Revealing account of the struggles and surprises when forming a financial joint venture with China
The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That ""Win-Win"" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years “on the ground” trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design—and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life, including Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers.
Describing a China he found fascinating and maddeningly complex, this book explores topics including:
Difficulties in transplanting SVB's model to China, from misunderstandings about titles and responsibilities to pitched battles over toilet design Ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today and why China must be met with realistic expectations Wilcox's own honest missteps and the painfully learned lessons that came afterwards
Engrossing, enlightening, and entertaining, The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That ""Win-Win"" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an essential cautionary tale and guidebook for all Western bankers, C-suite executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs seeking to do business within China.
By:
Ken Wilcox
Imprint: John Wiley & Sons Inc
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 234mm,
Width: 163mm,
Spine: 36mm
Weight: 612g
ISBN: 9781394294169
ISBN 10: 1394294166
Pages: 384
Publication Date: 25 November 2024
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments xiii About the Author xv Acronyms xvii Introduction xix Prologue: the Green Hat Award xxi Why I Wrote This Book xxii How I Structured This Account and Gathered My Information xxv Part I The Long Lead-up 1 Chapter 1 Silicon Valley Bank Goes to China: Inadvertent Tech Transfer 3 1.1 Why Silicon Valley Bank? The Bank for Innovation 4 1.2 Why China? 9 1.3 Why Me? 14 Chapter 2 It Starts with Guanxi : Kissing Frogs and Finding a Prince 19 2.1 A Prince at Last 20 2.2 Reaching the King 23 Chapter 3 Orienting Ourselves: the Staff, the Teams, and The Runaround 31 3.1 Settling In: The Local Staff 32 3.2 Settling In: The Local Experts 37 3.3 Getting to Work: The Secret Team 42 Chapter 4 Pains in the Neck: the New Bank’s Location, Organization, and Identity 51 4.1 The Org Chart 53 4.2 Issues to Resolve 68 4.3 The Letter and What I Learned 71 4.4 Achieving the Impossible 73 4.5 December 2011 74 4.6 Wrapping Up 2011 77 Chapter 5 Slogging Along: Resolving Some of the Major Issues 81 5.1 The Breakthrough in the Tea House at the Zigzag Bridge 86 5.2 A Turning Point 89 5.3 Put in Our Place 91 Chapter 6 The Grand Opening and Yet More Licenses We Didn’t Have 99 6.1 A License to Wait 101 6.2 The Worry of Warrants 104 6.3 Growing Anxiety 105 6.4 Regulation 106 Chapter 7 Staffing: Ccp Offspring, Parents, and Cultural Differences 111 7.1 Recruiting: Sons and Daughters of the Party 112 7.2 Retaining: The Brain Drain 116 7.3 Deeper in the Joint Venture 118 7.3.1 Managing the Lenders 118 7.3.2 Assisting Lao Ding 120 7.3.3 The Bank That Didn’t Pay Graft 120 Chapter 8 Where the Money Goes, Finding My Successor, and More About China 123 8.1 Seeking a Successor 124 8.2 Entertainments, 2012 126 8.2.1 Chinese Medicine 130 8.3 Reflecting 132 8.4 Wrapping Up 2012 132 Part II After the License 137 Chapter 9 Hastening the Timeline: the Four-prong Strategy And What “letting the Customer Decide” Really Means 139 9.1 Complexities 145 9.2 Moving Forward, Maybe 148 9.2.1 How “Letting the Customer Decide” Really Works 151 9.2.2 Making Progress? 154 9.3 The Danger of Hope 156 Chapter 10 The New Sheriff: XI Comes to Power 159 10.1 The Party Committee 163 10.2 Building the Bank’s Culture 164 10.3 Building Guanxi 168 10.4 The Carrot Overhead 171 Chapter 11 Irreconcilable Differences: the More We Knew, The Worse Things Looked 177 11.1 The Successor Is Named 180 11.2 Filling in the Blanks 184 11.3 Wrapping Up 2013 186 Chapter 12 Wrapping Up My Stay: Staff Changes, More Lessons, Still No Rmb 193 12.1 I Could Have Gone Home 198 12.2 Becoming Vice Chairman 201 12.3 Warrants at Last 203 12.4 Conversations in Context 205 12.5 Body Count 208 12.6 Revolution on the Doorstep 212 12.7 Leaving 213 Chapter 13 Success in a Fashion: China’s New Tech Bank (which Wasn’t Us), and Being Vice Chairman 217 Part III The Chinese Communist Party 223 Chapter 14 The Ccp’s Role and Influence 225 14.1 “Party, Government, Military, Civilian, and Academic, East, West, South, North, and Center, The Party Leads Everything.” 226 14.2 The Chinese Banking System and Economy 227 14.2.1 Chinese Economics 232 14.3 Opinions of Others About the CCP 237 14.4 Attitudes of the CCP 239 14.5 Changes with Xi 241 Chapter 15 Practical Guidelines for Working with the Ccp 247 15.1 Contracts and the CCP 250 15.2 CCP Negotiation 251 15.2.1 Random Observations 256 15.3 The CCP and Control 258 15.4 The CCP and History 260 Part IV The other 93 Percent 265 Chapter 16 Chinese Beliefs 267 16.1 Chinese Beliefs 269 16.2 Attitudes Toward Americans 279 16.3 Overseas Chinese 282 Chapter 17 The Lives of the other 93 Percent 287 17.1 The Life of Xiao Hong 290 17.2 Non-Chinese Living in China 294 17.3 Strange Things That Happen 295 Chapter 18 Conclusion: Seeking Truth From Facts, Making Sense of It All, and Trying to Predict the Future 297 18.1 How Western Companies Fail in China 304 Part V Four years lessons, condensed 317 Epilogue 325 References 329 Bibliography 331 Index 339
A 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), KENNETH WILCOX was the bank’s CEO from 2001 to 2011 and Vice Chairman of SVB’s joint venture in Shanghai (SSVB) until 2019. He is a former member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
