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<\/a><\/p>\nYou say the US and China seem headed for conflict. Do you think there\u2019s a way to improve relations? And is business and trade where that process starts?<\/h4>\n
There\u2019s a path forward to better relations, but it\u2019s going to require compromise and understanding on both sides.<\/p>\n
We wrote this book partly to show that global businesses have found ways to adapt without compromising our values or sacrificing our interests. They will continue to play a role as long as they can do so legally and ethically and aren\u2019t prevented from doing so by national security concerns in Beijing and Washington. Large foreign businesses have found ways to operate within the Chinese system and been successful. There could be useful lessons here for how other governments interact with China. In China, the relationship between government and business is very different from the West, and this is a common source of misunderstanding both at the policy and business operations levels.<\/p>\n
Our book offers a nuanced explanation of that unique dynamic, which is a common cause of failure for China CEOs if they don\u2019t appreciate how these relationships work. The CEO role in China is often mainly about government relations. I\u2019ve seen many new leaders fail in China because they didn\u2019t realise this or didn\u2019t know how to properly manage relationships with government officials in China.<\/p>\n
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You\u2019ve chosen your contributors carefully and seem to suggest that policymakers and company boards would do well to listen to practitioners. What is it about people actually doing business \u2014 at the coal face, so to speak \u2014 that makes them better interpreters of the pluses rather than the minuses in China\u2019s relationships with the outside world?<\/h4>\n
As a general rule, it\u2019s wise to listen to people with on-the-ground experience. China isn\u2019t unique in that regard. People who have run large businesses in China understand the workings of the system in a way that\u2019s different from the way Western government officials look at the situation. For one thing, the practitioners have actually lived in China. It\u2019s impossible to develop a nuanced understanding of any place or culture without spending time actually living there and making active efforts to understand what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n
Second, business practitioners have experienced the ways in which the Chinese system effectively achieves results here in China, even if that approach may not work for us in the West. Just look at how China has built out its infrastructure projects in such a short period of time. In China, the government has tremendous authority and can make decisions without undergoing the kind of lengthy reviews and compromises that Western democracies would demand. But for China, the system works. That doesn\u2019t mean we advocate adopting China\u2019s system of governance, but it does mean that business people take a practical approach to learning and picking out ideas that seem to work. It might be beneficial for governments to listen to what the foreign business community has learned about how China works in reality.<\/p>\n