One Billion Customers - James McGregor [14]
All of this is changing today. Young people from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore are flooding into China because they see it as the land of opportunity. These people are often as humble as those in the earlier waves were arrogant. They are often starting at the bottom, working their way up through companies, or establishing their own companies. The Singaporeans have made the most dramatic turnaround. Recognizing that its business executives weren’t equipped for the rough-and-tumble of China, Singapore instead has focused on importing the best brains from China and packaging this talent with government venture capital money to create cutting-edge research facilities and business startups at home.
Satisfied but Unsettled
As I sit in my apartment in Beijing in mid-2005, I find myself constantly amazed at how normal business in China has become, both in terms of international practices and the traditional Chinese way of doing things. The startup and the turnaround aspects of China’s economic rebirth are blending together.
When I arrived in Beijing fifteen years ago, the coming of winter was signaled by the piles of cabbage on every street corner. Cabbage was the only vegetable available until spring. People would shove it under stairwells, windowsills, and beds in their chilly cement-floored flats, and eat it throughout the winter, cutting away more and more rotten leaves to find palatable bits as winter progressed. Today street corners in Beijing are littered with department stores, mobile phone shops, foot massage parlors, Starbucks kiosks, and fashionable pedestrians who must sprint when crossing the street. The millions of new Chinese auto owners seem to feel that a gas pedal and steering wheel are tools for unleashing their inner aggression and creativity that is otherwise so squelched by political and parental controls.
I live in a new but nondescript apartment building on the city’s east side. My Chinese neighbors are entrepreneurs or executives for multinationals who often buy one apartment to live in and one to rent. On weekends we all converge on the dozen or so pirated DVD shops in the neighborhood where any Hollywood movie or American television series of note is available with Chinese subtitles for one dollar per disc. Our building, like nearly all residential apartments in major Chinese cities, has broadband access to the Internet, where porn is plentiful but nonsanitized news and political sites are usually blocked. In the winter, my neighbors store away their fake Callaway golf clubs, bundle up in their fake North Face parkas, grab their fake Prada purses, lace up their fake Nikes, and speed away in their China-made Buicks and Audis to meet friends at first-rate restaurants serving Italian, Thai, Japanese, Indian, California-fusion, or French cuisine, unless they are seeking comfort food and opt for a Chinese bistro and a warm plate of sea slugs, chicken feet, or peppered pork intestines.
A couple of decades of averaging 9 percent annual growth has transformed China in terms of material goods. It has created a society of haves and have-nots, with significant poverty remaining in many rural areas and rust-belt cities and tremendous wealth evident in cities large and small across China. The vast majority of the population is much better off. Government social programs are weak, but fast economic growth and the country’s strong family system have so far provided a safety net. In poor villages I have visited in western China, most people have televisions and other conveniences because they have children who have gone off to the cities to work in factories or on construction projects who send much of their income home.
A country that was until recently poor but safe has become one that is unsettled and insecure. There is nothing to believe in but making money. Personal introspection