China CEO, Voice of Experience--BOOK REVIEW

China CEO—BOOK REVIEWThis book is for anyone that is going to a new post in China and has never been here before. It is quite broad in its coverage of issues but maybe a bit shallow in its analysis. I like the idea behind this book—talk with people in the know (CEO’s in China) and take into account the culture, the government and the logistical difficulties that are China But it also makes a couple of assumptions which I do not think are absolutely true.First (misleading) assumption is that running a business in China is different from anywhere else in the world. China certainly has some different cultural issues that you have to get used to, but at the end of the day if you are good at what you do and you’ve hired good people and have a good process/product there is going to be only minor changes to the corporate organization from any other country.For example a summary of the Chapter “Managing Chinese Employees summarizes the following points as keys to success: Right Compensation, Smart Recruiting, Train to Retain, Promotional Opportunities, Loss of Face, and Building Employee Relationships. How are any of these (including Loss of Face) different from the US, Brazil or Europe? There not. Some of nuances are indeed different but I continually found myself asking “how is this different than the US.” Sure they throw the word “Guanxi” around likes it’s the secret of life on the planet. But outside of mentioning the significantly different personal relationships, I found little that was detailed enough to be of real value.Second, anyone coming to China is going to be working in a high level position in a Global Fortune 500 Company in Shanghai. I don’t know the numbers here, but I would have to guess that the bulk of foreigners in China are NOT working for huge multinationals. While a good percentage are, I’d be willing to bet less than 20% of foreigners in China work for Global Fortune 500 company—that means that the target audience for this book very very small (and the applicability to others equally discriminatory). So why aren’t the mid-sized companies and the educators and others included—why only high level CEO’s? Can the lessons from the CEO’s be extrapolated to apply to others? Sure, to some degree, but so can the lessons learned from the movie Hoosiers. This is a book that is supposed to be specifically about China and how to work here and how it’s different from anywhere else.Despite what I see as pretty shallow look into the specifics that actually do make China different China CEO is quite a good introduction to working in China. It has on-the-ground foreign businesspeople talking about what their actual experiences in various situations have been—this is great and varied experience that can really be helpful—I just wish we got the full stories behind all the one line quotes.I would love to have seen see a book series written on each of the ten chapters—that amount of depth would really allow for personal adaptation and application of the high-level general advice from the current volume. Hopefully more details/information are forth coming.I agreed with most of the book, but didn’t find anything that was as practical or applicable as I had hoped as a mid-sized business owner. I would suggest that you read this book and Mr. China at the same time to really understand what a non-Chinese speaking CEO of a large company and what a mid-sized, on the ground manager have in common in China—outside of chopsticks, not much.