Doing Business in Greater China: What do Foreign Businesspeople Expect?

Last week I taught a seminar at a business training camp for Taiwanese executives in the food commodities business. The trainees were an excellent group, full of energy and ideas. During the Q & A session, one of the attendees asked “What do foreign businesspeople expect from their local suppliers and customers?”

Wow, what an excellent question.

My answer? “If they are sourcing, they expect to find what they need at a price lower than they would have to pay at home and at the same or better quality. If they are on a sales trip, they hope to figure out the local distribution system and see if they can make a profit selling locally.“

But that wasn’t the most important thing the audience needed to know. I added something.

I told them that they need to educate their clients and customers, to help them understand how business is done locally, because there are such vast differences between West and East. I told them they should do this honestly, without selfish concern for their own position, but with the aim of creating a relationship that is beneficial to both sides (and no, nobody smirked–this was a great group of people who understand long-term partnerships). One example I gave was the current trend in the Taiwan consumer market toward unique and elegant packaging for products priced in the NT$100-200 range (about US$3-6). Many foreign businesspeople cannot understand how a finely packaged product could sell for US$10 in their home market, but must be priced at half of that in Taiwan, Hong Kong or China. They don’t understand that many white collar workers in these countries have only US$100-300 a month in disposable income (after housing, utilities, car, medical, and educational expenses) and so will travel an extra four bus stops to find something priced only US$0.50 cheaper at another store.

As far as sourcing goes, there are some honest suppliers out there who have chosen a long-term, relationship-building strategy over a short-term, screw the customer strategy, but they are still in the minority in China, less so in Hong Kong and Taiwan. That is why a company doing business in Greater China needs to do its research and have a number of checks and balances in place. Sourcing in Greater China can be a huge boon to a business, and can also be a minefield that results in lost limbs and profit. Plan on spending weeks overseas just to get all of the details worked out. Multiple trips, help from consultants, constant quality checks are a necessity for a prudent businessperson, but if you can get a steady supply of finished goods at half the price you’re paying now, it is well worth the effort.

Do the Chinese Lie? That Depends…

Out in my neck of the woods, it is not uncommon to hear a businessperson from a Western country, following a disappointing episode with a Chinese supplier, say something like: “They’re all a bunch of liars!” Some of my own clients talk about Chinese suppliers they’ve chosen to partner with using language I can’t repeat on a family site. Of course, they’re not all bad. Part of the problem is very different definitions of what constitutes ethical and honest behavior between the Chinese and the Western world (Note: I’d include the Japanese in the group of people who don’t understand Chinese “lying”).

In short, for most Chinese people, lying is not really lying. What we in the West would consider to be a bald-faced lie, a person in greater China might think of as a courtesy, a convenience, or a smart tactic, none of which are immoral. In fact, lying to achieve some business or social aim, and getting away with it, is considered to be a sign of intelligence and social skill among many Chinese.

Chinese values are rooted in concepts of duty to oneself, one’s family, one’s company, one’s friends and associates, but not to anyone else. There is no “Good Samaritan” ethic going on; kids are not really taught from a young age that they have a duty to help strangers. The teaching is more along the lines of “don’t make trouble,” “don’t do anything shameful,” or “be a good student.”

Also worth noting is the fact that many more things are covered up by the Chinese than they would be in the West. People don’t tell each other about things that would make someone lose face or cause social embarrassment, and once the “deception” is discovered, all is generally forgiven after a brief explanation along the lines of “it wasn’t convenient for me to tell you the truth.” Things like job loss, serious illness, legal trouble, or problems with children are seldom talked about, and often kept hidden, even among close friends and relatives.

In a business context, you might not hear about a shipment that was supposed to go out last week but will now likely never go out until it is too late. This occurs with great frequency in greater China, and there is very little concern or shame on the Chinese end, because it simply isn’t viewed as being wrong.

For the unprepared Western businessperson, these ethics can be quite unnerving. I’ve personally seen many a business deal, and many a friendship, fall apart because of these radically different values.

The Bottom Line: Don’t expect your Chinese suppliers to have the same set of ethics that you have. There are differences across the board in what constitutes ethical behavior when you’re talking about East and West. Tread carefully, and set up plenty of checks and balances.

Tip: If you can source in Taiwan, do it there. If you source in China, consider dealing with a Taiwanese-owned factory. The Taiwanese have been doing business with the modern West far longer than the Chinese have. They “get it” much better than China does.

Hakka Dreams

Some years ago at a popular restaurant in Xinzhu in the north of Taiwan, I joined a gathering of twelve business owners, all local Rotarians, for a feast featuring the local Hakka fare. Shortly after the first bottle of whiskey was opened, the backslapping and the joshing began. “True, this is Mr. Gao. We call him “Hotel”. He’s the richest man in our Rotary Club.”Mr. Gao replied: “Nonsense! Chemical, you are the richest man in Rotary, and you know it!”

Over the course of the meal, the sequence repeated itself several times. By the end of the evening, it became clear that Car, Bank, Manpower, DM, Medicine, and Well—each man nicknamed according to his industry or, in the case of Well, legendary drinking ability—were all wealthy yet unwilling to admit it too openly.

What I also remember about that evening, and dozens of similar evenings over the years, are the frequent observations made by these Hakka businessmen about their cultural identity. Things like: “We all came from farms up in the mountains. Our parents had to go to the river and catch a fish if we wanted to eat meat” or “Hakka people are careful with their money,” or “We Hakkas tend to be more conservative than your average Taiwanese.” One the most memorable of these remarks came from a Hakka businessman who often trades with the Japanese. He told me: “A Taiwanese Hakka businessman can best three typical Taiwanese businessmen, and a typical Taiwanese businessman can best three Japanese businessmen. These poor Japanese don’t stand a chance!”

Ask a non-Hakka Taiwanese to describe Hakkas, and he’ll often cluck his tongue and say something like “Hakkas can be really generous, but only when they need something from you,” or “Hakka people tend to be very clannish,” or “Hakkas are really tight with a dollar.”

Some 15% of Taiwan’s population is Hakka. The Mandarin word for Hakka is 客家人 (kèjiārén), or “guest person”, though this appellation is fairly recent. It describes the traditionally migratory nature of the Hakka people, who originated in northern China around 2,700 years ago. After a series of resettlements aimed at escaping war and social unrest, most Hakkas settled in southern China, with large concentrations in Guangdong and southwestern Fujian Province. It was from these southern outposts that Taiwanese Hakkas departed in their last migration southward, across the Taiwan Strait.

Today, there are four major concentrations of Hakka people in Taiwan. Most people in Taiwan recognize the corridor stretching from Taoyuan to Miaoli County as the location of most of the Hakka population in Taiwan. About 50% of Zhongli City, and 80% of the residents of Taoyuan, Xinzhu, and Miaoli Counties are ethnically Hakka.

The settlement pattern of these areas has much to do with the earlier arrival in Taiwan of Hoklo immigrants from Fujian Province, starting from the period of Dutch occupation in the mid-17th century. By the time most Hakkas arrived in Taiwan, the most fertile of Taiwan’s farmland, particularly in the south, was already occupied by larger populations of well-established Hoklo people. The only option left for most Hakkas was the hills and mountains of northern and central Taiwan.

A number of my Hakka friends have narrated oral histories of long-ago battles between Hoklo and Hakka peoples, explaining that the Hakka preference for mountain and hill living was really the result of having been pushed, by force, out of the lowlands. Ironically, as the Hakkas moved further inland, they in turn displaced, and sometimes assimilated, the aboriginal peoples living the mountain areas they settled in.

There are also significant populations of Hakka peoples in Taidong and Hualian Counties. Most of the Hakka immigrants who settled there arrived too late to settle in the hills of north-central Taiwan, traveling to the East coast looking for other lands to settle.

In Pingdong County’s Liugui and Meinong, there are also high concentrations of Hakka people. These were among the first Hakkas in Taiwan, having arrived as soldiers with Koxinga in 1661.

Finally, there are large groups of ethnically Hakka Taiwanese in the Dongshi area in Taichung County, as well as in surrounding towns and villages.

Politically, Hakkas are known for their support of the nationalist (KMT) party in Taiwan. Most Hakkas will proudly tell you that Sun Yat Sen and Lee Teng-hui are part of a long list of prominent Hakka politicians, and many of today’s politicians, from both sides of the political fence, claim Hakka ethnicity.

In researching this article, I kept coming back to a fundamental question about Hakkas. That is, do they define themselves as Taiwanese or as Hakka? Certainly, there are distinctive cultural characteristics—preferred foods, religious practices, architectural styles, language dialects, social customs, etc.—that are identified with Hakka peoples. When I asked my Hakka friends this question, they invariably told me that they considered themselves both Taiwanese and Hakka. Perhaps one of them explained it best when he said: “I think of myself as Taiwanese, but I’m Hakka first. I grew up speaking Hakka, follow Hakka customs, and tend to think more like a Hakka than a typical Hoklo Taiwanese.”

One Night in Taipei: Business Entertainment, Chinese Style, Part Deux

I’ve decided to post the rest of my narrative of a typical evening of business entertainment in Greater China.

Mom, if you’re reading this, know that your boy has seen a bit of the world but has not done anything to disgrace the family name :).

Note: If you are a female executive doing business overseas, you will most likely be politely dropped off at your hotel after dinner. If you want to continue to have fun, there aren’t many options at this point. The local boys aren’t going to take you to a men’s club, but they might offer to take you to a disco pub somewhere to bring in midnight. It is a fact of modern society in Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong that women are still expected to behave according to society’s expectations of women. To wit, good girls go home to bed after dinner, rather than go out to party. The irony of the situation (i.e. that men in these societies seek out the company of women for their personal entertainment, but don’t want their own women anywhere near one of those places) is not lost on me.  You don’t have to like it, but it is a fact.

One more note. If you really aren’t interested in adult entertainment that falls somewhere between watching a rated R movie and visiting a house of prostitution, you’d better excuse yourself right away. Claim illness, fatigue, a bad case of heartburn, whatever.

If you are curious enough to proceed and not too burdened with inhibitions, keep your wedding ring on and your trousers tightly belted. Or don’t, as the case may be.

Back home, if you were having a boys’ (or girls’) night out, right about this time you’d repair to a comfortable bar, pub, or dance club, where you’d drink and dance the night away. In Greater China, this sort of activity is for college students, not for real businessmen. Real businessmen repair to a club where they will be pampered and cared for by young, attractive women. These ladies are often scantily glad. The first such club I ever visited was staffed by women in see-through lingerie and I was shocked, to say the least.

There are several types of club that you may be taken to, but they will all share one common feature: karaoke. There will be a big screen television, a remote control, and a songbook. You will spend the next few hours taking turns belting out popular songs in Mandarin, English, Japanese, Cantonese, and whatever other dialect the people in your party like to sing in. Yes, you will have to sing, or be looked upon as a malcontent. My signature English song is “Hotel California” by the Eagles, as it is available on nearly every karaoke machine I’ve seen here, and it can be sung in a key I can manage without murdering the ears of my friends. I am also able to sing a number of Mandopop favorites, which won me a great deal of prestige in years past.

Once the drinks are ordered and the karaoke machine has been fired up, it is highly likely that an array of young women will be presented before you and your party. You will be asked to choose a girl from among this group, and as the guest of honor, you’ll have first choice. This can be awkward if you’re the shy type. If you really don’t want to choose a girl, then ask the boss to choose for you.

Each member of your party will be attended to by one young lady. She will pour your drinks, feed you, light your cigar and, in many places, give you lap dances at certain intervals. She will sing with you, converse with you, try to cater to your every need.

The other members of your party will possibly engage in behavior that you are not accustomed to seeing, even at a strip club back home. Fondling, kissing, etc. You may be encouraged to place your hands on the body of your female companion, which is allowed in Taiwan and China. At this point, we’re on the brink of all sorts of issues, exploitation not the least among them. If you’re a happily married man along for the ride, then just be polite but somewhat reserved. You can keep your hands busy eating fruit and snacks and sipping your drink, and you’ll survive the evening with your marital integrity fully intact.

After a few hours of this sort of entertainment (the clubs sell their services in hour long increments, with two hours being the standard), it will be time to leave. The other men in your group will most likely not take one of the girls home, since you are present and because of the cost involved in buying a girl from one of these clubs for the evening. If the men in your group decide they need companionship of an even more intimate type, they’ll probably call a pimp and set things up or they’ll go to a sauna somewhere. You may receive an offer to arrange such services for you. If you are like most people and that isn’t something you’re interested in, you can very convincingly explain that you are exhausted and need to go back for a night’s sleep, alone.  Local men will feel pressure to participate in this sort of activity, even when they don’t want to, but you’ll always be eligible for the foreigner exemption. 

You will most likely be in a private room for Phase Two of the evening, though at some clubs (called “piano bars”), you will be in a booth that is attached to a larger room, full of other such groups.

There are several variants on this sort of entertainment, but what I’ve described is usually what happens. As I wrote earlier, if you’re not up for this sort of an evening, you’d better bow out early. If you are curious and want to have the full local experience, now you know what you’re in for.

One Night in Taipei: Business Entertainment, Chinese Style

For those unsuspecting businesspersons heading to Taiwan or China from the West, you need to know what you’re in for once the day’s work is done and your hosts take you out for a night of fun.

First of all, some of your suppliers will understand that for most Westerners, business entertainment centers around providing your guests with a fine meal at a nice restaurant. One or two glasses of wine or a beer or two may be consumed. Conversation will be largely centered on matters not related to business. If your hosts understand this, then you can expect to go to a nice Western or Chinese style restaurant and enjoy a few quiet drinks. You’ll discuss a bit more business than you would back home–the Chinese can’t escape their own culture, which teaches them that a business deal is not finalized until you’ve socialized and patted each other on the back a few times. However, you’ll be safely back in your hotel at 10pm, in time to call your spouse and kids back home if they are haven’t already left for school or work.

If your hosts don’t understand that most Westerners prefer this sort of evening–I do have clients who will get back to the hotel, change into party attire, and head out to drink and have fun until the wee hours, but most are content to eat and get back to the hotel–well, then you’re very likely in for a wild evening. You can of course request an evening of entertainment, local style, if you prefer this. Just say “I’m here to do business, and to have fun. Let’s do what you normally do for fun on a night out on the town.”

If you are entertained local-style, here’s what will probably happen:

7 to 10pm-The Dinner

Still dressed in business attire, the factory boss will drive you in his BMW or Benz to his favorite eatery. Key managers will be invited, some of whom will likely be female. Friends who owners of other factories will be called out to put on a good show and to keep things lively. The dinner will start quietly, but soon the beer and whiskey will start to flow and predictably, the conversation will become more free-ranging as inhibitions drop. The noise volume will rise steadily until it’s at a low roar.

You will often find that as people are eating their fill and knocking back drinks, the boss will open up of his own accord. If he puts his arm around your shoulder and starts talking, listen carefully. He’s about to tell you what he really thinks about the business you are discussing, something he won’t do during the daytime when you’re at the office.

You are in danger of becoming very drunk at this point because (a) you probably don’t normally drink more than one or two servings of alcohol at a dinner (b) you’re likely to be jet-lagged and (c) everyone at the table will want to drink with you. In Taiwan and China, you don’t nurse a drink. You drain your glass as soon as it is filled and another person’s glass is raised to indicate that he wants to drink with you. Thank heavens beer and whiskey glasses in Taiwan and China are designed to accommodate local drinking culture: they are small enough that you can do a shot without feeling sick.

One way to preserve your liver and at least a semblance of sobriety is to insist that where you come from, whiskey is always taken with Coca-Cola, and order a couple of cans right away. That way, if ten or twelve people each want to drink two or three glasses with you (the women most likely will not drink), you’ll survive the evening by diluting the whiskey with Coke.

If you don’t drink, just explain politely and firmly that you don’t drink, but that they are welcome to proceed as they normally would. You’ll be happy with a Coke or some tea. The boss will likely not drink, though he will be in a good mood, and that will help you when it comes time to talk business.

As people get happier and happier, they will become touchy. Not sensitive, but tactile. They’ll put their arms around you, hold your hands, rub your leg, all sorts of things. Men in Taiwan and China are extremely repressed and only let loose when they are drinking in the company of friends.

Another important point: In Taiwan and China, deals are not really finalized–indeed, the real issues are often not even discussed–until you’ve been out to dinner and had some drinks. The best thing you can do is to relax, get into the spirit of things, tell some jokes, drink with your group, but hold on to your faculties as best you can so that when either your or the boss brings up the real issues, you are able to function.

Negotiation Tip: If you’re trying to get the boss to agree to a lower cost or make some other concession, hit him up between drink #4 and drink #6. If you try him before then, he won’t yet be in the “Mr. Generous” personae that Chinese businessmen love to adopt. If you try him after he’s had six drinks, he’ll be too drunk to remember what he promised.

Once everyone is stuffed, and most of the party is completed soused, the female managers will be dismissed. If you are willing to continue with the evening at this point, you are now in for one of the wildest evenings of your life.

10:30pm to After Midnight: The Entertainment

Now, dear reader, I must confess to a bit of hesitation on my part. I’ve got the next part written, but I am not sure if I’ll post it in its current form, which pulls no punches.

It is not that I’m ashamed of anything I’ve done, but I’m not sure if it is a good idea to publish the next part without a bit of whitewash. Give me a few days to think about it, and I’ll post Part Deux either unvarnished, or a bit more sanitized.

What do you think? Comments welcome.

US Consumer Concerns About Chinese Food Safety

This is too juicy to pass up writing about. Trader Joe’s, a very successful retail food chain based in California, has pulled all Chinese-made food products from its shelves.

Click here for a brief news item from AFP: US store chain cuts sales of food from China

From the article:

US grocery chain Trader Joe’s said Monday it would stop selling food imported from China due to customers’ concerns about the products’ safety.

“Our customers have voiced concerns about products from this region and we have listened,” Trader Joe’s spokeswoman Alison Mochizuki said in a statement.

“All single ingredient food items sourced from mainland China sre scheduled to be out of our stores by April 1,” she said.

What this means is that (1) if an ingredient for a food product is sourced from China, that food product may still be sold in Trader Joe’s and (2) Trader Joe’s may eventually sell foods that are made entirely in China sometime in the future.

This is the very definition of “growing pains,” folks. The same sort of process occurred in Taiwan, thirty or forty years ago. Here’s how it works:

Stage One: A developing country offers competitive advantages in labor costs and manufacturing speed. Many first world countries switch their manufacturing to this country.

Stage Two: The developing country’s factory owners achieve some success, and then through a combination of penny-pinching greed, lack of foresight and vision, and general lack of understanding of what the foreign market demands, start sending product with quality problems. In the case of products like foods, toys, and tires, this is downright dangerous. Consumers in the first world country react, the media plays up the problems, and the flow of orders starts to dry up as buyers look elsewhere, maybe paying a bit more.

Stage Three: The government of the developing country realizes that if something isn’t done to reign in these factory bosses, the country’s export manufacturing business is going to go to hell in a handbasket. They clamp down on dangerous practices, enforcing compliance with safety regulations.

Stage Four: The developing country recovers its export market, and continues to develop its technology and safety measures.

The interesting question here is, with enforcement in China so haphazard and hit-and-miss, will China successfully get through Stage Three to Stage Four? Several efforts have already been made to crack down on abusers, but in China, where the emperor is far away, the subjects basically do what they want.

Bottom Line: If you are sourcing your products from China, you’d damned well better be on the ground, or hire someone trustworthy to be on the ground, watching your suppliers like a hawk.

Happy Year of the Rat!

鼠年行大運!

From the wikipedia entry on Chinese New Year:

First day of the new year

The first day is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth.

Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a time when families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended family, usually their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents.

Indeed, my extended family members are all out doing their religious duty. They will repair to our home later this evening for an American meal I have prepared for them: Potato and bacon pie; lamb in mustard sauce, glazed carrots, salad, chicken corn soup, and apple pie. That sort of meal is decidedly not traditional, but such is the life of a multi-cultural family.

We had our traditional meal last night, on Chu Xi (New Year’s Eve), and I ate my lucky chicken, fish, soup, and sticky rice cake. We handed out red envelopes full of cash to the kids and to my father-in-law, and performed the traditional ancestral remembrances.

Here’s an article on what makes the Year of the Rat special:  It’s the Year of the Rat

Best Wishes for a wonderful new year!

Culture Shock: “Look at the foreigner!”

For those of you wondering what it might be like for an American to live in Taiwan, here’s a snapshot of a typical day:

After conducting a morning training seminar, I repaired to the wedding reception of a close friend. The reception was attended by nearly 400 people, and I was the only non-Taiwanese person in the banquet room. The groom is a professional educator and a graduate of both the #1 high school and the #1 university in Taiwan. His wife works for Cathay Life Insurance. So the crowd, comprised of educators and business people, was well-heeled and well-educated. I felt completely at home, not at all like a foreigner, because nobody treated me like a foreigner. I love to meet people like that, who view me as a person rather than an exotic breed of non-Taiwanese, and who don’t care enough about my nationality to make it an issue.

After the reception, I went to an afternoon meeting that ran until about 5pm. After 45 minutes on the subway, I got off and started walking toward home. Waiting at a stoplight, I heard a man standing behind me say, in Mandarin “The foreigner is going to cross the road,” followed by a woman’s response that was too soft to make out.

I was indeed planning to cross the road, but that was hardly worth commenting on, except for the fact that I am a tall white person in a land of people who don’t look much like me.

I turned to look at this pair and saw an older man, about 60, with a woman in her 20s. They were about two feet away from me.

The man made another comment: “Now he is looking right at you!”

I nodded my head and said, in Mandarin, “He can understand what you are saying.”

The woman then said. “I told you he could understand Mandarin.” I have no idea how she knew I could understand Mandarin, as I don’t wear a t-shirt proclaiming such, and most people who use the third person to discuss a foreigner standing directly in front of them, as if the foreigner is some kind of zoo animal, typically assume that the vagaries of the Mandarin language are beyond the comprehension of the descendants of hairy barbarians.

At this point, I just shook my head, turned back around, and waited for the light to change. They continued to discuss me in the third person, apparently still unable to grasp the concept that I fully understood what they were saying or, more likely, not caring. As much as I enjoy my relationships with well-educated, open-minded Taiwanese people, these sorts of encounters are discouraging. It is quite strange and discomfiting to be made out to be something not quite human by narrow-minded dolts.

Living in Taiwan, this sort of thing happens to me on a nearly daily basis. There is an incident or two per week on the MRT, where I either have to ask people to stop discussing me while I am standing next to them, or I have to change seats to get away from a group of idiots. When I go to China, it is the same, or worse. It actually happened again at the grocery store later today, when I caught a family by surprise, pushing my cart down the aisle they were parked in the middle of. I guess they haven’t seen too many foreigners, because there was a big, loud discussion about various aspects of my foreignness (including the very astute observation that “foreigners also go shopping at Carrefour!”) , and about foreigners in general, even after I had called across the central aisle to my wife, in Mandarin.

What can one do in such situations? Not much, actually. You aren’t going to be able to educate people like that, who are so lacking in any sort of understanding of the larger world that they simply couldn’t wrap their brains around the idea that I am actually just another human, rather than a bloody foreigner. At times like these, you remind yourself that if you lived in the US somewhere, you’d be just another American, which would be nice, but you wouldn’t get to deal with being an outsider, or a zoo monkey, all of the time. Comforting but boring in the end.

Sometimes living in Taiwan is an exercise in dealing with contrasts that can challenge the sanity of even the most easy-going person, but it is that challenge that makes life interesting.

China Today: Angst, Emptiness

Some months ago, I read this interesting Reuters piece on Yahoo News:

Anxiety, emptiness fuel Confucius craze in China

The article describes a book on the writings of Confucius and their application to daily life, written by a Beijing Normal University professor.

From the article:

Her mass following tells of deep anxiety about morality and beliefs in a society that has gone through a disorienting transformation in recent decades, analysts said.

“We were taught Marxism and Leninism in schools,” said Tian Na, a 25-year-old teacher who bought the book on the Internet.

“But when I became independent and went to college, I saw professors take bribes and I felt the old slogans like ’serve the people’ were no longer relevant,” she said.

Basically, folks in China are looking for something beyond the clarion call of “money, money, and more money.”

An opportunity for Christian missionaries?

That is a subject for another post.

Two Chinas

For a long time now, I’ve been shaking my head at the naivety of those who think that China is nirvana for marketers of all sorts of consumer products. “Over 1 billion people, all of them potential customers!” is the clarion call of these excitable people.

In terms of personal income and buying power, what you’ve got in China is essentially two countries. About 200 million people, mainly living along the eastern seaboard, are enjoying many of the benefits of China’s rapid economic expansion. The flow of new wealth does trickle into inner China, but it only trickles. The “other” China, the one made up of 900 million people, is NOT enjoying the benefits of China’s economic expansion. In fact, many of them are seeing their purchasing power drop as China is wracked by unprecedented inflation.

If you want to get a bit of understanding of the real China, take a look at this excellent piece in Time Magazine from a few years ago: “Seeds of Fury”

Bottom Line: If you’re selling something that costs more than a dollar, most people in China can’t afford it. Besides, if there really is a market for what you’re selling in China, the Chinese are very likely going to figure out how to sell the same thing at a lower price than you sell it at, if they haven’t already.