stepped outside my cabin and immediately enjoyed breathing the fresh, pure air that only a morning in nature can bring. I was immediately overcome by relaxation and happiness, and my mind started to wander.

After breakfast I ventured into the rainforest, and while I looked up at the sky I noticed that the vibrant sunshine was blocked by the countless leaves above, allowing only a few tiny rays to pierce the rainforest canopy and reach the floor. As I look down, a patch of dense shrubs struggled to absorb the little bit of sunlight available, essential for their growth. The whole world is full of vitality and life, I thought. Nevertheless, in this vibrant rainforest, not all plants can grow smoothly, and flourish, flowering and producing results. I looked at the devastated trees and deadwood lying everywhere, and realized that in these areas of sunshine, patches of plants grow vigorously. All of this made me think about the natural law for the coexistence of species, Darwin’s "Survival of the Fittest". In fact, this seemingly simple law of natural selection, can actually also be applied to the development of Kangxin.

At Kangxin, our professional expertise always focuses on our clients’ best interest. Past, present and future, we will always keep this faith and foundation. "professionally -oriented" refers to the firm's overall professional standards, while "client focus" indicates professional ethics. Emphasis on "professionally -oriented" includes two meanings: everyone should obey the regulations; and, second, the whole firm must have the requisite professional ability.

A person not complying with the rules of society is one who cannot be trusted. And a firm not complying with the rules is one who will never be able to provide exceptional service for its clients, and therefore has no capacity for sustainable development. A nation which fails to comply with the rules is a nation without any hope. Therefore, following the necessary rules is Kangxin’s very basic priority.

"Client focus," requires us to think for our clients and to make sure our clients receive the best possible service. Therefore, all of our staff need to be highly professional with strong expertise in their given area. Maintaining the continuous professional improvement of our employees is absolutely crutial for Kangxin. We hope that everyone can grow and develop with the firm. However, if someone doesn’t want to work hard and continuously seek to improve themselves and the firm as a whole, they will be faced with inevitable elimination. This reflects the natural selection process found in nature, and the very same thing I witnessed in the Amazon. Therefore, we absolutely should continue to learn and develop, and take advantage of the training opportunities organized by Kangxin. We need development and improvement in this ever-changing market, as Intellectual Property is far more competitive than ever before. Our number one goal is to maintain the highest level of client satisfaction, and to ensure our clients receive only the best service and work product. We are already faltering in the race to keep up with the ever changing needs of our clients. In order to achieve sustainable development to meet our clients’ and the global market’s increasing demands, we need to dramatically increase everyone's productivity and to improve the firm's overall quality levels, as this will unequivocally be the key element for survival.

Last year, Kangxin was awarded as the "2013 China Two-Star Patent Agency". At the same time, 3 Kangxin staff members were recognized as "2013 China Star Patent Attorneys". Having received the formal announcement, the whole firm immediately celebrated, and Kangxin has received many congratulations from our friends, clients, and other IP law firms around the world. With this happy ending, I am so pleased and excited about Kangxin, our firm.

We will continue to work hard and make improvements toward being a 3 star, even 5 star Patent Agency. Hopefully, this honor will bring us momentum as we begin 2014! Moreover, Kangxin also obtained many other awards in 2013, for instance: Intellectual Property Prosecution Firm of the Year by Managing Intellectual Property; and Tier 1 of Chinese IP Firms by Legal 500. At this moment, I would like to thank you - all of our employees for accomplishing so much today. And I also hope that you will always remember the result is from our previous efforts. We shouldn’t be carried away by the results obtained in the past, but should be fully focused on our philosophy and continue to look to the future.

2014 will be Kangxin’s 20th anniversary. In the past 20 years, Kangxin has grown into a leader amongst IP law firms in China. Some people came, others left, but most remain at Kangxin. Although we have sometimes stumbled, we have continued to maintain our values, and have never stopped the pace of progress as we advanced in the right, strategic direction. As a member of Kangxin’s staff, we look forward to the future, but we all know we will face more difficult challenges on the road to tomorrow. However, if we stick to our strategic goal and steadily make progress, we will survive and eventually enjoy the sunshine.

Though we achieved greatness in 2013, we must understand and recognize the fierce competition in the market. Some tropical rainforest plants are destined to be short-lived due to the changing seasons, so too are competitors in the market. In today's internet era, almost every corporation is exploring ways to integrate with the internet so as not to fall behind. With regards to the internet, internet thinking is necessary to be discussed in detail. My belief during the internet thinking era, is to stick to our philosophy and strategy and continue to provide our clients with satisfactory service adapting to the changeable environment. To be more specific, my further understanding for internet thinking is under the premise of a clear understanding of our client needs, perfecting administrative procedure, and building up strong firm platform to provide rapid response to serve clients. Professionalism, quality, efficiency, and focus on clients’ needs are the core issues to achieve our goals. In fact, we, Kangxin have been making consistent and progressive reform. In addition to establishing relatively independent professional business units and independent professional corporations, we are also implementing cross-border cooperation by different business-oriented staff. Although competition exists among different teams, the firm encourages promoting our response to our clients’ needs and working together to jointly create an ecological and dynamic growth of the amoeba organizational system.

However, we must notice that we are faced with fierce competition. Taking the advantages of rapid response for example, it has been gradually weakened due to the scale of our firm; and our shortcoming at the administration has to be improved. The situation requires us to accelerate and further refine our strategies to ensure that our developmental advantages can be maintained. All employees must have a sense of risk, uphold the "gingerly cautious" attitude, rapidly improve their abilities to optimize our process, improve quality, and increase efficiency.

In 2014, Kangxin will continue to invest in sophisticated and knowledge management to build our core competitiveness by enhancing the functionality and efficiency of the firm’s platform and developing talent groups. To ensure the two levels of competitive advantages, we have to create a learning organization, embrace reform proactively, deny the past bravely, and have courage to spur on ourselves. Therefore, the firm will continue its structure adjustment, improve the standard of the administrative procedure, and change the current regulations to adapt to market developments and client requirements. Meanwhile, we will also promote Six Sigma projects to meet clients’ needs and continue to promote the personnel capacity building. It is our pride that some of our managing staff have completed the PMP professional training and passed the exam to become certified professionals of project management by the world's most authoritative institution.

Competition in the future is not just about individual differences, but the firm’s platform and administrative system. The firm’s platform decides competitive advantages, while the shortcoming of the firm decides competitive disadvantages. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen and expand our platform, specialize our teams, and simplify our administrative procedures to then strengthen our advantages which will make up the shortcomings and meet our clients’ needs faster and more efficiently.

I have always believed that a firm’s platform is the core competitiveness, and abilities of teams are the competitive advantages of an organization. A firm should respect its talents, especially the ones identifying the firm’s culture, be able to suffer and withstanding loss, and continuously learning to improve. However, a firm shouldn’t depend on its individuals completely and only. At Kangxin, we have respected the idea that by using second-tier talent we can make it a first-class enterprise. Everyone may think that we are not the top intellectual talents, but we surpass competitors methodically through strong support of our firm’s platform. Additionally, our trained employees also gained wide recognition from the IP industry in terms of professional conduct and personal capabilities.

In 2014, Kangxin will require all employees to adjust or even change their way of thinking and methods of working. The senior staff should keep pace with the times and the firm’s development, and work to participate in the firm’s reform. Natural selection is applicable to everyone. I also hope that the senior staff can gradually drop their achievements gained in the past, actively seek opportunities for self- growth, maintain the courage to break through, and make personal adjustments to follow the firm's developmental direction. For the young employees, you should analyze your work, and focus on improving your personally ability to simplify complex things. You can grow into the needed talent base for the firm through competition and selection. Both of you should work closely not only to improve the professional knowledge and skills, but also to learn to get a variety of management based knowledge. You can create a strong professional team, prepared for hard fought battles by improving internal communication and teamwork, and taking the rational allocation of resources and benefits as well as input and output benefit-sharing into account.

2014 is approaching, and I would like to share some useful phrases with everyone: In this Internet era, we must be ready and armed by ourselves to meet our success! Time flies, and centuries are too long, but we need to seize every day and every second! In 2014, I hope Kangxin can create another brilliant year for our clients, for the firm, for you and for society as a whole. Rooting the earth deeply and being the initiative to change, allows us to keep up with our clients’ needs and market development!