was recently asked to speak at a conference on the topic of “the businessperson’s view of China.” I will be the only person on the program to address this topic. Others will deal with issues of morality, national security, media coverage, ideology—the familiar panoply of concerns with which Americans frame the US dialogue on China. My job is to “speak for business.”

Put yourself in my place. What would you do to get your hands around that topic?

1 It's always safe to start by defining terms.
Who genuinely embodies "the businessperson's view of China"? The CEO of a multinational corporation, for whom China—no matter how important to the company's business—is but one of a million daily concerns? How about a Taiwan- or Singapore-born manager of a US wholly owned plant in some East China economic zone, working to keep a complex production operation running smoothly? Or the American general manager of a joint venture, sitting as a minority member on the venture's board of directors? Or perhaps a government affairs director in Beijing, working to improve the company's communications with Chinese government agencies? Or maybe a lawyer with a good American firm and years on the ground in China helping clients to do their homework before they sign their contracts? What about the head of a security firm responsible for digging up reliable, confidential information about the Chinese companies and individuals with whom the firm's clients are contemplating business relations? Or maybe a logistics person, struggling to get goods into China, out of customs, and on to their distributors and endusers countrywide? And what about the owner of a small US company pondering whether this, finally, is the moment when China looks promising enough for him to look for profitable opportunities in the PRC? Is there an archetypal "businessperson's view of China" to be found here?

2 Next, we might read the latest books in English on China's economic and commercial prospects.
These books' message is brisk: China is China, either as it has been since imperial times or else as it has been since Mao took it over in the late 1940s. American businesspeople are "innocents abroad," self-deluding dreamers at best, and cavalier fools at worst, suspending their normal tough-mindedness as they guzzle the seductive elixir of the limitless China market just as their predecessors did in nineteenth-century England and early twentieth-century America. Drunk on the "sheer numbers" of people in China, these merchants failed to notice the difficulties—poverty, barriers of language and culture, and logistics—that ultimately sent many of them home disappointed. Today, these books suggest, US businesspeople still fabricate a mythical cornucopia of commercial triumphs just over the horizon, willfully deaf and blind to the evidence that China was, is, and will always be impenetrable and immune to their misdirected efforts.

Focused on China, the writers of these books maintain—if only by failing to look elsewhere—that China is unique as a graveyard for dashed business expectations.

They do not ask how overall returns on investment in other developing economies compare with those in China.

Focused on business aspirations, they forget about other Americans' dreams—some still very much alive today—of a China with new social, political or religious norms based on US or other foreign models.

Focused on business disappointments in China, they do not mention such domestic fiascos as the collapse of the American savings and loan sector or the more recent bursting of the dotcom bubble.

And they certainly do not spend their time on stories of business success or wise business planning by American firms.

We still haven't found the key to "the businessperson's view of China." We can

3 Look at the numbers.
China is awash in numbers and statistics. Maybe the numbers will speak for themselves, and a thorough search will lead to an inescapably convincing "businessperson's view of China."

But which numbers? China's economic growth since the late 1970s, as reported by the National Bureau of Statistics or as measured by skeptical foreign economists? The ballooning foreign direct investment numbers since 1992 and especially in the past year? The figures showing China's foreign trade growth from practically nothing 25 years ago to hundreds of billions of dollars today? The statistics on the soaring number of mobile-phone and Internet users? The information on disposable income levels for China's emergent middle class? The data on exploding private ownership of dwellings and autos? There are plenty of numbers to suggest that this time around, China has achieved an economic takeoff that global business would be foolish not to notice and derelict not to factor into its own projections.

Others' quantifiers are less encouraging. No one outside of China, and few inside, who have looked at the financial system have written a persuasively rosy picture; many have seen darker visions. Though hundreds of millions of Chinese have left poverty behind in the last 20 years, millions more remain impoverished. The quantitative evidence of inequality in wealth and income between cities and rural areas, and coastal and interior regions, suggests the intractability of China's immense social, economic, and political challenges. Indices of environmental degradation can be daunting. The HIV/AIDS numbers are only now beginning to see the light of day. And doubts keep arising about the reliability of statistics in China.

So far we've looked at defining our terms, we've read the latest books, and we've pondered some of the quantitative signs that could help our hypothetical businessperson form "the businessperson's view of China." Still, we're not there. Of course, we can also

4 Take a look around.
It's hard to come away from a visit to many areas of China without the sense that the past 25 years amount to much more than a mirage.

Even as one sighs at the perpetual flow of media stories detailing investment bubbles, guanxi-driven real estate scams, or huge, white-elephant office blocks unrented, the movement and the economic energy in many Chinese cities and towns bombards the senses. And by the way: What is that huge billboard for life insurance doing above the main thoroughfare in remote Kashgar, at the westernmost edge of China in Central Asia? And how did that sign reading "Love and Protect the Precious Fiber Optic Cable" wind up alongside the ribbon of asphalt running across the endless desert of western Gansu?

On the other hand, who are those people in tattered clothes camping out under bridges on the outskirts of this or that great city and scavenging through rubbish piles? Somehow, "the businessperson's view of China" needs to encompass the vitality and the suffering that are part of the China he or she is seeking to "view."

Still on the trail of "the businessperson's view of China," we certainly should

5 Listen to China businesspeople who have lived and worked in other developing countries. Businesspeople with time on the ground elsewhere in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, or Latin America usually have interesting, and often balanced, perspectives on China as a business site. Employee productivity, human resources, localization issues, systems integration capacity, physical security, bureaucratic procedures, transportation challenges, intellectual property security, corruption, functionality of telecommunications—take your pick. Ask Americans or businesspeople from other developed economies how China compares with other developing countries such as India and Brazil, which are closest to China in size, or South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, or Malaysia, among the major Asian developing economies. See what these veterans say.

It also makes sense to

6 Talk to Chinese friends, in-country and abroad.
What the Chinese think about their goals, their points of pride and longing, also provides insights for businesspeople about China, whether the "Chinese friends" are businesspeople, students, or employees.

We'll hear exuberance at the electrifying discovery of opportunities to succeed in the "outside world." We'll hear fears of the overwhelming technical power of the advanced industrialized economies. We'll hear bounding hope that China's continued opening to international business will bring growth and jobs, exposing the dark and protected corners of the old society and economy (and even the old politics). We'll hear grim conviction that foreigners' high-tech productivity will throw millions of simple Chinese working people out on the street. We'll hear familiar sounds about our investment dollars making money in China. We'll hear pride in how much has been achieved in such a short time; we'll hear sober assessments of how much remains to be done.

All right: we've done our due diligence. To find "the businessperson's view of China," we've defined our terms, read the books, waded through the numbers, walked around on the ground, talked to worldly-wise veteran business expatriates, talked to our Chinese friends and colleagues, and maybe even read a little history.

Can you, in my shoes, now come up with "the businessperson's view of China?"

If you can, I have a speaking engagement I'd love to have you fill.

The China Business Review, Volume 30, Number 1, January-February 2003