This book fills in some gaps for folks who are China watchers and who don’t know much about the early years of capitalism in modern China. It’s billed as a memoir of the author, himself. I found it a fascinating tale, full of informative insights. I’ll tell you a bit about it:
The author is Tim Clissold, who, per the book’s back cover “has been working in China for 17 years (and)…lives in Beijing with his wife and four children.” The book’s earliest copyright date seems to be 2004, which puts Clissold in China in the late ‘80s. I’m not sure that he really explains why he first went to China, but, in any case, he did some traveling there at what he calls “the tail end of the planned economy.” He goes back to London, but then back to China in 1990.
He lived in a university in Beijing for two years, learned Mandarin and much of the ways the Chinese led their lives. With a financial background, he takes a job as a Mandarin speaker with Arthur Anderson. At some point, he hooks up with a guy from Wall Street who can connect with hundreds of millions of dollars from Wall Street to invest in China. With his buddy, Clissold goes into the business of looking for Wall Street investments in China.
And this is what the book is about: the series of investments and adventures investing in and managing these factories/companies over the next decade or so. There are excruciating details of predicaments and details involved with the management of the companies. Here, we learn, first hand, of peculiarities of Chinese business “rules,” if there are any. Here, the reader can feel Clissold’s frustrations, if not his fears.
And, the author gives us insight into how most of the factories that he visited were originally set up under the Russian period of industrialization under Chairman Mao. After the Russians pulled out, the Chinese Military took over ownership and control of many of the factories. After Mao dies, the Military begins to release the factories to civilian control under the Communist government. Per Clissold, China was then like the U.S. was in the 1880s. Most of the factories were in disrepair and in need of investment capital, something that was then not available in China, domestically. Clissold also saw China at that time as uniquely like the U.S., in that it had resources and a population that could sustain its own economy. In short, Clissold saw great opportunity with investments in China.
But dealing with Chinese business people involved pain. The massive dinners with serious drinking were a burden. The country’s infrastructure was primitive. Factories had been relocated to rural areas that were hard to get to and were vulnerable to natural disasters. But by the early 90s, the Chinese economy was beginning to take off, and numerous countries had businesses clamoring to get a foothold. Competition was fierce.
Clissold’s Wall Street buddy raised the money in ways that astounded the author: “It was the wealth of the individual families in America…that really amazed me; I had no idea that such vast fortunes were controlled by families or individuals who had either made or inherited money,” he said. (This was the early 90’s, mind you.)
Clissold had visited 100 Chinese factories. His buddy had raised $200 million. The idea was to invest in multiple factories, with the goal of eventually consolidating them into a single corporate entity. That was how money was made in the U.S. Why would it not work in China, too?
With each deal, Clissold got majority ownership, but this did not mean that he would have majority control. Details of all his problems in this area abound in the book. But Clissold was essential. His Wall Street buddy did not learn Mandarin nor the details of how to deal with the Chinese in business. His buddy was the salesman. Clissold had to explain to the investors back on Wall Street what was going on at the ground floor. Clissold had to keep all the pieces of the puzzle in place.
He works for eight years, then has a heart attack and decides to quit. But he goes back in 1998. He is hooked, including with the language. But I don’t think that he really tells us the details of the overall business. He does tell us that after 10 years, he had worked himself out of a job, that the era of joint ventures was over in China. He says that billions of dollars were lost by Western investors, but he infers that he and his were winners.
I don’t think that he really wants to tell us the details of how he and his made money. It may be that his companies were at the base of the massive production of goods imported into the U.S. during the 90s. He says that the main purpose of the book is to better inform the American people of the ways of the Chinese in the hopes that we will better understand how the two countries need to interact and coexist in the future. Again, the book is more of a memoir than anything else, but it contains enough historical and personal insights to make it a good read.
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bargainsdonthurt
A must read for anyone considering doing business/investing in China
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on October 15, 2018
