【中文标题】熊猫的另一副面孔
【原文标题】The panda has two faces
【登载媒体】经济学家
【原文作者】Schumpeter
【原文链接】http://www.economist.com/business-finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15814746
在中国做生意永远不会像是在人民公园散步一样。
谷歌和力拓在商业界就像粉笔和奶酪一样差异巨大——前者是个诞生于1998年的擅于摆弄程序的神童；后者则是一个从1873年就致力于采矿事业的老者。但是在过去的几个月里，他们都发现自己在中国政府面前遇到了麻烦。
为了躲避监管，谷歌关闭了中文搜索引擎，把来自中国的流量分流到香港服务器；力拓眼睁睁地看着自己的4名雇员以收受中国公司贿赂的罪名被判长期监禁。谷歌和力拓仅仅是近期在中国面前碰得灰头土脸的一长串西方公司中的两个新人。联合利华被与一家看不上眼的中国合作方逼婚，因此而痛苦多年。中国政府以看似站不住脚的确保竞争为理由，阻止了可口可乐收购一家本地果汁制造企业的企图。美国商会最近的一项调查显示，在中国做生意的大部分美国公司都感到他们是歧视性政策和区别对待的受害者。
显而易见的原因在于执政的共产党对所有与其打交道的人来说都是一场恶梦——翻手为云覆手为雨。共产党几十年来一直在热切地追求外国投资者，它抛出的条件是廉价的劳动力和巨大的潜在市场，更不用提那些豪华的工业园区和世界级的基础设施。从90年代中期开始，上海就修建了第二座航站楼、一条新的地铁线、内外环公路、两座高架通道和一条轻轨线。
但是与此同时，中国政府也要分回那“一磅肉”（译者注：语自莎士比亚名剧《威尼斯商人》，比喻合法却极不合理的要求）。共产党把外国投资视为获取先进技术的机会，而不仅仅是就业机会和资本，因此而始终坚持合资公司的方式。它把经济增长视为扩张自身力量的工具，因此一旦感觉到难以控制的威胁，就会祭出铁拳政策。
这些政治困扰因素还要叠加在文化因素之上，中国人对于“关系”的强调让人很难区分正常交易与腐败之前的差别。而且，脆弱的司法系统意味着公司是在一个昏暗、困惑的环境中运作。透明国际在最近的一个腐败印象索引中，把中国排在180个国家中的第79位。
腐败、司法的肆意妄为，以及政府对外国公司的极力控制与剥削，都在力拓案件中发挥了作用。尽管力拓雇员是因坦承接受贿赂而被定罪，但政府逮捕这些人的时机恰好是在力拓决定退出与一个中国政府控制的公司进行合作之后，而且当时力拓正在与其它几家中国公司商谈铁矿石的价格问题。中国政府并没有将中国的行贿者绳之以法。在谷歌事件中，政府不仅坚持要审查搜索结果，而且还被认为在幕后策划了攻击谷歌服务器中不同政见者的邮箱的行动。
真是一塌糊涂。但是，如果有一件事情要比与中国做生意更加危险，那就是不和中国做生意。但凡你能想到的任何商品，中国都即将成为其世界上最大的市场。这里有4亿网民，美国的数量是2.4亿，印度8千万。去年，中国的汽车销量超过美国，中国市场是世界上唯一一个继续膨胀的市场。中国的经济继续保持每年10％的增长，而发达国家的经济似乎在很长一段时间内都不会有任何起色。难怪会有30万家外国公司在这个中土帝国投资。
这些公司如何把握它们的机会？如何驾驭中国这股巨浪而不是被拍在浪花底下？世界上最优秀的公司在中国步履艰难这一事实说明不会有一个简单的答案。但是，几十年来不同公司的痛苦经历指明了两个明确的法则。
多拍马屁
第一，外国公司需要相对夸张地表示出对中国传统的尊重。中国人都极为以它们的历史为骄傲，并且极不信任外国人，在他们看来，这些外国人长久以来一直在虐待他们。这意味着要在这个国家下长期的赌注。宝洁花了3年时间才开始在中国盈利，欧莱雅花了9年。肯德基用了10年时间不断完善其商业模式，才形成目前这种在450个城市都有其餐厅的巨型网络。这里包含的另一层含义是在政治活动上要舍得投入。渣打银行中国区总裁黄远辉认为，在华跨国公司的高层人士必须花费他们三到四成的时间来奉承当地的官员和政策制定者们。
第二，外国公司不应当为短期利益而牺牲其原则。信息自由对于谷歌的招牌来说是无比重要的，那么它就应当宣布其神圣不可侵犯，并且否定自己原先用其来交换商业利益的行为。尽管中国政府不一定会接受这种强硬的态度，但是就谷歌事件来看，这要比奴颜婢膝地遵从第一条法则有更好的机会。
这一切还都是值得的。越来越多的迹象表明，中国市场正在按其既定方向发展。美国商会在2008年的一份报告中说，它调查过的公司中，有四分之三最终还是在中国赚到钱了。还有超过一半的公司利润高于全球平均利润水平，而且比十年前的利润率增长了13％。但是同样，中国依然会扮演难伺候的角色。他们通过压榨西方公司获得了巨大的利益，而且金融危机更增强了他们继续采取这种方式的信心。在未来几年，像谷歌和力拓这样的事件会越来越多。
原文：
Doing business in China is no stroll in the people’s park—and never will be
GOOGLE and Rio Tinto are the chalk and cheese of the business world: the former a bits-and-bites wunderkind born in 1998, the latter a grizzled mining company that has been around since 1873. But over the past few months they have both found themselves in trouble with the Chinese authorities.
To avoid censorship, Google has closed its Chinese search engine and diverted traffic from the country to its site in Hong Kong. Rio Tinto has seen four of its employees sentenced to lengthy prison terms for taking bribes from Chinese firms. Google and Rio are only the most recent of a long line of Western companies to have been bruised by China. Unilever suffered for years because it was forced into shotgun marriages with unsatisfactory Chinese partners. The government has prevented Coca-Cola from buying a local juice-maker out of seemingly spurious concerns about competition. A recent survey by the American Chamber of Commerce in China found that a high proportion of American firms doing business in the country feel that they are the victims of discriminatory or inconsistent treatment.
The most obvious reason for this is that the ruling Communist Party is a nightmare to deal with—all smiles one moment and snarls the next. The party has been wooing foreign investors for decades with access to cheap labour and a huge market, not to mention fancy office parks and world-class infrastructure: since the mid-1990s Shanghai has built a second international airport, a new subway, inner and outer ring roads, two elevated freeways and a light-rail system.
But at the same time the Chinese want their pound of flesh. The party regards foreign investment as a mechanism for acquiring foreign know-how rather than just jobs and capital; hence the insistence on joint ventures. It also regards economic growth as a tool for entrenching its own power; hence the application of the iron fist whenever business threatens to get out of control.
These political difficulties are piled on top of cultural difficulties. The Chinese emphasis on personal connections (guanxi) makes it hard to distinguish between business-as-usual and corruption. And the weakness of the legal system means that companies operate in a confusing half-light. Transparency International’s most recent Corruption Perceptions Index ranks China 79th out of 180 countries.
Corruption, legal caprice and the government’s determination to control and exploit foreign firms all seem to have played a part in Rio’s troubles. Although the trial of Rio’s employees hinged on the bribes they confessed to taking, the government’s decision to arrest them in the first place came hot on the heels of Rio’s decision to pull out of a deal with one Chinese state-controlled firm, and amid tense negotiations over the price of iron ore with others. The government has done nothing to bring the Chinese bribe-payers to book. In the case of Google, the government not only insisted on censoring search results, but was also thought to be behind attempts to hack into dissidents’ correspondence on the company’s webmail service.
All very messy. Yet the only thing more dangerous than dealing with China is not dealing with it. China is already well on the way to becoming the world’s biggest market for anything you can think of. It has 400m internet-users compared with America’s 240m and India’s 80m. Last year car sales in China surpassed those in the United States. And the Chinese market is only going to get bigger. China’s economy is growing at 10% a year at a time when the developed world looks set for a period of prolonged lethargy. No wonder more than 300,000 foreign firms have invested in the Middle Kingdom.
How can these companies boost their chances of riding the Chinese wave rather than being dragged down by the undertow? The fact that some of the world’s best companies have struggled in China suggests that there are no easy answers. But several decades of corporate agonies suggest two clear rules for doing business in the country.
Just add butter
The first is that companies need to show an almost exaggerated respect for China’s traditions: the Chinese are simultaneously immensely proud of their history and highly suspicious of foreigners who, in their view, have repeatedly mistreated them. This means making a long-term bet on the country. P&G took three years to become profitable in China. L’Oreal took nine. KFC spent ten years perfecting its business model before becoming the powerhouse that it now is, with restaurants in 450 cities. It also means investing heavily in politicking. Stanley Wong, head of Standard Chartered’s Chinese operations, reckons that multinationals’ senior representatives in China must spend 30-40% of their time buttering up officials and regulators.
The second rule is that companies should never abandon their principles for short-term gains. Freedom of information is so central to Google’s identity that it was right to declare it sacrosanct and repudiate its previous willingness to negotiate it away for commercial advantage. Although the Chinese government may not accept such intransigence, as in Google’s case, the odds are better if firms slavishly follow the first rule.
That is a price worth paying. There is growing evidence that the Chinese market is living up to its promise. The American Chamber reported in 2008 that three-quarters of the companies that it surveyed were finally making money in China, and almost half were enjoying margins that are higher than the global average, up from 13% a decade before. But there is equally no doubt that the Chinese will remain tough customers. They have profited mightily from their ability to squeeze concessions from Western firms. And the financial crisis has boosted their confidence in their way of doing things. There will be plenty more cases like Google and Rio Tinto in the years to come. |
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发表于 2010-4-7 10:42
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发表于 2010-4-7 11:24
