Conquering China 101

By Bill Powell/Shanghai

Got anybody in your company so patient, so persistent, so willing to sit in interminable negotiations for hour upon hour that he would be worthy of the nickname Iron Ass? If so, send him to China; it may be where he belongs. That is one of the enormous number of practical lessons large and small to be gleaned from James McGregor's new book, One Billion Customers: Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China. McGregor is a rare breed: an extraordinarily capable journalist--he was the Wall Street Journal's Beijing bureau chief from 1990 to 1994--who evolved into a successful businessman. He ran Dow Jones' China operations, was head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing and now is a venture capitalist focusing on technology investments in China. His book is the best to date describing the scrum of trying to do business in China at a point when the hype--the nation of 1 billion customers--is finally starting to become reality. Our little nugget of wisdom on the China market for those wanting to do business there? Read this book.