最近连续读了几本外国人在中国做生意的书，2209其实是红色轮盘，但一定是不敢写出来的。同类的书交织在一起看，了解才会比较全面。Jack是ASMICO的真正老板，对比着TIM写的MR. China也很难得，可以说是对那个时代、对当下中国更为全面的了解。整本书读起来还是收益非常大的，照例做些摘要。
Everybody has their own opinion, but if I had to boil down everything I’m going to tell you in this book into one important idea, it’s this: you have to develop a strong local management team for your company here.
本地团队是关键，不只是对外资企业，对国内企业也是。
Yale reinforced forever my view that hard work and perseverance can help you overcome any obstacle. It also gave me a great deal of confidence in what I could ultimately achieve if I set my mind to it. If you want something badly enough and are willing to work for it, chances are you’ll get it. If I was going to leave PaineWebber and truly strike out on my own, I didn’t want to simply follow others, or chase after the same deals that everybody else was competing for. I wanted to be the first to discover something, and to capitalize on my discovery.
努力和坚持能克服一切问题，所以核心是方向，方向定了努力去做，就能实现。关键就是要做第一。
Mike Johnston, whom I worked for at PaineWebber, once told me that it’s easier to predict the actions of an institution than an individual, and China was certainly an institution. Individuals can wake up one day and decide, for no apparent reason, to reverse a decision made the day before. But all institutions, no matter how irrational they might seem from the outside, have a logic to them. Once you understand the logic, you can start to predict how an institution will act in the future. China is an institution, not a family, and it has a logic. If I could figure it out, I’d have a chance, I reasoned.
But the country does have a logic. If you rely on your experience, use your good judgment, and spend the time, you’ll be able to find it. And as you do, step-by-step, China won’t seem quite so mysterious.
机构行为是遵循逻辑、是可预测的，国家也是机构。和机构打交道，了解其逻辑，结果就基本是可预测的，这是很好的观察，这个有助于帮助我们理解明天的中国如何走。
My first job was to form an investment vehicle so that Bill Kaye and I could bring in outside investors and at least earn some management fees to cover expenses. I went to work putting a vehicle in place, and by the middle of 1992 we had formed a limited partnership and had taken in the first $35 million, which grew relatively quickly to $100 million.
哥们的第一次亚洲创业居然是设个基金炒股票，难怪后面转一级呢，二级转一级的案例。
It began to make more sense to me to pick an industry, not a set of individual companies, and develop a strategy for creating the leading company in that industry in China. The company would then benefit from the inevitable consolidation instead of falling victim to it.
选择一个行业，打造一家领军企业，持续受益于市场整合，成为Jack的主要策略，这个还是特别不容易的，也非常有志向。要单纯赚钱的，炒地皮炒房的生意显然更好，但这是选择。
When I’d been in investment banking, I had called on a number of companies in the automotive components area. Though times were tough then, in the late 1970s, I looked back at financial statements from the 1950s and 1960s and saw that these companies had all been very profitable. This had been America’s growth period in autos.
选择汽车配件行业还是有其独特的观察的，五六十年代的美国配件行业一度利润非常好，70年代开始整合的历史就是Jack的出发点。
Another important conclusion that I came to after these first few trips to China was the importance of majority ownership and management control. In all of the meetings I had in 1992, I was pleasantly surprised that most of the managers spoke about profits, and the need to make them. With their socialist, centrally planned backgrounds, I had thought that profit wouldn’t even be in their vocabularies. What I didn’t know was whether these managers even understood what the word profit actually meant, and whether they meant what they said. After all, they had to know that emphasizing the importance of profits was important to attracting capital, and that’s what Westerners wanted to hear.
不得不佩服Jack还是非常火眼金睛的。虽然企业家不断说利润，但从计划经济的背景上看，Jack还是有明确判断这些人说利润只是为了骗投资，哈哈。
China is a marathon, not a sprint. I’ve found that to be true. Though we hadn’t planned it this way, these public signings also broke the logjam with CNAIC. Dong Jianping saw the newspaper articles, concluded that we were serious, and sent a message through Ai Jian that he wanted to meet with me the next time I was in Beijing.
When we met, Dong immediately produced a spreadsheet listing twenty of what he considered to be the best components factories in China, along with their locations and products. While CNAIC did not have any formal connection to most companies on the list, Dong had gotten to know their general managers over the years, and he had tried to help each of them obtain government loans and find joint venture partners or sources of technology. It was his knowledge and personal relationships, not his position with CNAIC, that turned out to be most valuable. The list that Dong produced that day turned out to be the best single list of potential joint venture partners that we ever received, and we eventually consummated joint ventures with several of the companies on it. Little did they know that the only capital I had at that time was my American Express card. Fortunately, it was platinum!
非常有趣的起步故事。起初只是配合北方工业集团签个意向协议，媒体一报道效果就不一样了。汽车协会的董给提供了真正合作的清单，成功率很高。小插曲是当时Jack并没有钱，只有一张白金运通卡！
The result of these discussions was the formation of Asian Strategic Investments Corporation in September 1993. Dean Witter, TCW, and the company that Bill Kaye and I had formed were the shareholders, and the idea was that it would act as the general partner of a limited partnership that we planned to put together later in the year.
Last, and most important, our timing was good. We caught the tail end of the initial rush to invest in China. If we’d started six months later, when Zhu Rongji’s austerity program to combat inflation began to take hold and interest in China began to wane, we probably wouldn’t have been successful. As I’d learned in twenty years on Wall Street, timing is everything in the capital markets.
时机太重要了，晚一点就没有机会完成募资了。正好昨晚看Bill Gross的TED演讲，专门提到了创业成功的核心要素是Timing！
Our head-on collision with China’s “management gap,” we had to regroup and reevaluate how we were going to manage and grow our business in China. The years between 1996 and 1998 were some of the darkest for ASIMCO. We managed to work our way through them through sheer perseverance, and because our strategy was correct. Through this, I have learned that getting the strategy right is one of the most important things that a company can do.”
The fast growth of China’s automotive industry from 1992 to 1995 had masked some underlying problems in our businesses. As the market cooled in 1996 and 1997, they began to come out of the woodwork.
During this period, the distinction between “profits” and “cash” also became apparent. When a company in China shows profits, the question you always have to ask is “How are accounts receivable and inventories?” The good news is that state-owned managers in China can be profit oriented. The bad news is that they don’t often attach the same importance to cash as a Western company might.
管理代沟，作者体会很深的领域。95年之前的市场快速增长掩盖了不少问题，市场一遇冷问题就开始暴露出来。分清楚现金流和利润，是多么简单和重要的事情，现在能真正分清楚的人也不多。
In my twelve years in China, I’ve learned that there are only two rules: RULE #1: EVERYTHING IS POSSIBLE. RULE #2: NOTHING IS EASY
这两点总结太精髓了，一切都有可能+没什么是很容易的，所以就需要明确的方向+持续的努力。
If the foreign partner doesn’t include everything in the joint venture, the Chinese partner will continue to do business, making and selling the non-joint-venture products while still participating fully in the joint venture itself. In this way, the joint venture process carries the seeds of its own destruction. Given that most, if not all, of the employees and managers of the joint venture were former employees of the Chinese partner, where do their loyalties really lie? With the Chinese partner, which might still employ an employee’s spouse and provide housing and schooling to the family, or with the new “foreign bosses”? The answer is pretty clear.”
这是个同业竞争没有被重视，导致后续打仗、两败俱伤的事情。专注投入是前提，同业竞争是红线。
Using Ding as an example, we embarked on Plan C: finding and empowering New China managers. First and foremost, a New China manager is a Mainland Chinese who is open-minded, and who recognizes the importance of being open to new ideas and concepts if the company—and China more generally—is ever going to reach its full potential. Many managers in China have engineering backgrounds, and this is certainly a plus in a manufacturing-oriented company. But on top of this, New China managers have had real experience managing in China and at least some exposure to modern management concepts and tools. They may not have an MBA, but through management training or development programs they’ve come to understand that management is indeed a science, and that the management tools and methods that have proven to be successful in other parts of the world may have an application in China.
新中国策略“方案C”：本地团队，思维开放，融合海外优秀资源和管理经验。
Once I had sufficient evidence that Fang had violated the noncompete agreement, I confronted him and told him that something had to give. He responded by offering to run our joint venture under a management contract that would guarantee us a certain level of profit. This was completely unsatisfactory to me. Apart from the fact that our joint venture would never have any equity value under this type of arrangement, I also wasn’t about to agree to any formal relationship with someone who had already proven to be untrustworthy. I made the decision then and there to replace him. He had crossed the line, and the die had been cast.
Of uppermost importance in my mind was controlling the company’s chop, the little round stamp issued by the government and used to certify the company’s approval of a transaction. In China, nothing gets done in the name of the company without the chop.”
We took a couple of positive lessons from what happened in Anhui. First, patience, perseverance, and careful planning can prevail, even against strong vested interests. Second, the local government can be an ally, but you have to work hard to develop the relationship. (After Anhui, I redoubled our efforts to expand our network of relationships with local governments in China, and we brought on several local advisers to make sure we never let up.) Third, learning to operate the Chinese way—leveraging relationships and playing to your strengths—will most likely lead you to the best result. In the case of Anhui, we had no real relationship with the local government before the change in management. One year later, they were our biggest ally in putting the matter to rest.
安徽这一仗还是很漂亮的，虽然没披露，但实际这个Fang就是中鼎股份的夏鼎湖。
What we were doing instead was picking and choosing, combining the best in China with the best from the rest of the world. From this came our Core Purpose: To create a truly global company which is unique because of its ability to combine the best in China with the best from the rest of the world.
We determined that the managers who were most successful at ASIMCO were those who believed in teamwork; accepted personal responsibility; understood the need for continuous improvement; had joined ASIMCO because of the opportunity; and were attracted by significant goals. These five values then formed ASIMCO’s Core Values, which, along with the Core Purpose, began to define our culture. Now we knew what to look for when hiring or promoting our employees.
Finally, a group of our managers, after several days of discussion, determined that the company’s long-term goal should be To be recognized as the global leader in all of our products. We said that we wanted to be recognized as the best by industry experts, our customers, you name it—a much higher standard. We wanted to be the leader, not just a leader, and we wanted our leadership to be global, not merely in China. And last, this statement meant that we wanted to be the leader in all of our products—not some, not most, but all.
AMSICO的这段故事还是很值得借鉴的，确定核心目的、价值和长期目标。
Most things get done at the local level. Nobody likes it if you go above them to exert pressure, and local government officials in China are no different. They tend to react negatively to pressure or guidance from Beijing or the provincial authorities. I had made this mistake often enough and hadn’t fully appreciated how decentralized China actually is until I had been here awhile.
In general, having local governments highly incentivized to develop their economies is a good thing. But when you combine those powerful incentives with the overall lack of separation of power in China, the dynamic for creating overcapacity begins to emerge. When a commodity like steel is in high demand, any local company or entrepreneur interested in building a steel plant could expect to get favorable treatment from the local government, including bank financing. Over the past ten years, it has been this precise dynamic that has led to the overcapacity in motorcycles, cement, and beer that I mentioned earlier.
If you pick an industry where the barriers to entry are low, and where capacity can be added cheaply and quickly, it’ll be impossible to attain adequate pricing. Rather than producing these products, it may be smarter to take advantage of the overcapacity and low prices and source these products from China. The trick in China is to make products that can’t be easily made by others, for whatever reason. Generally, these will be products with a higher technology content that are difficult to manufacture and can’t be easily duplicated.
中国是个去中心化、分散决策、地方权力很大的决策格局，Jack的这点理解还是相当到位的。由此引出的他对中国钢铁行业过剩的预测、分析也非常经典。
Henry is also always alert to remind me of the small things that I might do to further develop my relationships—a message of best wishes at Spring Festival, a small gift to commemorate a special event, sometimes just a word or two of thanks in recognition of some special favor that the government has done. In China, I have found that showing respect through these seemingly small gestures goes a long way. Nowhere is this more true than in dealing with the local governments.
多么入乡随俗啊。作为中国人都有点自愧不如了，有时候不拘小节是个坏事。
To me, China’s different cost perspective is the most fundamental explanation of why Chinese manufacturers can make things so cheaply. It’s also why products that seem reasonably priced to Westerners are considered prohibitively high-priced in China, and why products that Western companies think will appeal to the mass market in China instead succeed only in a niche market. To be competitive in the China market, it’s essential that a company’s managers have the same cost perspective as its customers and competitors.”
入乡随俗的成本视角。
My long experience in China tells me that understanding this local market—and perhaps even making a serious effort to tap in to it—is important, for several reasons. First, it’s big. The local market is where the ultimate economies of scale in China will come from. Opting out of this market forsakes those economies. Second, as income levels rise over time, the local market will merge up technologically.”
THE POINT IS that whatever the product—restaurants, autos, hotels, or hair care—there’s a large local market that coexists with a smaller, higher-priced, higher-technology segment that began to develop when China opened up in 1978. These two markets will not stay separated. As shown by Geely, Beiqi-Foton, and countless other examples, the lines between them are already starting to blur, and ultimately the two will fuse into one.
本地市场的观点也很有意思，扎实而务实，所谓的下沉市场。
Third, you can do your best to keep key processes and aspects of the technology separate from one another by placing them in different facilities in China, which makes it harder for one person to see and understand the entire process. You should also carefully consider whether it’s wise to outsource key components. In many products, the key to the technology is in the components. It might be perfectly safe to teach a supplier how to make such components in more developed countries, but in China it’s probably a better decision to keep them in-house.
Make no mistake about it, the technology gap is closing, and it is closing fast. Global assemblers are transferring technology and know-how to local Chinese suppliers in order to develop a reliable supply base in China. Global components companies are expanding their operations in the country, bringing their latest technologies and designing advanced systems for Chinese assemblers. The CEO of a major transmission company told me that his company was designing a new transmission for a Chinese assembler.
Innovation occurs when an unsatisfied market demand is combined with a lot of smart people. Somewhere out there lies a technological solution. Somebody will figure out how to create more fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles, which at the same time meet the affordability needs of the China market.
技术鸿沟正在缩小，老外还是有办法，但想规避也相当有难度。
First, no matter how straightforward or outwardly aggressive Chinese may appear to be, they are very sensitive—much more so than Westerners. They don’t like to be embarrassed. Where you might be able to tease a Westerner in public, this is generally not a good idea here. “Face” is extremely important, and “loss of face” a serious matter. Being told “no” publicly is, for example, a loss of face. Better not to be so direct. Deliver the bad news privately.
敏感的中国人，当面不说no，坏消息要私下说，这些规则我们依然在持续理解。