Comments

Thanks for the recommendation, Tom. I'm looking forward to a trip to India in July. I'm touring the country and interviewing privately owned companies using US manufacturing technology. It's a great privilege to see first hand what some of these observers/thinkers are writing about. Any tips for while I'm in Mumbai?

Posted by matt at May 27, 2005 11:47 AM

A rising TIDE LIFTs all ships.

The USA, EU - especially the UK, and India, JAPAN, KOREA, VIETNAM will all benefit radically by the world-wide lift of new free enterprise opportunity via CHINA.

LOVE AND PEACE AND PROSPERITY IN THE FREE AGENT WORLD [TO A RADICAL DEGREE].

Posted by Sean at May 27, 2005 3:03 PM

Tom, have you had a chance to read another book on the same topit by C.K. Prahalad's book - The Fortune of the Bottom of the Pyramid? It was named the best business book of 2004 by virtually every publication (Fast Company, Economist, WSJ, Amazon, etc).

Posted by Manny at May 27, 2005 3:43 PM

It is the end of the world as we know it. Of course, this can be said on any given day. Interestingly, China's rise has been at the hands of incremental improvement not blowing shit up.

Posted by Troy Worman at May 27, 2005 5:02 PM

Thanks Sean for picking out the UK - I share your optimism

Our UK economy has been well managed by Gordon Brown the Chancellor under Mr Blair since 1997 so I will agree with you we are well placed - I just hope the conservatibve (small c) Brits won't miss the boat.

Come to think of it ....Wasn't there a song about the slow boat to China?

Posted by Trevor Gay at May 27, 2005 5:13 PM

forget it, trevor.
chinese hate everything english so passionately.
but they LOVE germans!

so whats up? anybody coming? i'll guide you in...

Posted by jens at May 28, 2005 5:16 AM

Don't understand that Jens

The Chinese people I know over here in England love the English - we eat their take aways all the time :-)

Posted by Trevor Gay at May 28, 2005 6:34 AM

What will be really interesting is seeing how Adidas/etc. can sell its shoes/products to the very people making them who can't afford Western prices, or will China cease to be a huge labor pool of underpaid labor? The ripples in the West aren't going to be anything compared to the waves in China itself.

Posted by Doug at May 28, 2005 12:44 PM

Jens - Are you from HATELAND? Here are a few facts..
Chinese work HARD.
They are SMART
They are among the BEST in everything they do.
They DONT HATE anybody...they just DONT CARE.
They know Taiwan is a part of China and nobody can ever do anything about it.
They are 1 billion strong.
They can survive on just Chinese food. New Yorkers eat it atleast once a week!
Other countries need their market more than they need the world's market!

Matt - Can I know which sectors/companies are on your list during your trip?

Posted by Hesh at May 29, 2005 3:56 AM

When I lived in New York city and had my own business, I hired Chinese and Hispanic immigrants and students and found them all to be very hard working, very clever and personally of strong character. Most importantly, I found them to be very polite which mattered since we were a small business dealing with blue chip companies and international government agencies. For all that the Chinese are supposed to be a communist society, they are taught from a very early age how to do business - they're some of the oldest traders in the world - and one of the things they understand very well is human nature and how to take advantage of its weaknesses.

I enjoyed on many occasions seeing Westerners blunder about in negotiations with Chinese people and fall into trap after trap after trap. They missed signals you did not need to speak their language to understand and allowed themselves to be easily manipulated into revealing their personal weaknesses. It was painful to watch, but entertaining too.

I'm not sure how true it is right now to say other countries need the Chinese market more than the Chinese need other countries' markets. McKinsey are estimating that if everything ticks along as it has been, the Chinese won't overtake the American economy till 2040. I've found predictions, especially long-term ones, sound nice, but never go according to plan.

Posted by Noel Guinane at May 29, 2005 4:47 AM

hesh, :)
this was more or less a humorous comment - at least it was supposed to be one... sorry. was refering to a colloquial chinese joke-name, a "sound transformation/translation" of the word englishman which forms into s.th. that retranslated means "insincere"...
but, hey, as i said, this remark was supposed to make you smile, not frown...
sorry.

Posted by jens at May 30, 2005 4:50 AM

You also recommended 'The Flight of the Creative Class,' which talks more about smaller countries littered throughout the world that are attracting our most talented creatives (or, more precisely, keeping their own.)

It looks like we're being attacked on all fronts by what could be a perfect storm of economic and sociological change - all of which add up to some serious problems for the United States.

I hope we're smart enough to make changes fast...just as I'd rather be steering a small, agile company than a behemoth, I wouldn't want to be in charge of fixing this problem.

Posted by Sean Johnson at June 2, 2005 12:24 PM