China’s Disruptors

By Edward Tse on August 27, 2015

In September 2014, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba raised $25 billion in the world’s biggest-ever initial public offering. Since then, millions of investors and managers worldwide have pondered a fundamental question: What’s really going on with the new wave of China’s disruptors?

Alibaba wasn’t an outlier—it’s one of a rising tide of thriving Chinese companies, mostly but not exclusively in the technology sector. Overnight, its founder, Jack Ma, appeared on the same magazine covers as American entrepreneurial icons like Mark Zuckerberg. Ma was quickly followed by the founders of other previously little-known companies, such as Baidu, Tencent, and Xiaomi.

Over the past two decades, an unprecedented burst of entrepreneurialism has transformed China’s economy from a closed, impoverished, state-run system into a major power in global business. As products in China become more and more sophisticated, and as its companies embrace domestically developed technology, we will increasingly see Chinese goods setting global standards. Meanwhile, companies in the rest of the world wonder how they can access the fast-rising incomes of China’s 1.3 billion consumers.

Now Edward Tse, a leading global strategy consultant, reveals how China got to this point, and what the country’s rise means for the United States and the rest of the world. Tse has spent more than twenty years working with senior Chinese executives, learning firsthand how China’s most powerful companies operate. He’s an expert on how private firms are thriving in what is still, officially, a communist country. His book draws on exclusive interviews and case studies to explore questions such as:

  • What drives China’s entrepreneurs? Personal fame and fortune—or a quest for national pride and communal achievement?
  • How do these companies grow so quickly? In 2005, Lenovo sold just one category of products (personal computers) in one market, China. Today, not only is it the world’s largest PC seller; it is also the world’s third-largest smartphone seller.
  • How does Chinese culture shape the strategies and tactics of these business leaders? Can outsiders copy what the Chinese are doing?
  • Can capitalists really thrive within a communist system? How does Tencent’s Pony Ma serve as a member of China’s parliament while running a company that dominates online games and messaging?
  • What impact will China have on the rest of the world as its private companies enter new markets, acquire foreign businesses, and threaten established firms in countless industries?

As Tse concludes: “I believe that as a consequence of the opening driven by China’s entrepreneurs, the push to invest in science, research, and development, and the new freedoms that people are enjoying across the country, China has embarked on a renaissance that could rival its greatest era in history—the Tang dynasty. These entrepreneurs are the front line in China’s intense hunger for success. They will have an even more remarkable impact on the global economy in the future, through the rest of this decade and beyond.” —Portfolio/Penguin

Book Review: 

David Pilling, Financial Times (July 29, 2015)
Ravender Sembhy, International Business Times (July 20, 2015)
The Economist (July 11, 2015)
Kenneth Rapoza, Forbes (May 16, 2015)

 

Mapping Fallout From ‘Black Monday’: Who Was Hardest Hit?

By David Wertime on August 26, 2015

August 24, which some have already dubbed “Black Monday,” was not a kind day to global equity markets. The rout began with a massive sell-off in China, where the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index plunged 8.49 percent in just one day. Those losses echoed in major indices worldwide, including those of Japan (down 4.61 percent), Germany (down 4.70 percent), and the United States (where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 3.58 percent).

Fred Hu

on August 26, 2015

Prior to founding Primavera Capital Group, Fred Hu was Chairman of Greater China and a Partner at Goldman Sachs, where he was instrumental in building the firm's franchise in the region. He led some of the largest and most significant transactions in the firm’s history, and served on the Goldman Sachs Partnership Committee, the Global IBS Leadership Group, the Pine Street-Goldman Sachs University Board, and the firm-wide Culture, Diversity, and Leadership Committee.

Hu is a respected economist whose main areas of research interest include macroeconomics, international finance, and capital markets. He served at the International Monetary Fund, and he has advised the Chinese government on financial reform, SOE restructuring, and macroeconomic policies. Hu also sits on the Hong Kong Government’s Strategic Development Committee and the Advisory Committee for the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. In addition to holding several corporate directorships, Hu is Chairman of the Nature Conservatory’s China Board, a Trustee of the Yale-China Association, a director of the China Medical Board, and a member of the Advisory Committees for the Harvard China Fund, the Stanford Center for International Development, and the Jerome A. Chazen Institute of International Business at Columbia University.

Hu also is a co-director of the National Center for Economic Research at Tsinghua University. He holds a Masters in Engineering Science from Tsinghua University, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.

Mao’s Ghost

By Yang Fawei on August 26, 2015

When Deng Xiaoping ascended to the throne in late 1978 and then began to initiate a whole series of economic and political reforms that soon transformed the face of China, many people blithely assumed that time had come and gone for China’s inimitable Mao Zedong, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.