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Doing Business in China?
By Joseph Hunkins at April 16, 2008 1 CommentsHome from two weeks in China I’m still struggling to digest the business bits I took away from the experience. I had a very enjoyable dinner meeting with two internet startup entrepreneurs in Shanghai. One is starting a series of Startup and Entrepreneur meetings in Beijing called “BASE” which will help introduce new startups and entrepreneurs working in the Beijing area.
Initially, the single most striking aspect of China to me was how many workers would be assigned to tasks that in the west are generally done with machines or by a single person. Businesses seem to throw people at jobs, rather than innovation and technology, though I’m hardly experienced enough to generalize about this yet.
I found this video interview of Beijing filmmaker Siok Siok Tan who has a great introduction suggesting how one should approach learning about China business, which clearly happens in a different context than what most westerners generally expect:
Labels: beijing, china, china business
One Comment
I’ve been in China for 3 years now. The observation that business “throw people at a job” is accurate but not because Chinese are not able to automate, but because labor costs are so much lower. As an American (Born Chinese), our rules of thumbs for costs are completely wrong. For example, I have a chaffeur and a nanny/housekeeper/cook. In the US, only the super rich can afford these luxuries. In China, the chaffeur essentially comes with the rental of the car, and many middle class citizens have nannies and housekeepers. Albeit, costs are rising quickly, but for the moment, it often makes more sense to use human labor than to automate.