由保罗· Denlinger

咨询业在中国茂盛。 终究它是最大的潜在的单一市场在世界上，并且大家聚集对它。 新的公司需要关于怎样的信息和忠告应付这个市场的独特的挑战。 为是流利用中文，或者在中国长大的所有工商管理硕士，和熟悉贸易的工具，例如财政塑造，企业交涉，并且公司估价，中国代表将未来几年擅于他们的“铁饭碗”。

或它？ 我的经验是有多次被重覆的错误。 它得到象观看一个唯一Broadway展示的被谴责，多次，改变的地方的唯一的事是集合和演员; 线是相同。

我在一个早先投稿报道了其中一个主要谬论， 通过中国市场炒作报道他们进入中国的最初的原因。 这个投稿将包括某些矢败的追加记帐的原因。

因为大多数我的经验是以技术或媒介或者起动从美国，我是自然地偏心的往那些公司在我的评估。 有许多成功案例从财政区段、工程学和消费品。 These areas, unlike hi-tech, have had decades, and in some cases even more than a century of experience, building their China presence, and understanding the challenges involved. They have the money, and have built up a knowledge base of experience which they can draw from, and because of the large scale of their businesses, even if they cannot draw from in-house experience, they know how and where to get it when needed.

Some of the US technology companies which have come to China and have failed to succeed in the Chinese market are eBay, which basically had to hand over its operations in China after running into the strong local player, Taobao.com, in the auction field. Yahoo! had to basically pay a China partner, Alibaba.com, US1B to take over its China operations. More recently, Google, the US search advertising firm, has had to fight an uphill battle against the largest Chinese search firm, Baidu.com. Online gaming is a new area which does not exist in nearly as large a form as the US, with Shanda being the granddaddy in China, while newer players such as Perfect World (PWRD) have sprung up with new and different business models, and successfully going public on the Nasdaq. In instant messaging, Tencent’s QQ has been able to rack up 600M registered users, and unlike any US IM clients, become profitable.

Because most US startups come from technology backgrounds, they tend to believe that their business is scalable. The word “scalability” is in itself, an engineering term, which means that an architecture can go from 1 user to one billion (or infinite) users, or across national borders and into different languages and markets, without any major architectural hiccups. For this reason, they tend to play down distribution and cultural differences in their most initial stages. Most of the time, they have people on staff or in management who know something about the local market; more often than not, they are not in senior decision-making roles.

Then, when they get to China, they try to do what they did in the US, and quickly discover that the rules in China are very different. Whereas labor is very expensive in the US, with each hire drawing the attention of different company committees, in China it is one of the single cheapest expenses. (Except for senior and executive management, where highly qualified individuals cost just as much, if not more, than in the US.)

The most common failing comes in the area of product management, when the US insists on controlling the product development and launch schedule, with local product launches coming only after the US is ready. In smaller markets, that’s fine, but in fast-moving large markets, especially one as large as China’s, it’s a killer. (Even in fast-moving small markets it’s a dubious strategy; in South Korea, Google has been consistently beaten by Naver, a highly successful Korean company.)

This puts the China office in a continuous battle with the US headquarters for resources; the Chinese local competitor has no such restrictions on what it can do, and the Chinese company surges ahead in capturing market share, and eventually, revenue. The American company then organizes what can best be called a “strategic withdrawal”, as did eBay.

In more mature industries where there is some kind of brand equity, product lines are already fairly mature, and headquarters makes resources available to country managers as needed. Because of the fast-changing nature and relative immaturity of hi-tech, this has not yet happened.

When the American companies fail, the blame is usually assigned to some form of Chinese government protectionism, and favoritism to the local companies. Of course, this explanation is more palatable to Congress members seeking re-election and US TV talk-show hosts, but more often than not, it is a vast over-simplification of a complicated issue.

Paul Denlinger, The China Vortex, Owner at China Business Strategy