HAVE BEEN IN CHINA FOR JUST LESS THAN THREE YEARS NOW AND FIND THAT ONE OF the benefits is meeting a lot of interesting expats. The only drawback is that you lose friends just as quickly as you make them, because the community is a very mobile one.
One of the friends (we’ll call him Steven) I made when I was still a newbie here recently told me he was on his way back home. This was because he’d been moved to a new project, he said. So we talked about the family and the new project and had a couple of drinks. After which he confessed he had, in fact, requested the move.
That is not at all unusual, of course, but it was his reason that caught me off guard. Simply put, he was "gatvol".
It was the bureaucracy, mostly. He felt he had poured his heart and soul into China for the last six years, but for every step forward there were two steps back. The frustration finally got to him.
Steven’s group operates in a highly regulated industry, even more heavily regulated than the media sector. It is painstaking work to build anything of substance. Steven had made progress and the medium-term prospects were looking good. However, as often happens, new regulations were recently put forward that would push everything into the long-term, so the group would not see the rather more immediate gains they were hoping for. This was the last straw, as far as Steven was concerned.
New business development can be like that here: ebb and flow. It is something you can easily observe, but understanding it is another matter; though I do have some theories of my own.
My best insight into the Chinese way came over tea with an elderly Chinese gentlemen who speaks exceptional English. His view was simple. The Chinese, he said to me, never worry about the here and now. Everything is done to benefit the next generation, and sometimes the generation after that. Short-term setbacks and frustrations are inconsequential.
In the real world, things are a little more complex, of course. Young Chinese are much like young people everywhere in their concern with the now, specifically the material now. But when it comes to the bigger economic picture the old man has a point. The world’s longest continuous compound aggregated economic growth in history does not come about by accident. China’s economy didn’t just start growing 20 years ago; the planning to achieve it started 30 years ago.
The Chinese government is single-minded in its drive to create something for future generations to enjoy. That strikes you after you’ve been here for a while and have run head first into the frustrating consequences of that single-mindedness. But it is also something I admire deeply.
The Chinese government has a specific timetable to which it works in every industry sector. This is not open to negotiation. There is definitely no kow-towing to any company or interest group; just ask the American government. As a result you have, in the execution of these plans, an occasional testing of the waters, followed by a pulling back. Hence the frustrations we have come to know so well.
Legislation and regulations are promulgated to allow certain business activities and developments. People like us jump on those opportunities, but we run the risk of the regulations being tightened up just as our operations get going.
That doesn’t make it any different to a lot of games. Big game fishing, for instance. Those with the patience and the focus catch the really big fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment