最早是在单伟建的新书走出戈壁中提到了这本书，才知道了这段不为人知的历史，可以说是最早在中国进行PE投资的一批人了，血泪教训慢慢。先读了一遍英文版，又从孔夫子上找到了几乎绝迹的中文版，虽然已经是作者开始亚洲战略投资有限公司（ASIMCO）这段创业史的接近三十年后了，其中的人性和故事放在今日依然不变，依然可以给我们当下的投资从业者以非常大的启发。
传奇还在于ASIMCO最终改名了亚新科，成为了国内最大的汽车零部件集团之一。2016年按照22亿人民币的对价出售给了上市公司郑煤机，2020年依然能看到公司的蓬勃发展，实现了38亿人民币的收入和3.6亿元的利润。虽然股东已经几经更迭，如果不是有其他的瑕疵，这样的公司如能登上A股，百亿市值还是可期的。对于当初出资了接近5亿美元的投资者而言，22年后拿回本金的3/5自然是一笔巨大的亏损。这也是一段应该深刻铭记的历史，难得的商业史。
照例做些摘录。
You know, Wall Street goes in phases,’ he continued. ‘It’s a question of getting there first and being ahead of the curve; creating the leader in whatever’s gonna be the next big story. Just like Milken did with junk bonds. The smart people figure out where the money flow will be and get there first. It’s a question of riding the next wave and that’s why I’m in Asia.
两个老外还是相当敏锐的。90年代就能够看到亚洲的巨大机会，犹如之前大家看到的印度机会一样。前途是光明的，但道路是曲折的。逻辑还是非常受用的：无论什么，要赶在浪潮之前，要做第一！这和自己当初出来时的想法非常有共鸣。
We were all over the press. The Asian Wall Street Journal ran a whole page on us. The article, which was entitled ‘The Insiders versus the Outsiders’, compared our chances with another group of Hong Kong investment managers who had raised ninety million for one of the big Beijing-based industrial groups. We were the ‘outsiders’ from Wall Street up against the ‘insiders’ from Hong Kong who claimed to have all the right relationships in the inner chambers up in Beijing.”
当初的巨大成功也在媒体上引起了轰动，所谓高光时刻。
He was flexible and only dug his heels in on two points: our cash had to come quickly and he was to remain in charge. After a couple of months, we agreed a handshake deal: twelve million dollars for a 60 per cent stake in the business. On 8 September 1994 the twelve million dollars were wired into Shi’s bank account in Ningshan. Late that day, I took a long walk up to the Great Wall and stared out northwards towards Mongolia over the ancient parapets. We had made our first investment. I felt exhausted, exhilarated and apprehensive all at the same time. It had been a bruising process. Would it all be worth it ?
宁国的老石作为民营企业家还是相当痛快的，直接了当。基金第一个项目投出去带来的兴奋感也跃然纸上，经历了诸多的不顺之后，已经是巨大的成功了。但最终是吗？
In the space of eighteen months, we had come from nowhere to be one of the biggest financial investors in China, right at the height of the China boom. We were fast becoming the nexus between the vast capital resources on Wall Street and the greatest growth story ever.
94-95年间，18个月成为了当时国内最大的外国投资机构了，犹如今日的红杉之类的。
During the money-raising process, Pat and IHC were clear about the strategy of buying up factories and consolidating them into the largest components company in China. The investors identified with the story. It had happened in the States so why not in China? Pat had told the investors that we would go for size; we would only use their money to buy stakes in businesses that were in the top three of their markets.
一开始就相当明确的行业和投资策略，投资到企业零部件产业，只投资行业的前三名、保持控股。逻辑今天看起来也依然不错，行业也没选错，那问题出在哪里呢？时代吗？
With a bit more straight talking, I thought that I could bring them round. They maintained their optimistic attitude and it seemed more like a slight bump in an otherwise smooth ascent rather than any serious stalling of the engines. We asked the factory directors to come to Beijing where we went through the numbers together. They were all confident of being back on budget by the year-end so there were no particular alarm bells. But I never felt as though I had got the whole picture. There were nagging inconsistencies in the description of the overall market from the various factory directors. Whenever we asked questions, they seemed to throw up a smokescreen of perplexing detail that was difficult to assemble into a coherent story. Unperturbed by our confusion and rising exasperation, they sat on the opposite side of the table, smiling and slurping their tea out of big glass jam-jars at each meeting until they suggested lunch at eleven-thirty.
The factory directors would often talk for hours on end without getting to the point and then suddenly demand an immediate decision on purchasing millions of dollars’ worth of machinery without any analysis, insisting point-blank that the decision had to be made there and then.
By the end of the year, with profits still nowhere in sight, it was obvious that the task ahead was much more difficult than any of us had imagined. But with more than four hundred million in the balance it was hardly the time for doubts.
长春项目所经历的一切，有时代的影子，但在当下也并不鲜见。不少人总是能够巧舌如簧、避重就轻。
But Pat still felt that they would come through in the end and he remained optimistic. The market hadn’t grown as fast as predicted, but he was confident that the situation would right itself in the end. He’d seen these kinds of cycles before on Wall Street, and with the four hundred million, we had enough capital to get through these temporary difficulties. Pat even thought that the downturn might do us some good. ‘It’ll weed out the weaker opposition,’ he said.
Pat/Jack的自信我还是很欣赏的，虽然作者后来已经撤了，Jack几乎还是坚持到了最后，虽然没有给投资人以好的回报，但从事业角度还是成功了，他的乐观遇见性没有错。
So we invested and, after a brief period of profits, in startling contrast to the radiant future that Pang had foreseen in his projections, there were massive losses. Much more alarming were the rapidly dwindling bank balances as cash poured out of the business. Basic things were missing. Pang never seemed to collect money from his customers, but paid his suppliers in advance. There was never any serious analysis when he wanted to buy new equipment.Pang became more and more difficult to deal with; he talked in great ellipses, never really getting to the point and blowing up minor details into major rows.
哈尔滨的庞元文这段故事还是挺深刻的，持续亏损，不断的消耗现金，款收不回来，维持生产必须持续采购，随意买设备，直至枯竭。庞的能力就在于你说大事，他总能用小事来打断你、干扰你，这类人现在也极其多，如果不能在同一纬度上谈话，确实就是灾难。
But who would have guessed that the situation would ever get so complicated or so severe, or that Pang would go to such lengths to protect his own position? Or that the contract would have been so useless? It didn’t make sense. All we had wanted to do was to build a strong business where all parties could benefit but we’d ended up achieving the exact opposite. I felt confusion and anger – and a deep sense of frustration that such an opportunity had been wasted by our inability to rein in one individual. All I could do then was survey the wreckage: the broken buildings and the broken lives, up in the ice and the cold.”
庞的这段故事也让作者十分受伤，做成一件事确实不是仅凭良好的愿望就可以的，背后需要付出十分艰辛的努力，大量外人无法得知的伤心故事。要感谢作者能把这一切都展示给我们，警醒自己。
Pat had a way of looking at our factory directors that he often wrote about and mentioned in speeches. He’d talk about a ‘management gap’ in China. His analysis was that, after the founding of the People’s Republic, China had essentially been closed to foreigners and there had been no true competition in the socialist economy. So managers in China had just been allocated capital and told what to make. There had never been any pressure to respond to a market or develop new products. Capital was simply assigned to whoever worked their government networks most successfully. There was no market regulation to funnel capital to the best managers and no pressure to perform. Once Deng took off the handcuffs, the natural Chinese entrepreneurs suddenly burst out into the open. The problem, Pat thought, was that managers seemed to go to either extreme. ‘If the management is too bureaucratic, you can’t get anything done,’ he’d say, ‘But, on the other hand, if they’re too entrepreneurial you can’t sleep at night. You may be in the components business one day and find that you are in the hotel business tomorrow.”
Pat对中国存在管理断层、企业家两个极端的观察还是很到位的。计划经济和市场经济的快速变化中，守旧的官僚的企业家什么都干不了，但似乎不犯错，不是好的企业家；勤劳的企业家又过于聪明，经常胡来。这可能也是国内一直没有太好的职业经理人的缘故：毕竟真正处于市场经济的时间太短暂了。类似的极端不只是企业家，政治家、学者都有类似特征。无疑，勤劳的企业家还是更可取一些，只要加上简单的条件就能相当好了，守住底线、保持专注。
What had I learnt? From my eight years at the coalface in China, I knew that I was dealing with a society that had no rules – or, more accurately, plenty of rules that were seldom enforced. China seemed to be run by masterful showmen: appearances mattered more than substance, rules were there to be distorted and success came through outfacing an opponent. The irony was that the entire nation seemed to be shadow-boxing with itself. Whereas to most foreigners China seemed too centralized, with an all-controlling Party brooding at the hub of a vast monolithic State, everywhere I had looked there had seemed to be a kind of institutionalized confusion.
“I hoped that this might give me a chance of reaching across the cultural divide, a chance of appealling to common values. If it came to a struggle with the factory directors, I had to convince them that I was fighting them not as a foreigner but as a businessman. That way, I might have a chance.”
中国就是这样的太极拳社会，规矩不少但得不到很好的执行、制度性混乱的观察非常深刻，事实就是如此。作者也清楚其解决方案，作为商人来唤起逐利的共同价值观，回避所谓中、外之间的对立。