|
|
One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China (Wall Street Journal Book) (Hardcover)
by James McGregor
| Category:
China business, Marketing & Selling |
| Market price: ¥ 288.00
MSL price:
¥ 268.00
[ Shop incentives ]
|
| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
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. |
| If you want us to help you with the right titles you're looking for, or to make reading recommendations based on your needs, please contact our consultants. |
Detail |
Author |
Description |
Excerpt |
Reviews |
|
|
|
Author: James McGregor
Publisher: Free Press
Pub. in: October, 2005
ISBN: 0743258398
Pages: 336
Measurements: 9 x 6.1 x 1.2 inches
Origin of product: USA
Order code: BA00765
Other information: ISBN-13: 978-0743258395
|
|
Rate this product:
|
|
- Awards & Credential -
This book is destined to become the bible for business people in China, so it is. |
|
- MSL Picks -
It 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. (From quoting a guest reviewer, USA)
Target readers:
Business people who are buying, selling or cooperate with China.
|
|
- Better with -
Better with
China Streetsmart: What You Must Know to be Effective and Profitable in China
:
|
|
Customers who bought this product also bought:
|
|
James McGregor is a journalist-turned-businessman who has lived in China for nearly two decades. He is currently a China business investor, advisor and entrepreneur. He is the founder and chairman of JL McGregor & Company LLC, a boutique advisory and investment partnership focused on China. McGregor also serves as Senior China Advisor for Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide; is a senior advisor on China matters for executive search firm Spencer Stuart; and is a Senior Director of Stonebridge International LLC, an international strategic advisory firm headed by former U.S. National Security Advisor Sandy Berger.
|
|
From Publishers Weekly
The promise and perils-mostly the latter-that Western businesses face in China's huge but chaotic market are probed in this illuminating if not quite reassuring primer. Ex-Wall Street Journal China bureau chief McGregor presents a series of case studies from capitalism's Wild East, including a rocky joint venture between Morgan Stanley and a Chinese bank; the rise and fall of a Chinese peasant turned billionaire smuggler; Rupert Murdoch's travails in bringing a satellite TV network to China; and a muck-raking Chinese financial journalist's battles with both government censorship and the private media's cozy relationships with advertisers. He caps each chapter with gleanings of wisdom ("assume your procurement department is corrupt until proven innocent") and pointers on such topics as which bribes are ethically acceptable (expenses-paid junkets to America "with generous opportunities for tourism and relaxation") and which are not (suitcases full of cash). McGregor writes with the confidence of an old China hand, occasionally lapsing into generalities about Asian "shame-based" cultures, but generally treating the Chinese businesspeople he profiles with the same sympathy and insight he accords Westerners. Still, the picture he paints of the Chinese economy is a daunting one, ruled by over-mighty Communist officials, bribe-hungry bureaucrats, Byzantine regulations and a murky, cut-throat business culture structured by personal and family ties. Westerners contemplating a plunge into this shark tank will profit from McGregor's cautionary tales.
|
Preface
It should have been a routine flight from Beijing to the coastal city of Fuzhou. The government-owned airline was new and the airplane was fresh from a foreign factory. But I began to get a sense that this ride wouldn't be entirely routine when I saw how cheerfully untrained our crew was. The flight attendants sat giggling in the front row, eagerly putting together take-home bags of the best food from the extra meals. The cockpit door was open throughout the flight. The flight engineer came back to snooze in the front row.
Finally we began our descent. The lush green countryside, populated by farm huts and pigpens, loomed closer and closer. As the aircraft swung around to line up on the rapidly approaching runway, two of the flight attendants stood behind the pilot and copilot as if surfing the plane onto the runway. Then, with barely fifty feet between us and the rubber-scarred runway, the pilot suddenly jammed the throttles forward. Engines screaming, we began an abrupt climb. Amazingly, neither of the flight attendants toppled over, but they did stumble back to their seats with a look of fright. Up and around we went, once again lining up on the runway. Then I heard the distinctive eerrrrrrrr of the landing gear being lowered and felt the shuddering as the wheels entered the airstream. I hadn't noticed any of that on our first approach. So that's why we did the sudden go-around!
I was thinking about how sensible it was to travel by train as I walked into the terminal. Then I saw a propaganda poster on the wall that has since remained firmly in my mind as the perfect description of the transformation China is undergoing: Strive to Fly Normal. That is the essence of what China is trying to do: become a normal country, one that is integrated into the world economy, a place where citizens can concentrate on their prosperity and happiness instead of suffering from political power struggles. Like our novice flight crew, China has spent that past twenty-five years alternately stumbling and soaring through a massive trial-and-error reform process, and so far most of the landings have been smooth.
It is difficult for anyone in the West to overestimate China's growing role in the global economy. With 1.3 billion mouths to feed, its consumer market has the potential to be larger than North America and Western Europe combined. Measured by purchasing power parity, China's current per-capita GDP is $5,000 and rising steadily each year. It has surpassed Britain as the world's fourth-largest economy. China consumes 25 percent of global steel, 30 percent of cement, and is the world's largest market for electrical appliances. Foreign companies are flocking here, both to sell and to buy. Contracted foreign investment in China now averages $420 million a day.
Since 1978, when Premier Deng Xiaoping launched a set of economic reforms that included using foreign companies and their capital, technology, and management skills, China has become a manufacturing powerhouse, combining technologically sophisticated factories with energetic, intelligent, and low-cost labor. But China has allowed foreigners in only on its own terms, and those terms are often opaque, contradictory, and bewildering. All too often, laws are only the law when they benefit China. Negotiations can take forever and the resulting agreements can be promptly ignored. Corruption is frequently the lubricant that greases the wheels of commerce. Business in China has always been conducted behind multiple curtains and amid much subterfuge, and that hasn't changed. 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 requires that politics be an integral part of business plans. China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 and the country's desire to transform local companies into global leaders is bringing more international practices into China by the day. But I still see foreign executives confidently breeze into China only to be run over by their Chinese competitors, the Chinese government, or their Chinese partners -- or sink themselves through various combinations of unrealistic expectations, impatience, and lack of common sense. The more business in China changes, the more it stays the same. As a journalist, I have traveled the entire country and enjoyed a front-row seat for this historic drama. As a businessman, I've been involved in the power plays, the complex negotiations, and the political intrigues that are a routine part of doing business in the country.
This book is intended to show rather than tell what it is like to do business in China. There are no simple formulas or magic solutions. Only by showing the sometimes complex details of how certain deals came together or fell apart, how the people involved viewed and treated each other, how politics and prejudices tainted expectations and outcomes, will I be able to convey to you the nuances that have made China such a frustrating yet rewarding place for so many foreign businesses. Each chapter begins with a simple introduction of the characters and situation. Next, in an overview section, I put the characters and situation in their proper context. The story then unfolds as a straightforward narrative. At the end, in a section entitled "What This Means for You," I explain how what happened in this chapter can affect how you do business in China. Finally, I summarize -- pithily, I hope -- many of my own observations in a takeoff on Mao's Little Red Book.
Demographers may quibble with the title: China's current population is 1.3 billion. But it is the round "billion" that matters, that threshold number that symbolizes the vast and untapped continental-size market, the teeming Chinese masses waiting to be turned into customers, the dream of staggering profits for those who get here first, the hype and hope that has mesmerized foreign merchants and traders for centuries. The title is my tribute to another American journalist-turned-businessman, Carl Crow, who lived in Shanghai for twenty-six years and in 1937 wrote 400 Million Customers, a rich trove of anecdotes and insights about the Chinese people and doing business in China, much of which still holds true today. I share Crow's deep respect and admiration for, as he put it, "the interesting, exasperating, puzzling, and, almost always, lovable Chinese people." My goal for this book is to also share Crow's ability to convey timeless insights and commonsense lessons about Chinese business practices, and the deeply ingrained thinking and behavior patterns of Chinese people, through a combination of scholarship, grassroots experience, lively narrative, and good humor that transports the reader deep into the China business world.
Please enjoy the journey.
James McGregor
Beijing, 2005
|
|
| View all 5 comments |
Seth Faison (MSL quote) , USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
I loved this book, by far the best book I've ever read about doing business in China, where I lived for 12 years. The writing is clear. The story-telling is superb. But most of all, the broad perspective and specific analysis of how things work in China combine to deliver a compelling guide for anyone who wants to better understand that mysterious country. It is deeply revealing about Chinese culture, pointedly instructive about why China is such a hard place to do business and ultimately satisfying with its description of success stories.
McGregor came up with a structure that works well. Each chapter tells the story of a particular corner of China business, with a context that is drawn with a journalist's economy and insight, and then a conclusion about what it means. The first one, about Morgan Stanley's efforts to create the first Western-Chinese investment bank, is simply masterful: An engrossing tale, with fascinating characters and a sequence of events that tells a lot about how surprising, frustrating and exciting it can be to work in China. McGregor is remarkably clear-eyed about China, quite admiring and then equally candid about its shortcomings. You trust him as a narrator, because he is evidently in command of his material, but also because he has an incisive eye for human behavior, cultural misconceptions and dumb luck. It makes the whole book very readable and quite enjoyable.
In contrast to many other books that portray China as a machine, or a cold monolithic state, 'One Billion Customers' is deeply perceptive about China's true strengths and glaring weaknesses. The author's personal background comes through clearly: as a journalist, and then as a businessman, he has learned a tremendous amount about how things work in China, and lucky for us, he has the writing ability to communicate it with us. Highly recommended.
|
Daniel Harris (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
I have been involved with the legal side of China business for many years and as I was reading this book I would find myself nodding along to virtually all of the stories and to nearly all of the end of the chapter suggestions on how to conduct business in China. It was not until I finished the book, however, and really started thinking about it that I realized that well over 90% of my Chinese business encounters are very different from those described in the book. This caused me to realize that this is not really a book about doing business in China so much as it is a book about doing big business in China. Among other things, the book eloquently details the difficulties of establishing a foreign wireless network, a foreign media empire, and a large scale foreign investment bank, but it never delves into the nitty gritty of the small and medium sized manufacturing and service businesses that operate so successfully in China. So while this is the best book I have read for understanding the Chinese business persona, the China picture it paints does not really apply to most foreign businesses coming in to China. Indeed, early on, the book reveals that nine out of the ten most successful brand names in China are foreign. If everything were indeed so bad there, this obviously could not be true.
|
Donald Hsu (MSL quote), USA
<2007-02-01 00:00>
Everyone knows that China is rising: GDP per capita is now $5000 per year, 4th largest economy in the world, needs everything from oil, steel, cement, fertilizer, chemical, to credit cards, insurance, cell phone and color TV. Every Chinese is an entrepreneur, wishing to get rich, just like Americans. Those who made it, with broadband internet, fake Nike, fake Rolex and fake everything else. There are millions of migrant workers who work 12-hour day shift, share one room with 10 people, and earn pennies. For the Three Gorges Dam project, China used Siemens, Mitsubishi, GE.. to pit against one another to get best products, engineering, price, willingness to transfer technology to China, and even to finance the deals, truly amazing! Growing up in Taiwan, the Taiwanese business CEOs always bowed to Japanese, now it is the other way around. The whole world is bowing to China because they are thinking of 1.3 billion customers, they need to cultivate, have the patience and long-term strategy. AIG has been doing it for 100 years. Establishing good relationship with the Communist party leaders is just a start, with much more complicated road ahead. Is this worthwhile? The book cited many failure stories and is a must read for all CEOs interested in doing business in China.
|
Paul Mooney (MSL quote), China
<2007-02-01 00:00>
China's new fleet of hard-nosed businessmen turned starry-eyed optimists would benefit from reading James McGregor's new book, "One Billion Customers: Lessons Learned from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China." The author, who has spent 15 years in China, first as the Wall Street Journal's China bureau chief, then as a businessman and entrepreneur, offers a well-written and often humorous insiders' guide on how - and how not to - do business in China.
The lessons come in the form of several case studies of ventures that either soared or crashed. Each chapter gives the details of a troubled venture in China, which is followed by a section entitled "What This Means for You," in which Mr. McGregor offers street-smarts on how the example can help the reader's business. Each chapter finishes with "The Little Red Book of Business," a pithy summary of Jim McGregor's own observations.
Some of the best pearls of wisdom come from this section at the end of each chapter. At its core, James McGregor writes, Chinese society is all about self-interest. It is very strong on competition but very weak on cooperation. In China, a conflict of interest is viewed as a competitive advantage. Deep scars from the Cultural Revolution and the upheaval of a sudden shift to getting rich has created an atmosphere in which nobody trusts anybody. In China business, the expectation is to be cheated.
The book is based on solid reporting, hard research, grassroots legwork, and lots of personal experience of doing business in China. Any foreigner hoping to sell China a billion of anything would be well advised to pick up a copy and read it on the plane coming over.
|
View all 5 comments |
|
|
|
|
