One Billion Customers - James McGregor [99]
Politics no longer drive everything in China. To understand where China is headed, focus on analyzing the country’s business and commerce more than deciphering People’s Daily headlines.
Acknowledge that your overseas Chinese employees can become pawns in political battles. Openly discuss and determine strategies to prevent China from taking advantage of them and the United States from accusing them of disloyalty.
Relations between the United States and China are caught up somewhere between the Cold War and hot competition. Recognize that underlying the diplomatic and business cooperation between the two countries are strong political forces on both sides that see the other as a future enemy.
China constantly erects political or regulatory roadblocks aimed at limiting foreign business opportunities and helping domestic companies. Don’t confuse your administrative victories in these battles with genuine business accomplishments.
Get your own copy of Lucian Pye’s classic text, Chinese Negotiating Style, and read it. It’s still very relevant.
6
The Truth Is Not
Absolute
The Communist Party believes it must control information to stay in power, but China needs an informed citizenry to compete in a global economy. This leaves the media, from Rupert Murdoch to a crusading Chinese journalist, searching for the size of their cages.
RUPERT MURDOCH isn’t a man accustomed to cooling his heels, but there he was on a crisp day in October 1997, pacing back and forth at the top of the steps at the north entrance to the vast Great Hall of the People on Tiananmen Square, looking skinny, nervous, and unimportant. He was anxiously awaiting permission to walk the last mile of his tortuous journey into the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party. Aides to Communist Party propaganda czar Ding Guangen would escort him to an audience with Ding, the man who had worked for years to derail Murdoch’s effort to break into the China media market.
Murdoch had earned the enmity of China’s top leadership four years earlier when the Australian media mogul said in a speech that advances in communications technology had “proved an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” Murdoch had been referring to Russia and Eastern Europe, but the Chinese took his warning as a dire threat. The speech came just two months after Murdoch bought control of STAR TV in Hong Kong, a new free-to-air satellite television network that reached every corner of China. A month after Murdoch’s September 1993 speech, Premier Li Peng struck back, banning the private ownership of satellite dishes in China.
Murdoch had been seeking to make amends ever since. He had tried numerous avenues in an apparent attempt to curry favor. Highly paid consultants proved useless. Murdoch made donations to a foundation headed by Deng Xiaoping’s handicapped son, he purchased expensive art from one of Deng’s daughters, and his publishing company entered into a lucrative book contract for another daughter. He even ordered his executives to remove the British Broadcasting Corporation programming from the STAR transponder that covered China, a signal he was interested in entertainment, not news, for China.
Liu Changle, a former army officer with his own media aspirations, finally opened the door to the inner sanctum for Murdoch. He convinced the Chinese government that he could partner with Murdoch and keep him under control in China while building a station that would broadcast the Chinese viewpoint to the world. With the leadership’s blessing, Murdoch and Liu eighteen months earlier had launched Phoenix Satellite Television in Hong Kong. Now Chinese President Jiang Zemin was about to visit the United States and Ding wanted to ensure that Murdoch’s Fox network and his U.S. publications would treat Jiang kindly. Today Murdoch would be granted absolution for his speech four years earlier.
But first he had to be reminded of his status in China. Hence the wait at the north entrance. When he and his small party