Take A Hint From China

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http://blogs.forbes.com/china/2010/06/11/take-a-hint-from-china/


Take A Hint From ChinaJune 11, 2010 - 4:07 am
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Janet CarmoskyBio | Email
Currently CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The China Business Network -www.thechinabusinessnetwork.com - sinocentric business veteran Janet Carmosky spent nearly two decades living and doing business in China. Her mission is "cross border competency for anyone who wants it."





I read a post on the Peking Duck blog Thursday morning about TCBN Charter Member David Wolf's latest piece in Ad Age China. Writing about increasing antipathy to foreign brands in China's domestic market, Wolf characteristically hit the nail on the head: "Suddenly, just as people in China were starting to wonder if they still needed foreign capital and know-how, we went and proved to the Chinese that we were greedy, dumb and actually needed China’s help to pull us out of our own mess."

The emperor is looking pretty scantily clad in Chinese eyes. I am tempted to summarize the lessons learned - so far - from China's 30 years of rocketing from poverty and isolation to global superpower status in the following terms: humility is the ultimate competitive advantage.



By subordinating to the dominant power - adopting the maxim that "the customer is always right" while building a customer base comprised of anyone who buys manufactured goods anywhere in the developed world; by seeking knowledge of the deep secrets of America's meteoric success in a few hundred short years by studying the wisdom of iconic institutions like Wall Street, Harvard, Silicon Valley and the WTO - China learned everything it could from the West about unleashing the forces of economic development in the modern world. What happens next, now that Wall Street has proven an unreliable compass point?

The era of China's enthusiastic learning from the West is clearly waning. That's a Yin Yang theory term - one aspect wanes, the other waxes. Once the former subordinate becomes powerful, it's time to learn about them and from them in order to deal effectively with them. The social values of the west are still powerful. But the Chinese experiment with democracy for practical rather than moral reasons, and even today appreciate that a diverse, educated and open civil society breeds great resilience, creativity, and ultimately, wealth and power. So we still have some behavior to model.

At the same time, China from 1979 to 2009 is a case study without parallel: creating wealth by mirroring some behaviors and values of the people who have the money.

We can't out-Chinese the Chinese, but we can regain ground by being our smartest selves. Civil, diverse and open societies can do that. From Japan we learned just in time inventory control, manufacturing quality control and continuous improvement, innovation in consumer electronics design, and an appreciation for sushi.

Maybe we can learn from the Chinese about the power of the collective - not a communal - effort: a group of individuals and organizations acting in concert for a common goal; the joining of forces to focus on economic development.  

Shenzhen, Tianjin Economic Development Area, and Suzhou Singapore Industrial Park are the world's most successful economic development zones, and they succeeded by making it relatively easy to set up shop in China. Land? Got it. Electricity and water? Yup. Regulatory approvals? Concierge right here. Talent? Resumes on the way over. Foreign-friendly housing and bilingual
associates to help get settled in? Check and check.

America is complicated. I've asked numerous people from the NY and NJ Port Authority, airlines and tourism industry association over the years, "What would it take to get some Chinese language signage and some 'getting out of the airport and to your hotel' brochures at the information desk at Newark and JFK?" The fact that everyone tells me it would be a bureaucratic nightmare means one thing: we need to get better at the collective effort.

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