Managing The Dragon
Business in China - From the Ground Up



China’s Two Markets for Capital (Jul 4)
In the chapter on China’s Two Markets in my book, Managing the Dragon, I describe how every product in China has two markets: a highly visible market that resembles those in the most developed economies in the world, and a second, much less visible one that is purely local and unique to China. While the [...]


Chinese Version of Managing the Dragon Now Available (Jul 4)
On May 16, the Chinese version of Managing the Dragon was published by China Youth Press.  The book is now available at book stores throughout the country, as well as through China’s two major on-line booksellers, Dang Dang and Joyo Amazon.  The book has been well received by Chinese readers and China Youth Press has [...]


Olympic Update (Jun 30)
If you are intentionally avoiding China and Beijing during the Olympic Games, thinking that the country and the city will just be too crowded, you may want to reconsider. August is always the hottest and most humid month in China’s capital city, and most expatriates living here typically take the month to return to their home [...]


Entrepreneurism Rides High In China (Jun 25)
Ted Fishman, the author of China, Inc. and a good friend, shocked me and the audience in Florida in late 2005 when he stated, matter of factly, that there are 85 million private companies in China, more than three times as many as the 25 million in the United States. Ted and I were serving [...]


China Raises Gasoline and Diesel Prices at the Pump (Jun 22)
As a result of rising crude oil prices, and taking advantage of a drop in the country’s inflation rate in May, China raised gasoline and diesel prices for the first time in eight months this Friday. As of midnight, gasoline prices were raised by 0.8 yuan (12 cents), and diesel 0.92 yuan (13 cents), per [...]


Sometimes, The Market Just Wants To Go Down (Part II) (Jun 19)
With prices in China’s A share market falling precipitously from their October 2007 peak, and many in China calling for the government to do something, anything, to stop the stock market’s slide. I wrote a post on April 29, Sometimes, the Market Just Wants to go Down, where I argued that further intervention by [...]


The Grass is Always Brown! (Jun 14)
Given all the questions I’ve gotten recently about whether ASIMCO plans to move production to lower-cost countries like Vietnam to escape rising wage rates and inflation in China, I found the opening sentence in a recent Wall Street Journal article about Cambodia to be somewhat ironic: As Vietnam’s overheated economy teeters on the brink of crisis, [...]


Visas (Jun 11)
As anyone who lives and works in China knows, obtaining visas is becoming a bigger and bigger problem here. So much so that some, like the Australian foreign minister, are warning that this could harm future trade and business. In a recent interview, Stephen Smith told reporters in Hong Kong: “It is important that the [...]


Impact of High Priced Oil on China’s Auto Industry (Jun 6)
???????? ????? ????????One of my recent presentations, I was asked what impact $130 a barrel crude oil is having on the growth of China’s auto industry. It was a good question, one that deserved a much better answer than I could give. With the price of crude increasing so quickly–a 17 percent increase in May [...]


A Real Chinese Hero (Jun 4)
With almost 100,000 people either dead or missing, and as many as 5 million now homeless, it is difficult to find many bright spots in the devastating earthquake that ripped through Sichuan Province several weeks ago. The reconstruction needed to repair the damage done in those few minutes will be an ongoing story for months [...]