One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in ChinaIt is well known that with a population of 1.3 billion people, China's market is moving quickly toward surpassing those of North America and Europe combined. Companies from the United States and around the globe are flocking there to buy, sell, manufacture, and create new products. But as former Wall Street Journal China bureau chief turned successful corporate executive James McGregor explains, business in China is conducted with a lot of subterfuge -- nothing is as it seems and nothing about doing business in China is easy. Destined to become the bible for business people in China, One Billion Customers shows how to navigate the often treacherous waters of Chinese deal-making. Brilliantly written by an author who has lived in China for nearly two decades, the book reveals indispensable, street-smart strategies, tactics, and lessons for succeeding in the world's fastest growing consumer market. Foreign companies rightly fear that Chinese partners, customers, or suppliers will steal their technology or trade secrets or simply pick their pockets. Testy relations between China's Communist leaders and the United States and other democracies can trap foreign companies in a political crossfire. McGregor has seen or experienced it all, and now he shares his insights into how China really works. One Billion Customers maximizes the expansive knowledge of a respected journalist, well-known businessman, and ultimate China insider, offering compelling narratives of personalities, business deals, and lessons learned -- from Morgan Stanley's creation of a joint-venture Chinese investment bank to the pleasure dome of a smuggler whose $6 billion operation demonstrates how corruption greases the wheels of Chinese commerce. With nearly 100 strategies for conducting business in China, this unprecedented account combines practical lessons with the story of China's remarkable rise to power. |
Contents
| 1 | |
| 21 | |
Same Bed Different Dreams Avoid joint ventures | 58 |
Eating the Emperors Grain Chinas relationship | 94 |
Dancing with the Dinosaurs Powerful bureaucratic | 126 |
Caught in the Crossfire Government lobbying must | 155 |
The Truth Is Not Absolute The Communist Party | 190 |
The BestLaid Plans Government planning and manip | 225 |
Managing the Future China is a nation always cram | 258 |
Acknowledgments | 295 |
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Common terms and phrases
American Barshefsky began Beijing Boeing bosses build bureaucrats business in China Caijing CATIC China business China Construction Bank China Telecom Chinese companies Chinese government Chinese officials CICC Clinton commercial Communist Party company’s country’s culture deal Deng Dow Jones employees engineers entrepreneurs executives export factory Fang foreign companies friends global Hitt Hong Kong industry Internet investment bank Jack Wadsworth Jiang Jiang Zemin joint venture Justin knew Lai Changxing Lai’s launched leaders Lenovo Levin Little Smart McDonnell Douglas ment military million mobile phone Morgan Stanley Murdoch negotiations nese numbers overseas overseas Chinese partner party’s People’s percent political Premier propaganda satellite Shanghai Shuli smuggling Stanley’s stock market Taiwan Tiananmen Tiananmen Massacre tion told trade Unicom United UTStarcom Wahaha Wang Qishan wanted Western Wu Jichuan Wu Ying Wu’s Xiamen Xinhua Zhang Zhu Rongji Zong
Popular passages
Page 22 - You, O King, should simply act in conformity with our wishes by strengthening your loyalty and swearing perpetual obedience so as to ensure that your country may share the blessings of peace.
Page 24 - The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change. The way to do this is to persuade China that it must change: that it cannot satisfy its imperial ambitions, and that its own national interest requires a turning away from foreign adventuring and a turning inward toward the solution of its own...
Page 37 - Chinese in the past several months, that we have reached the end of the usefulness of that policy and it is time to take a new path toward the achievement of our constant objectives. We need to place our relationship into a larger and more productive framework.
Page 204 - China after the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in May 1999 and after the EP-3 incident in April 2001.
Page 42 - ... If China accepts the responsibilities that come with WTO membership, that will give us broad access to China's markets, while accelerating its internal reforms and propelling it toward acceptance of the rule of law. The bottom line is this: If China is willing to play by the global rules of trade, it would be an inexplicable mistake for the United States to say no.
Page 2 - China is undergoing the raw capitalism of the Robber Baron era of the late 1800s; the speculative financial mania of the 1920s; the rural-to-urban migration of the 1930s; the emergence of the first-car, first-home, first-fashionable clothes, first-college education, first-family vacation, middle-class consumer of the 1950s, and even aspects of social upheaval similar to the 1960s.
Page 96 - Everywhere one looks in China there are state-enterprise bosses and government officials sporting Armani suits, driving Mercedes or Audi luxury cars, and living in apartment buildings called Park Avenue, Palm Springs, or Beverly Hills. They golf at private clubs that charge $150 a round. Many of them earn little more than $1,000 a month, but nobody asks about their assets and nobody tells.
Page 42 - ... on balance it favors the recent US trade agreement with China in about the same way that Americans ultimately came to favor NAFTA after its passage by the House of Representatives in 1993. The agreement between the United States and China, signed by the Clinton administration on November 15, opens the way for China to become a member of the World Trade Organization. When asked directly, the public favors the agreement by a 54%-to-33% margin. About the same percentage favored NAFTA in early 1994,...