Enterprise China

PREFACE

As senior professors of leadership and strategy, our research and writing go  back more than 30 years. Over that time, collectively, we have traveled to China (including Hong Kong) more than 120 times. We have written more than a dozen business case studies on Western companies in China and Chinese companies expanding abroad. We have served as visiting professors at leading Chinese business schools and have taught scores of executives and senior Chinese government officials. As well, we have run workshops for more than 3,000 Western executives about doing business in China or working with Chinese companies. In addition, we have interviewed dozens of Chinese executives and government officials, including mayors and members of Chinese state regulatory agencies and planning offices in China, as well as equal numbers of US and European officers in trade associations and business roundtables and Western executives with significant experience in China. We have served on governance and advisory boards of publicly listed Chinese companies and distinguished Chinese universities.

Our interest in China has only grown throughout the years. The country's growth and prosperity have surpassed everyone's expectations, including our own. We each traveled to China for the first time in the summer of 1989—one to Beijing and the other to Shenzhen. The impact of the protests in Tiananmen Square had a profound impact on the country and each of us. One of our first joint research trips to ...