Tracing back the origins, exploits and stories of the British Chinese community, who can trace their heritage to regions across East and Southeast Asia, ‘Chinese and British’ draws on the national significance of what it means to be Chinese and British. In addition, it celebrates the lasting impact of Chinese people on the UK, from wartime service and contributions to popular cuisine to achievements in art, literature, sport, music, fashion and film.

The exhibition presents personal artefacts from Chinese British communities alongside books, manuscripts, and maps from the British Library’s collection. One of the highlights of the exhibition is a map from 1880 of Chinese communities around the docks of the East End of London. As Britain traded heavily with the Chinese in the 17th century, increasing numbers of Chinese people and sailors settled around the docks at Limehouse and set up businesses in the area.

The exhibition also showcases Chinese efforts in WWI and WWII. In WWI, Chinese Labour Corps helped to build the trenches in northern France, and in WWII, many were deployed as seamen and often worked on ships as caterers. The exhibition highlights these efforts through trench art and personal memoirs. Importantly, the British Library also explores the forced repatriation of Chinese sailors, many of whom were unexpectedly deported after WWII. This was largely unknown until revealed in 2022 in a British Home Office internal investigation report on the incident, which acknowledged the degree of coercion and racial factors behind the repatriation operation.

Another focal point of the exhibit is the challenges Chinese immigrants faced finding jobs in the early 20th century. Many new arrivals found work in industries such as merchant shipping and laundries, then later in catering, restaurants and takeaway shops. Since then, many British Chinese people have excelled in careers such as science, medicine, law and politics, and have significantly contributed to arts and culture in the UK. Through writing, fashion, music and film, people of Chinese descent in the UK are continuing to explore the intersection between their different cultures – often developing a unique perspective that incorporates both Chinese and British identities.

The Chinese and British exhibit is a must for anyone interested in bridging the cultural gap between the East and West. For example, for UK consumer brands, or for any company considering selling to Chinese clients, it offers valuable and important insights into how to better connect with the global Chinese diaspora.

“Chinese diaspora in the UK has always been an important target for UK consumer brands in their China marketing campaigns, but this is even more vital now that Chinese tourists are not able to travel abroad at the levels they used to before the pandemic,” Antoaneta Becker, Director of Consumer Economy at the CBBC, points out. “The UK Chinese community is both a key consumer audience as well as an ambassador for Brand Britain. Understanding its history, origins and target groups is a key part of any China cultural literacy brands should own.”

Currently, there are over 400,000 Chinese residents in the UK, which makes it even more important to engage with this dynamic community. The exhibition, which is presented in both English and Chinese, runs until April 2023, and entrance is free.

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Unlike Mickey Mouse or Elsa from Frozen, LinaBell has never appeared on the big screen; yet this fluffy pink fox has still captured the hearts of thousands of visitors to Shanghai Disneyland — as well as millions of Internet users (as of 16 December, the Weibo hashtag for LinaBell had been viewed 610 million times). LinaBell is both a life-sized character, appearing in the Disney parade and in selfie spots around the park, and also appears on a range of different branded products (many of which sold out almost immediately after her launch).

LinaBell is part of the Duffy and Friends plush toy line, the first character to debut at a Disney park in Mainland China. Duffy and Friends launched with Duffy the Disney Bear at Walt Disney World Florida in 2002, and is now primarily sold at Disney parks in Asia, including Shanghai Disneyland.

According to Disney’s official announcement, LinaBell “is a fox with an inquisitive mind and the intelligence that supports it. She finds joy and excitement in solving problems and mysteries.” This messaging seems to have resonated with Gen-Z Chinese women, many of whom have posted about the pink fox on platforms like Xiaohongshu.

LinaBell taps into a current preference among Chinese consumers for cute and childish things, known as ‘meng culture’ or cute culture, which can be considered similar to the Japanese concept of kawaii in Japan. Some have suggested that cute culture has caught on with millennials and Gen-Z as a sort of therapeutic escape from the extreme pressure many experience as part of China’s intense work environment. Indeed, many posts on Weibo about LinaBell are notable for the use of words like “cure” and “restore.” Big brands — including luxury brands like Louis Vuitton — are taking note of this trend and launching collaborations with cartoon characters targeted at the Chinese market.

For British cartoon brands like Peppa Pig, which has already found substantial success in China, LinaBell’s launch offers a lesson in the importance of sensitively localised characters. The character is seen as being made ‘in China, for China’ (although it will launch in Tokyo and Hong Kong in 2022), and at least one of the actors who plays the character at meet and greets has been praised for communicating with visitors in different dialects of Chinese. Disney’s slogan in China is “Authentically Disney, Distinctly Chinese,” and this approach has made the park substantially more financially successful than the ones in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

Finally, as The China Skinny pointed out, the character’s success also offers a lesson in timing launches for the Chinese market. The character was introduced on 29 September, just days before the week-long National Day Holiday starting on 1 October, which saw thousands of tourists visit Shanghai Disneyland. Tying a major launch into a national holiday like Chinese New Year or May Day can be a good way to tap into increased consumer spending, although brands have to think strategically about marketing to avoid getting lost in the noise.

Photo captured from YouTube

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Land of Big Numbers, Te-Ping Chen

When we think about China, we often think about it in terms of hard facts: GDP, export volume, population growth. Chinese-American writer and journalist Te-Ping Chen’s collection of short stories, ‘Land of Big Numbers’, in some ways offers a corrective to that: a reminder of the highly individual voices, pursuits, and people – creative, ambitious, and deeply resilient – that define life in China beyond the headlines.

The book’s ten short stories shed light on a variety of Chinese characters that, in many ways, personify aspects of China’s modern economic landscape. There is the migrant worker who finds a job in the big city, two men from very different backgrounds who play the stock market, an online activist. Overall, the book is an easy to read and approachable way to explore aspects of the Chinese economy that are not always covered in the news.

Decoding China’s Export Miracle, Yuqing Xing

Yuqing Xing’s book explains how China’s deep integration with global value chains (GVCs), a new model of manufacturing and trading goods internationally (often via several different countries) has been a decisive factor in the country’s emergence as the world’s number one exporting nation and the champion of high-technology exports.

GVCs give Chinese firms a unique channel through which to access new knowledge and production know-how, which brands like Huawei and Xiaomi have used to leap forward in the brand development process — what Wing refers to as ‘non-linear innovation.’

The book uses a range of case studies including Apple, Uniqlo, Dyson, Samsung and others that use China to become ‘factoryless manufacturers,’ and looks to the next 5-10 years of trends in China’s export market. 

The Chinese Economy, Stephen L. Morgan

As Professor of Chinese Economic History at the University of Nottingham, Stephen Morgan offers a well-rounded overview of the Chinese economy, as well as its intersection with Chinese politics.

The book charts four decades of economic decision-making since the start of Reform and Opening Up, touching on issues such as sustainability, urbanisation, the ageing population and the middle classes. It also looks examines the state sector and the kind of political climate that will be necessary for China to achieve balanced economic growth.

How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate, Isabella Weber

In the 1970s and 1980s, some post-Soviet economies underwent so-called ‘shock therapy’ in the switch from a planned to a free market economy, with varied (and sometimes negative) results. How did China, which entered a period of reform and opening up around the same time, avoid the same fate? Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Isabella Weber, attempts to answer this question via interviews with a wide range of Chinese and international economists who contributed directly to policy during this era.

The book is a must-read for those who wish to understand the complexity of the Chinese economic landscape, as by looking to the past, it sheds light on the direction of China’s reforms in the short to medium term. 

Above Sea: Contemporary Art, Urban Culture and the Fashioning of Global Shanghai, Jenny Lin

Professor of critical studies and former Shanghai resident Jenny Lin’s new book examines contemporary art and design in Shanghai since the 1990s. In particular, it questions whether the city’s vibrant art scene can coexist with state control and how a top-down emphasis on art and design can support or contradict its desire to be an international finance centre. While the book has a fairly specific scope, its takeaways can be applied to the Chinese economy at large, especially with regard to how top-down control relates to creativity and innovation (a theme also explored in Stephen Morgan’s book).

The post Want to understand the Chinese economy in 2021? Start with these books appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

This column usually looks at business books, case studies, histories, or economic treatises, but this time we’re focused on fiction. Te-Ping Chen is a Chinese-American writer and journalist who has been based in both Hong Kong and Beijing with the Wall Street Journal. But she has another life as a short story writer and has been published in an impressive array of journals including The New Yorker and Granta. ‘Land of Big Numbers’ (Scribner) is Chen’s first published collection, consisting of ten short stories, all of which engage with contemporary China in one way or another. All of her stories shed light and bring voices to a variety of Chinese characters we may have briefly read about or interacted with but have never really known. Here are the call centre worker, the subway commuter, the migrant, the computer gamer, the nail house dweller, the stock market day trader, the back yard engineer.

In ‘Land of Big Numbers,’ you’ve chosen to use fiction to tell contemporary stories. Anyone reading China stories in the newspapers in the last decade will recognise many of your initial premises as ‘ripped from the headlines,’ but they invariably head off in other directions, taking unexpected turns.  How do you feel your fiction writing adds to your journalism?

Working as a reporter, especially when writing short dispatches, it can sometimes feel like you’re capturing the architecture of stories, but not always what’s inside them. As a foreign correspondent in Beijing, the headlines I covered were mostly driven by high-level news: foreign relations, state policy, trade. Yet what I found most compelling about life in modern China was what was inside the house: the people, relationships, the particular and the human. From a distance, so much of China tends to get reduced, with the country often seen as a monolith; people think about GDP, statistics, the Chinese Communist Party. I hope ‘Land of Big Numbers’ in some ways offers a corrective to that: a reminder of the highly individual voices, pursuits, and people – creative, ambitious, and deeply resilient – that define life in China beyond the headlines.

I truly believe you can’t understand modern China without having a deeper view of its people, and that’s what I hope ‘Land of Big Numbers’ offers up: a nuanced, more empathetic portrait of a place that often gets lost in translation. I also found fiction was a way to capture certain parts of what I love about the country that journalism doesn’t perhaps as easily render: its beauty, humour, and playfulness, in addition to its politics.

Your first story, Lulu, concerns two twins who go in different directions in life. To me, this story, as well as elements in some of the others, speak to the extreme randomness that often seems to apply to life in China – who wins and who loses can seem so random compared to our perhaps more structured lives in Europe or North America. Do you see anything in that reading?

That’s a good question! I tend to see life as full of ungovernable outcomes. No matter where we live, so much of what we endure or are uplifted by seems like accidents of birth or privilege or being at the right place at a particular time (or the wrong one). What fascinates me in Lulu, and some of the other stories as well, is how two people can respond to the same set of circumstances in such radically different ways. So, in Lulu, one twin ends up becoming an online activist and dissident of sorts, while the other winds up becoming a professional video gamer. Even though they’re born to the same expectations in the same society – and the same household! – they wind up on starkly divergent paths, all because of the contrast in the lenses they apply to the world.

As someone who regularly skids back and forth between fatalism and optimism, I’m drawn to characters like Lulu, who are able to see their purpose in the world with such clarity. As you note, life can feel shot through with so much randomness. It’s rare to meet people like Lulu, but as a reporter in China, I felt fortunate to encounter more than my share.

Many of your strongest stories seem to invoke allegory. New Fruit is a favourite of mine. A delicious new fruit – qiguo – appears in markets all over the city. At first, everyone loves the new taste, the senses it invokes, but then the following year the taste is different, something has changed, it’s all a disappointment where before it was a revelation. Is it fair to see New Fruit as an allegory for the pace of change in Chinese society over the last three decades?

Oh, wow, I’ve gotten quite a bit of commentary from readers on New Fruit, but haven’t actually heard that interpretation before. To be honest, that hadn’t occurred to me, but I love that you read the story that way. Nostalgia works in such funny ways. As it happens, while I was writing New Fruit, the neighbourhood in Beijing that I was writing about – one of the old hutong areas near Beixinqiao – was undergoing extraordinary changes, with the government bricking up many of the mom-and-pop establishments that made up the fabric of the area and many residents getting displaced. I wasn’t strictly thinking about nostalgia while writing that story, which to me was more about using magical realism to explore what it’s like to live in a society where so much has been deliberately forgotten or sits veiled. But a feeling of nostalgia was absolutely bound up in the writing of that story, given how swiftly everything was being transformed around me.

China isn’t one story, it’s billions of stories

This isn’t nostalgia, exactly, but I was also writing ‘Land of Big Numbers’ at a time when the government’s attitude toward foreign media and peoples’ willingness to engage was changing in very palpable ways. And that awareness also shaped the writing of the book and gave it a feeling of greater urgency, too.

Your story Shanghai Murmur concerns Xiaolei, a migrant worker who finds a job as a florist and, of course, dreams big dreams. Yet it seems Xiaolei can only ascend so far in the city before she hits a glass ceiling that pushes her back. It seems to suggest you think social mobility beyond the basic rise out of poverty is not really possible …

I wouldn’t say so. The odds are steeply stacked against Xiaolei, but she’s also someone who takes risks and has drive and a sense of her own self-worth. She gets on a train with nothing more than a fictitious job offer. She quits a job once her superior starts harassing her. When we meet her, she’s still very young, and the scope of her ambitions and aspirations exceeds her reach, and we see moments when that realisation chastens her, most notably in an encounter involving a customer and a Mont Blanc pen. Yet I actually feel optimistic about Xiaolei’s life chances. No, she won’t likely become a millionaire, but during my time in China, I spoke to many people who had wrested themselves out of seemingly impossible situations and created new lives that, if not strictly wealthy, were something much more proximate to it, a life of comfort and ease and choices. There are, of course, many more millions of migrant workers like Xiaolei who don’t end up substantively changing their life circumstances beyond a basic rise out of poverty. But there are absolutely those that do.

The story that gives the collection its title, ‘Land of Big Numbers’, concerns China’s stock market dreams. Two young men, one poor, the other rich, play the market. Aspiration can make people vulnerable to cheats and con artists as get-rich-quick schemes proliferate. Does the fact that new innovations and possibilities – wealth, stocks and shares – come without any schooling in these new phenomena mean that some people lose out and are ultimately unable to catch up?

I think Zhu Feng, the poor investor, is the victim of naïveté, as well as a certain misplaced faith in the government. He’s a young government bureaucrat who prides himself on being street smart and savvy, much more so than the older men left behind by the economy like his father, who he scorns. Yet at the point we meet him in the story, like many of his generation, he’s never truly been tested or tried, and when he gets swept up in the frictionless ease of this new playground, the stock market, he really doesn’t have many defences. Ironically, it’s his unschooled father who turns out to be wiser in some ways. The story is absolutely about two young men playing the stock market but to me, it was also about a generation gap between the main character and his father, and the surprising knowledge of each other that they acquire along the way.

And yes, it’s also about what you describe – what it’s like to be young and ambitious and desperate, and trying to find any way possible to catch up with your wealthier peers, while also having a certain blindness to the struggles of those around you.

This is also perhaps a theme of my favourite story in the book, Gubeikou Spirit, where a group of subway commuters become stranded in a station. They cannot leave, no trains come, they must persevere against the backdrop of the repeated slogan, ‘We’ll Get There Together’. Yet the tale suggests that while that may ultimately be true, not everyone will get there at the same time, in the same way, or by the same route and that the concept of ‘there’ is different for everyone anyway. In the story, we see that trains don’t always stop for everyone, tunnels often lead nowhere, some cave in, some are dead ends, others are under construction just beyond our reach. Is this your perfect allegory for China in the 21st century so far?

I’m so glad to know you enjoyed that story. I don’t know what the perfect allegory for China in the 21st century is. But you’re correct that so many of the themes the story evokes are precisely the ones that, to me, are at the heart of life in modern China. On the one hand, it’s a story about public transportation, bureaucratic overreach, and a system that breaks down. But it’s also about what it means to live in a society in which one’s choices are so constrained, and how adaptive human nature is, and how powerful – and frightening – that trait can be.

Over the course of the story, we see this group of commuters alternately turn on each other and band together, and how their sense of self is shaped by state media. We see their sense of civic pride and how resilient they can be, and how that resilience is a double-edged sword. There’s ramen and politics and bad TV shows. There’s earnestness and cynicism, romance and recriminations and people like the main character, who are determined to find their way out. Each time I reread it, I find myself sympathising with a different character, and likewise, I hope the reader comes away being able to see through different eyes, as well. China isn’t one story, it’s billions of stories, and I hope ‘Land of Big Numbers’ opens up more audiences to the complexity of the world it contains.

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According to a survey conducted in 2020, the number of listeners of podcasts, audiobooks and other audio shows is now estimated to be around 542 million – and that’s just in China. Across the globe, podcasts have become one of the most convenient ways to take in new information, and is increasingly one of the most creative too. Here are 13 podcasts on China you should be listening to now to understand the country better.

Business

Tech Buzz China: Co-hosted by the bilingual and bicultural Rui Ma and Ying Lu, Tech Buzz China is a biweekly technology podcast that is all about China’s innovations. They share and discuss the most important tech news from China every week, and include commentary from investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs.

The Sinica Podcast: The flagship show of the Sinica Podcast Network founded in 2010 and hosted by Kaiser Kuo and Jeremy Goldkorn offers a frank and engaging weekly discussion on business, technology, politics, and culture in China with a range of experts such as former National Security Council China director Ryan Hass or Pulitzer Prize winning writer Ian Johnson.

Chinese Whispers (The Spectator): A fortnightly podcast, hosted by Cindy Yu, offering an in-depth look into Chinese politics, society, history and much more.

EU-China Podcast: Bringing you interviews with experts and practitioners directly involved in EU-China relations, this show delivers concise and straight-to-the-point briefs on the top EU-China news making headlines.

China Biz Roundup: This podcast by Caixing Global, China’s top independent news outlet specialising in economics, business and financial news, offers a short, 15-minute daily update for investors, business leaders, policymakers and anyone interested in the latest from the country.

China Talk: A weekly show exploring China’s economy and tech scene, hosted by Jordan Schneider and published on Lawfare. Guests include a wide range of policy analysts, business professionals, journalists, and academics.

China Business Brief: CBBC’s very own podcast that offers a fresh perspective on issues and developments affecting anyone doing business in or with China, the world’s second-largest economy.

Technology

China Tech Investor: This is one for tech and startup enthusiasts. Co-hosted by contributor Elliott Zaagman and investor James Hull, each episode brings in a different specialist to talk about the emerging trends, offer business advice, and general news within the tech sphere.

Culture

Middle Earth: China’s Cultural Industry: Hosted by Aladin Farré, Cao Liuying, Karin Chien, and Jenny Wu, this podcast provides a unique perspective on the low-budget films and art-house movies coming out of China.

Bottled in China: Hosted by Emilie Steckenborn, this podcast looks at China’s Food & Drink scene through conversations with KOLs, brewers, and restaurant owners in the F&B sector.

NuVoices – Hosted by Chenni Xu, Cindy Gao and Joanna Chi, NüVoices explores and narrates the role of women in academia, media and the arts, as well as addressing issues of abuse of power and international and domestic politics.

Ta For Ta: The title of this podcast means “her for her” and is a biweekly show capturing the narratives of women from Greater China. Hosted by Juliana Batista, and produced by SupChina on the Sinica Podcast Network, listeners hear from invited guests who share their insights and experiences ranging from navigating cultural divides in the business sector, to female empowerment.

Environment:

Environment China: This is a bilingual podcast under the Beijing Energy Network. The show features interviews and conversations with advocates, entrepreneurs and experts working in the environmental field in China.

Need help researching the China market? Talk to a CBBC advisor today – click here.

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M&M’s, Michelin, Monopoly, Nintendo, KFC and Pringles – all household names, and all have mascots that are synonymous with their brands. What helps these brands connect with their customers is a relatable, recognisable and memorable character that creates an empathic reaction in a glimpse.

T-Mall’s feline games controller mascot

Those familiar with Chinese giants TenCent, Meituan (the largest home delivery app) and T-Mall (the e-commerce megalith) will immediately recognise the QQ penguin, scooter drivers dressed in yellow with kangaroo ears on their helmets, and the video game controller-shaped cat head from T-mall advertisements plastered throughout Chinese subway stations.

Both in the West and in China, companies use mascots to differentiate themselves from their competitors and convey their brand personalities, but the key difference is their ubiquity in China

Both in the West and in China, companies use mascots to differentiate themselves from their competitors and convey their brand personalities, but the key difference is their ubiquity in China. Mascots – traditionally anthropomorphic cartoon characters – help companies build a more powerful brand image and persona, eliciting a direct intuitive response in consumers, and broaden the scope of a company’s engagement that takes the relationship beyond the purely transactional nature of purchasing.

Jingjing and Chacha are two animated characters that police in southern China use to broadcast public messages

“The Effect of Brand Mascots on Consumers’ Purchasing Behaviors” (2016) by Proud Arunrangsiwed and Isari Pairoa found that brand mascots significantly increase a customer’s willingness to purchase products, create a more positive attitude toward the products, and heighten the possibility of purchase. In China, using ‘ke-ai’  (Mandarin for ‘cute’ ) characters and cartoons to convey messages is appreciably more common than in the West, and far more acceptable to the adult cultural palate; even the CCP uses cartoons to make public announcements, and recommends television broadcasters give priority to animated series.

QQ’s penguin mascot is one of China’s most recognisable

Brand mascots are able to function as influencers on social media platforms and build a following around their stories. According to Synthesio, a social media analytics company, mascots notably outperform celebrity endorsers. Most companies in China have official WeChat accounts, and those with mascots periodically create animated stickers for their followers to download, share and pepper into their chats, tapping into the 1.2 billion monthly user rate of the platform.

According to Synthesio, a social media analytics company, mascots notably outperform celebrity endorsers

Similarly, Chinese companies’ marketing departments will release seasonal posters depicting their mascots celebrating major Chinese and Western holidays and downloadable phone wallpapers for followers to decorate their home screens. After applying for the appropriate trademarks, a company’s mascot can itself become a licensed intellectual property. Using the image and personality of a popular character can help the sales of consumer product lines such as apparel and toys, video games and animated media, and generate licensing revenue for the IP owner.

The waterproof radio B.Duck now features in a fashion line

One example in China is B.Duck, which began as a company selling waterproof radios, and now has a successful line of products based solely around their character, including their own fashion apparel lines, as well as a long list of licensing awards. Matt Wills, founder of Floob Creative, a Shanghai-based design agency, focuses on exploiting the popularity of mascots in China. “I noticed a hole in the creative market – whereas many design agencies focus broadly on logo and graphic design, we differentiate ourselves by specialising in character and product design.”

Wills has a background in IP development and consumer product design, most recently as the creative director for Dark Horse Comics. “It was a natural fit for me, so I found the best illustrators, animators and designers in my network, and we are connecting with an increasing number of clients who see the value in having a character that resonates with their demographic.”

Matt Wills of Floob Creative can be reached at hello@floobcreative.com

The post Why you should consider having a brand mascot in China appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

I originally came to Beijing back in 2017 on a teaching fellowship through Princeton in Asia. I had been an early childhood educator for about three years at that point and felt a desire to ‘disrupt’ my life a bit. I came to China to force myself to live a different life in the hopes of discovering something new.

I accepted a position as an English lecturer at China Foreign Affairs University because it was a new challenge in my career as an educator and afforded me a schedule with substantial free time. I believed this would give me the chance I felt I needed to try and figure things out.

I spent all my free time following every interest and passion I had, and reflected, researched, and explored things I thought I wanted to do. I was searching for an activity to focus on outside of work to help me build new skills and to potentially find another career path.

I felt like I was waiting for some sort of sign that would give me a clue into what I was really meant to do. Then the moment came. I was invited to a dinner a friend of mine was hosting for black women in Beijing and I met a young woman named Maria.  Not long after our meeting I stumbled upon the idea for an events platform and needed a place to start. I reached out to Maria on WeChat and after a few meetings, I knew she was the person I should work with to build What’s Good Beijing? From that moment on, she has been my co-founder, business partner, and best friend.

As a newcomer to Beijing, I knew going to events would be a great way for me to get to know both places and people. I would go through every source I could find for event information (WeChat groups, subscription accounts, websites, blogs, word of mouth). I quickly figured out a couple of things. One, that finding these events was a heavier lift than I expected. And two, that a lot of the events I would attend were hosted by people within the local black expat community.

My lightbulb moment was the Mainland China premiere of Black Panther in February 2018. A black woman who owned a media company hosted a premiere party for the film at a local Beijing movie theatre. Tickets sold quickly and it was a fabulous red-carpet affair. The night before the event I checked the WeChat group and saw several people begging for tickets despite the event being sold out. They’d only just found out about the event. So I asked the same event group chat if they knew of one single platform that promoted all events happening in the city, and when I realised there wasn’t one I decided to launch What’s Good Beijing? (WGB)

Our desire was to create an inclusive events platform because of all the amazing events happening within the black community. As we began the building process, we quickly found that there was an overwhelming number of events from the wider Beijing community that also struggled with visibility. We made it our mission to effectively gather all the information we could find to better promote these events in a digestible and aesthetically pleasing way.

As we began the building process, we quickly found that there was an overwhelming number of events from the wider Beijing community that also struggled with visibility

Our first and main product became our weekly events magazine – What’s Good Beijing? – which consisted of only the images of event posters and their QR codes from WeChat. We believed images were the best way to quickly absorb information. We then categorised and curated the events for our audience which began with just one small WeChat group. By the end of year one, we had three functioning groups and to date we own and manage five groups on WeChat.

As our following grew, so did our business model. We would receive inquiries about venue suggestions, promotional strategies, even event logistics. We then decided to expand our business into providing event consultation support for individual event hosts all the way up to larger corporate entities such as hotels. With all the knowledge and experience we gained in event planning it seemed natural to start hosting our own events. We already had a clear understanding of what existed in the city so we could easily see what was missing. We became known for our popular event series called “Trap N’ Paint” which was a night of music, paint, and creativity. Attendees would party and paint while listening to trap hip-hop music, an underrepresented genre in Beijing’s nightlife scene.

It was a full-circle experience to bring our online followers to offline events, to connect with them and to facilitate their connections with others. Beijing is a big city and so it can take some time to adjust and find your niche. Our platform brings diverse people together because we bring diverse information together. People are able to use our magazine as a jumping-off point to find a community they can belong to. We would receive overwhelming feedback from our followers about how our platform helped them cure their boredom, connect with people, and push them out of their comfort zone. This was always our ultimate goal, which tells us that we truly are what’s good in Beijing.

I find myself especially lucky that I do not need to look much further than my family for mentors and deeply influential people. The primary person being the matriarch of my family, Ojinika Doris Ibekwe Mora. She is a proud Nigerian mother of eight children and a formidable woman with the intelligence, grace and humour to match. So much of what I am, came directly from her. She set the foundation for who I am and for what I have accomplished.

My mother showed me what a fighting spirit looks like. I watched her fight alongside my father to provide for our family as immigrants in America. I watched her fight for success in her career as a pharmacologist over several decades. I watched her fight for her integrity in the face of both gender and racial discrimination. My whole family watched as she fought for her life while battling several types of severe cancer. I was raised by the living and breathing definition of resilience. And what truly was remarkable and borderline otherworldly to me was the faith and positivity she used to light her way through any dark moment. If she could do all that well then of course I had to believe that I could do just about anything.

Humility, passion for life, unwavering faith, and a strong sense of self are just a few of the impactful qualities of my mother that I have tried to ‘copy and paste’ into my own life. In my adult life I see the real influence my mother has had on my core beliefs and principles: The first being the importance of taking pride in who you are and where you come from. I am a proud queer Nigerian American woman and have learned from my mother to bring my full self with me everywhere.

I am a proud queer Nigerian American woman and have learned from my mother to bring my full self with me everywhere.

Taking pride in who you are takes courage and bravery since you cannot always be promised a warm welcome. This is why my mother showed me how to hold on to your joy. Joy is an internal feeling that gives you the power to find positivity despite your outward circumstance. Whether things are great or terrible, a joyful person will always try and find a reason to smile. My mother taught me to be a “child of change.” This means three things: (1) always seek to be a better version of yourself (2) embrace the change that life throws at you and (3) actively bring change to any spaces that you occupy.

While I acknowledge the gross inequities that still exist for women in business, I cannot say I personally have dealt with any gender-specific challenges while in China. I am proud to say that I have had so many transformative and positive experiences throughout my entrepreneurship journey so far. During the nascent stages of WGB I was able to build meaningful and diverse partnerships with male and female entrepreneurs across different industries. I was impressed with the various support groups and networks for women in business and the spirit of collaboration in the air. I was even lucky enough to speak on a panel of other ambitious businesswomen at the US Embassy about female entrepreneurship.

I had never even experienced this many successful female entrepreneurs in one place in my life. Since WGB is a woman-owned enterprise, we consciously supported other women through event promotion, production of advertising materials (videos, photos, posters), and listening ears.

I had never even experienced this many successful female entrepreneurs in one place in my life

I also discovered a strong community of black women in business here in China. As a black woman I know we are uniquely underrepresented in this industry and believed it was important to connect with others just like me. So much so that WGB gave special focus to hosting and supporting events that honoured the contributions of black women here in Beijing. Interestingly enough, as adults, all five of my sisters including myself work in and/or own a business. This illustrates the positive impact of gender diversity in the workplace. People struggle to believe in what they cannot see.

The diversity of our backgrounds, identities, and experiences tells a story and provides each of us with unique perspectives. Nigerian feminist writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie in a 2009 TED talk warns of the dangers of a “single story.” I believe that this lack of contextual knowledge about diverse peoples makes you ill-equipped to understand, represent, and to serve them. A diverse business environment acknowledges that no one person knows or has done everything. This is the benefit that gender and overall diversity bring to business.

I received the best piece of business advice long before I thought about being an entrepreneur. When I was about 11, my brother said it was important to “fail better.” I thought he misspoke and meant to say, “feel better” so when I finally heard correctly, it made even less sense.

When things would go wrong in my business or in my life I would always get swept up in the negative emotions of failure. The anger, anxiety, fear, and insecurities would all bubble to the surface. It often would derail my progress and even trigger bouts of depression. By the time I was able to move past it, I would always regret the time wasted. As I thought about the concept of “failing better” I began to realise that failure was not just something you could experience, but a skill you could develop. In my process of getting better at failing, when things would go awry I would try to reframe and reimagine the failure to help get through it more effectively.

I believe keeping a sense of humour when problem-solving is as important as staying calm. My ten years in early childhood education taught me the power of a playful mind. I learned to never underestimate the ability of play to trick the brain into doing amazing things. When experiencing failure, using playful humour can often help keep the stakes from feeling too high, thus keeping you calm and effective.

The post African American female entrepreneur Chika Mora on her company What’s Good Beijing appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Back in 2008, an anonymous foreign businessman in China decided to call himself Jack Leblanc and examine why so many businesses failed in the PRC. His thoughts back then were published as ‘Business Republic of China’, a warts-and-all take on running a foreign venture in China.

Now the book has been updated, expanded and republished as the somewhat more bluntly titled, ‘Why Your CEO Failed in China’ (Blacksmith Books). And so it seems Jack Leblanc, who first arrived in Chongqing in 1989, remains working on everything from selling plate glass to engineering dotcom dreams. He’s not entirely convinced foreign business has got China right yet, and indeed, in these trying times of trade spats, pandemics and diplomatic rows, perhaps we’re even going backwards?

Leblanc remains anonymous, but FOCUS has contacts that go back decades and Paul French was able to track him down in his hidden lair where he edits business plans, preps his IPO documents and pontificates on what we’ve all got wrong over the years.

It’s been over a decade since you wrote Business Republic of China. What brought you out of China book publishing hibernation to write another tome about why and how so many foreign businesspeople get China so wrong?

While working over the past decades with small and medium-sized Western technology companies wanting a slice of the China market, I’ve noticed a common thread: their entry strategy is often fraught with misunderstandings about the Chinese market and outdated concepts. In their Excel sheets and PPT presentations, there’s no trace of how the local market really works, how Chinese think, live and breathe business.

After muddling around for a while, the CEO will close down the China operations as it seems to be a bottomless money pit. Then, ten years down the road, a new CEO will appear on the scene realising that China is the market that needs to be broken into, either through direct sales or a production unit. Often it’s a vicious circle that repeats itself with similar mistakes and approaches, but now in a different market where local competitors have upped their game and customers have become way more sophisticated.

The main mistake is often the lack of patience to understand the peculiarities of the Chinese market on all levels

Looking back across 30 years of China experience, what are the major reason foreign CEOs have failed in China?

The main mistakes is often the lack of patience to understand the peculiarities of the Chinese market on all levels (it’s really different in many ways) and identify the key players that might be interested in their product or services. Patience runs out because local operations are only budgeted for a two to three-year run and with expected revenue streams completely off the mark.

Wanting to succeed in a demanding market like China, it’s really important to sweat it out for at least five years while gradually adapting to local sales/marketing/production methods for products/services that are really needed here.

Potential customers are not always easy to identify as there are so many buyers in the market that cater to different needs within a same industry or product type. It’s often looking for a needle in a haystack to pinpoint the one customer that is willing to pay a premium for a Western designed or made product.

As local competition doesn’t sit still, innovation and adapting to Chinese requirements often seems to be a major hurdle for Western SMEs. It could be because of financial restrains but also the attitude back home of “we’ll adapt our existing product range/designs once the volumes are really hitting the mark” or “this product has been working in other markets why can’t Chinese customers adopt this product too?”

Surely CEOs in 2020 are smarter than CEOs in 2010 or 2000 or 1990? Or are foreign CEOs simply doomed to keep making the same mistakes over and over?

The Chinese market of 10 or 20 years ago has turned into a completely different landscape where customers are now picky, more product savvy and clearly know what works for them. CEOs often forget that the Chinese market is fiercely competitive and only the best local companies will survive and reap the benefits of operating in a country of 1.4 billion souls.

Loads of Chinese studied abroad, came back 5-10 years ago with fresh ideas, knowledge, a can-do attitude and a taste of Western society. Today many of them have upped their game in niche markets, that were initially only the realm of Western SMEs. Now they’ve often become leaders in their field in China and beyond, thanks to innovative approaches in production, design, cost control and sales tools.

It’s often looking for a needle in a haystack to pinpoint the one customer that is willing to pay a premium for a Western designed or made product.

At their own peril, CEOs of Western SMEs often remain in their ivory tower of “we know best” and only dream of the riches and glory the Chinese market will bring without realising the long-term efforts and sacrifices that have to be made to break into and remain laser-focused on the market demands for the long-term.

The simplest of things a CEO could do is frequently fly into China and stay for at least ten days, travel with and listen to their local staff, trust that they know best and allow them to be at the steering wheel of the operations. At the same time, it’s important to gradually build up the SME’s presence in China to gain valuable knowledge on how this market really functions, what are the pitfalls and best practices. Coming all guns blazing might not be the best approach, as the ammunition needs to last for the long-run.

The shelf of ‘doing business in China guides’ – the good, the bad and the ugly – is groaning under the weight of so many titles. What has Jack Leblanc’s book got that the others haven’t?

Jack Leblanc only has stories to tell and doesn’t believe that this is a “how-to” book of doing business in China at all. It’s only one person’s experience and in the vastness of China, things might well be completely different from someone else’s. It’s up to the reader to make up their own mind. Jack just hopes that those stories will enable companies to understand that China is truly different and one should be ready to embrace the surprises, the failures, the unexpected, the abrupt changes in regulations and cultural differences, but also cherish the successes so that they can really stay afloat in this ever-mutating market landscape. From my end, the longer I’m in China the more I realise I really don’t really understand this place and will forever be an outsider.

They say the internet has changed everything – disruption. Why have China CEOs seemingly failed to really ‘get’ the Chinese internet and left it almost entirely to local players?

We went through the dotcom craze, and in the West, many of the wannabes fizzled out after the bubble burst. Meanwhile in China, deep-pocketed companies, combined with all those overseas graduates coming back to Chinese shores, had visions to cater to the masses that blossomed from a sheet of paper. Meanwhile, the Chinese government quietly kept on investing in infrastructure, in certain regions of the country – even fixed-line phones were leapt over to embrace mobile phones – and this brought the internet to every corner of the country. This, combined with world-class transport infrastructure, logistics and Chinese customers who are always adventurous and craving to try something new, helped build the internet giants of today.

Many Western companies failed to see the advantages the internet was bringing to China because they only looked at it with preconceived ideas and what was familiar to them: Amazon, Google etc …. and the belief that to buy something online spoils the experience or can’t offer a good service. But in China customers knew better. Instead of getting stuck in traffic jams, visiting far away shops crammed with people, suddenly, browsing, buying, entertaining, studying, going to virtual markets, making payments, was now only a click away. Even beggars on Beijing’s streets have their own QR code to receive money virtually. By the time the Chinese internet giants were well established, hurdles to market entry become unsurmountable because they’d built up a huge advantage.

You’re still a young man. In 2030, will we need another cautionary tale from Jack Leblanc about business in China or will we finally get it? What does the future hold for the newly minted, fresh-off-the-boat China CEO?

It’s difficult to predict what happens in China in ten years’ time as this market is evolving so fast that today’s business plan can be a shambles six months down the road. I hope that by 2030 more CEOs will finally change gear and get it but I wouldn’t bet on it. Today, Westerners are still thinking that they’re leaders in many fields and banging on about past experiences, while the Chinese keep on working out their dreams and needs of tomorrow.

But I’ll take a shot and make a couple of predictions:

• Most – especially those Western technology SMEs that failed to succeed building up a significant presence over the past two decades – will have been bought over by their competitors or will be a shadow of their form self.
• For Western luxury products and consumer technology, the Chinese market will be front-and-centre, as buying power here will only increase. The CEO will be most willing to focus on China as he/she will be more culturally sensitive to local buying behaviour & product preferences.
• Every CEO, even those not interested in coming to China, will finally realise the value of IP rights and how to scrupulously protect them by investing in modelled IPRs that are enforceable in China.
• By 2030, the new CEO venturing into China will already be familiar with the International technical standards that were defined by Chinese industries. Those are already slowly but surely appearing in all corners of the world and the Belt and Road initiative is a unique opportunity. The West will need to accept that there’s no longer a monopoly on setting out standards.
• As technology evolves and R&D cycles get shorter and shorter, Chinese companies will often becoming leaders in existing technologies and inventing new products that one day will become a common good in all parts of the world. Most probably the shareholders will have hired a culturally sensitive CEO.

Meanwhile, Jack Leblanc, while enjoying a glass of wine, will be looking back and wondering why, after 40 years, he still doesn’t get it.

The post Why Your CEO Failed in China appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Since I was young I have always loved traditional Chinese culture, which I learned about from studying Chinese martial arts from a young age. For as long as I could remember, I had wanted to move to China, to experience everything I had only read about up to that point. And at 21, I finally boarded a plane and set off – since then I’ve never been out of the country for more than a few weeks.

What greeted me on arrival in China was completely different from my naive expectations. I’d chosen Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province, to be my home in China. When I arrived in September 1999, the industrial hub was grey, smoggy and not the cultural hub I had been hoping for. In fact, despite all my enquiries, finding anything related to traditional culture, or at least what I had thought that meant, was nigh on impossible.

How has technology improved cultural relations?

I adapted, settled in, found a taichi teacher and started looking for things to engage myself in. Over the years I went from kindergarten teacher to business consultant, to risk analyst for a Chinese investment firm before I decided it was time to start doing something for myself. At that point I’d been in China for about 12 years. I was out for dinner with a friend, who mentioned to me how hard it had been to find something for his visiting family to ‘experience’ in the city, as opposed to just seeing the usual sites. We talked at length about how it was still quite difficult to experience any kind of traditional culture, such as Chinese painting or calligraphy, and I knew that I wanted to do something to address that problem.

Actually getting my own company off the ground was a struggle. Working in the service industry is always a hard choice; convincing customers that your services will benefit their lives is always hard, and forget about finding investment or government support for such an endeavour. No, if we were going to succeed, it would be through our own hard work and fighting for each and every customer. But that’s exactly what being an entrepreneur is all about.

AJ presenting on Chinese culture

We officially started our company in 2013, when we registered in Hong Kong, and started offering martial arts programmes to tourists from around the world. It took a few years to gain traction, but eventually, that started going well and the programmes were a success. Based on that, we decided to move on to the next step in our long term plan, and in 2017 opened a traditional Chinese culture centre in Beijing, offering private workshops and scheduled events in more than 20 different Chinese cultural subjects, mostly to tourists but also local expats as well. We did so well in fact that we maintained a five star review rating across all sites we were listed on and rose to number seven on TripAdvisor for cultural experiences in Beijing.

The fact that tourists were our main client base, almost proved to be our downfall. Relying on just that one demographic for our entire business, was one that we should have addressed early on. When problems first became apparent at the end of January, our initial take wasn’t to panic. China can handle it, it will be dealt with swiftly enough, we thought.

Why cross cultural training is essential to your business

We ignored the British government’s suggestions to leave China and posted comments online trying to balance the Western media’s coverage on China’s way of dealing with the situation. We thought we would just have to spend a few weeks relaxing and that things would soon return to normal. We were right about China’s handling of the situation but grossly underestimated the haphazard response from many Western countries and their lack of clarity and direction.

In China, those of us whose businesses are based on large gatherings, and especially tourists, are still at a disadvantage. Although the necessary steps were taken to return to near normality in just a few months, we could tell we wouldn’t be seeing the usual numbers during the summer months that we had during previous years. We knew that we would have to adapt to survive.

We weren’t alone in our troubles and wanted to work together in some way with other companies in a similar position to us. So we started reaching out to other companies reliant on tourists to see what we could do to help each other. We created some content featuring a handful of other companies discussing how they were handling the situation and the articles we produced were well received. This became a series which was shared on social media, keeping the featured companies in the minds of potential customers and reaching new audiences – not to mention providing some helpful cultural information about Beijing.

One of the classes laid on by Cultural Keys

We started to offer online presentations to continue to engage people in Chinese culture. These proved extremely popular and definitely helped us stay active and positive, with something to focus on during the early summer. We previously hadn’t considered an online offering before, but after seeing the demand both locally and internationally, we have decided this is something we will continue to offer long-term.

Because we have always kept our overheads low, we managed to survive on a reduced income. When we opened the culture centre two years ago, we made a decision to have no permanent staff or teachers, and this, coupled with very low rent, meant that we were able to get through the pandemic relatively unharmed. We lost a huge amount of business, through cancelled events in the spring, lost customers and B2B opportunities we were unable to capitalise on, but we did weather it.

We used the time we were given to look carefully at ourselves, our company, what we do and how we do it. And I think that has most definitely made us better and stronger, both in terms of the products we’ll offer moving forward and through working with others to build a community of like-minded businesses.

The post Entrepreneur Spotlight: Cultural Keys appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.

Sheedy has worked all over the world and was given the opportunity to work closely with Li Jinyuan, the founder and Chairman of Tiens Group – known locally as Tianshi – a large multi-level marketing company headquartered in Tianjin selling everything from traditional Chinese medicines to instant coffee. Sheedy’s time at Tiens and conversations with Chairman Li led him to research and write Unlocking The Emperor’s Door (Nicholas Brealey Publishing), a book that examines, among other things, the path to Tiens’ success locally and internationally, and the methodology behind multiple innovative new products. Paul French caught up with Chris Sheedy to hear more…

We don’t have shelves of books about doing business with Sweden or Canada, but we do for China. China and the West have been doing business for decades now. How come issues like respect, where you sit and how you refer to people are still so important to success?

That’s an excellent observation, and the answer is both extremely simple and terribly complex. First of all, few territories are as culturally different to the West, or indeed are changing so rapidly internally and in terms of their global reach. Successful business in Sweden or Canada, or almost anywhere else in the world, doesn’t rely so heavily on an entirely new set of cultural guidelines being followed.

Then, there’s the fact that more businesses than ever are looking to China as a part of their growth strategy – and what a growth strategy it is if a brand succeeds in China. Where there is demand (in this case for business knowledge) there is supply (in this case, shelves of books).

The more complex answer is something businesspeople in the West should be proud of. That’s the fact that we want to do business well in other territories, and understand how to do business with Chinese companies globally. We’ve moved beyond the idea that everything should work our way, that we can force our own processes and methods of business and ways of thinking and, indeed, our own culture, onto those with whom we do business. We want those we’re dealing with to know that we’ve done our research and that we respect their ways.

That, in fact, is how the best business has always been done – respectfully, with empathy and even with vulnerability. In the Covid-19 and post Covid-19 environment, many thought-leaders agree, this very human approach to business will be more important than ever.

You discuss in detail the highly regulated and hierarchical workplace at Tiens Group. In light of China’s rapidly changing society and new generations coming up through the management structure, will the Chinese workplace become more flexible over time?

The Chinese workplace absolutely will become more flexible – it’s happening right now. Even the most traditional Chinese leaders are recognising the value of diversity of thought and leadership. The clearest examples of this are in the tier one cities in China, where many middle managers have earned qualifications, such as MBAs and other degrees, in the West. They have returned to China with a slightly different point of view on how businesses can be managed, and on their roles within those businesses. Their attitudes are outstanding – a perfect mix of self-confidence, role competence and cultural respect.

Why vocational training is on the rise

On the flipside, during meetings within various organisations in China I witnessed the negative side of the hierarchical structure – younger but highly competent staff sitting silently in meetings, never sensing they had permission to offer their ideas, simply waiting to be told what to do. This creates a bystander culture in which everybody watches and waits for instructions from above. It is the opposite of the engagement and buy-in that drives discretionary effort. But, let’s be honest, this doesn’t only happen in Chinese businesses.

I witnessed the negative side of the hierarchical structure – younger but highly competent staff sitting silently in meetings, never sensing they had permission to offer their ideas, simply waiting to be told what to do.

Chinese workplaces face all of the same challenges as those in the West. The big difference is the level of respect Chinese workforces typically have for senior people, and this comes from somewhere much deeper within the Chinese culture. Depending on the way this respect reveals itself in the workplace, it can be an exceptionally positive organisational trait or one that doesn’t support or encourage new or diverse ideas.

I discovered a country that is carefully balancing centuries of tradition with decades of rampant advancement

Throughout the book, you use the example of Tiens’ Chairman Li Jinyuan. Why do you find his case study so compelling?

I’m unashamed to say I was fascinated by Chairman Li from the moment we met.

This is partly because his story contains all of the hallmarks of a page-turner. He came from almost-rags to create unimaginable riches in a business environment which, for several decades, offered entrepreneurs no support at all.

He failed, then failed again, then failed some more, but continued to adapt and tap into new resources that others simply didn’t identify, during seemingly endless periods of adversity. He is the living embodiment of resilience and persistent vision. If the book was purely about his business story, it would be a great one.

What are the most common mistakes foreign businesses make?

Perhaps most importantly, Chairman Li built his empire on his own, suffering more than his fair share of loss along the way. He didn’t do it with family money. He didn’t take over a business that was already in existence. He didn’t even have an extensive education, but goodness, he could teach today’s young businesspeople a thing or two.

Chairman Li is imperfect. He has made some great mistakes. And he is still consciously attempting to democratise control of his business to encourage diversity of leadership and has not yet succeeded in that endeavour. But I think I’d be right in saying he has never, for even a single day, lost his passion for community and his sense of responsibility to others.

As somebody who has spent his life entirely within and around Western businesses, I found the level of corporate generosity and social responsibility within Tiens Group simply astounding. And he serves a mean Moutai…

The concept of ‘face’ in business in China has been endlessly discussed. Why are we still talking about it? Have we failed to truly understand it?

Of course we have failed to truly understand it, and that’s fine. The concept is so deep and complex. It has developed over centuries and is woven intricately into the fabric of every interaction, every relationship, every belief, every word spoken and every word unspoken in China.

Many Chinese people told me that even they don’t have a full grasp of the idea of face, or at least can’t articulate it in a way that foreigners would easily understand. So, it’s okay for Westerners to lack a thorough comprehension. I found the more I understood of the concept, the more I realised I didn’t understand.

The concept is so deep and complex. It has developed over centuries and is woven intricately into the fabric of every interaction, every relationship, every belief, every word spoken and every word unspoken in China.

Fortunately, there’s a surface level of comprehension that tends to get you through most interactions, and that actually serves as a good model for any relationship, in China or elsewhere. It involves listening more than you talk, always demonstrating respect for those around you, never attempting to paint anybody else in a negative light and never misrepresenting your abilities.

Face, at its most basic level, is about being a good, modest person, and that’s an excellent starting point for anybody, anywhere.

Fortunately, the Chinese people are exceptionally forgiving when a foreigner gets things wrong, as I did constantly…

Tiens Group is into direct selling, which has something of a global image problem. Yet in China, it’s been phenomenally successfully for decades, all the way through to today’s live streaming. Why is direct selling, seemingly in all its manifestations, so massive and intense in China?

Direct selling certainly has an image problem globally, and it’s entirely of its own making. The industry, particularly in the US, created serious problems for itself when it shifted from making money by selling something, to making money by selling nothing.

But most of the direct selling world does excellent business and does it very well. After all, it’s simply a retail model without stores, a good way for salespeople to demonstrate and sell products to interested buyers.

Why cross cultural training is key to business success

Chairman Li pioneered direct selling in China. He learned from the very best and very worst examples in the US. He recognised direct selling as the perfect model for his health products to be explained, rather than languishing on the shelves of corner stores and mini-markets.

The industry did well in China because of a lack of big-brand supermarket chains and an enormous, but geographically dispersed population. However, as you mentioned, many such businesses (including Tiens Group) have in the last few years pivoted their models to look and behave more like online retailers than direct sales outfits. This is partly because of changes in technology and partly because of changing expectations of younger customers in China and worldwide.

You worked in close proximity to Chairman Li at Tiens for some time. Looking back on that time, what were your major discoveries?

Apart from Moutai, you mean? Actually, I’d classify the experience of working closely with Chairman Li, of being given an access-all-areas pass within a Chinese multinational, and of spending such a long period in China, as life-changing.

In the West, we are fed an enormous amount of disinformation about China. This is part of the reason that we are unsure about doing business there, and why some businesses fail on their first few attempts at setting up relationships.

After all he has achieved, and with all they know about what he has built, he still senses a feeling of superiority from some Westerners.

Chairman Li explained to me, in a very Chinese and respectful way, that sometimes he senses Western businesspeople think Chinese business leaders are somehow backwards. After all he has achieved, and with all they know about what he has built, he still senses a feeling of superiority from some Westerners. And of course, that would happen.

Because of the typically negative media reports on China, and because of the fact that in the West we tend to feel our own culture is quite advanced, I was surprised by the level of technology and the depth of cultural complexity in China.

I discovered a country that is carefully balancing centuries of tradition with decades of rampant advancement, cities that made Western centres look positively medieval, a government that has absolute control and that mostly uses that control in a positive way, and generations of Chinese (most of whom deeply respect their government, unlike the way we in the West tend to feel about ours…) struggling to come to terms with the line they’re currently straddling, the one between the old and the new.

The China story over the next few decades will be ever more fascinating, particularly in the twisted and splintered, post Covid-19 environment. I look forward to seeing how it all unfolds.

The post Christopher Sheedy’s book Unlocking The Emperor’s Door appeared first on Focus - China Britain Business Council.