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I'm seeing a lot of Canadian Born Chinese or Chinese-Canadians moving to China to start a business or startup. Their fluency in the language and culture varies
by brilliantcode 10y ago
I'm seeing a lot of Canadian Born Chinese or Chinese-Canadians moving to China to start a business or startup. Their fluency in the language and culture varies but they are just like you and me. Raised in Canada or America. They passionately hold on to the idea of the Zhunguo Meng (中國夢) or "The Chinese Dream", a counterpart to The American Dream.
So far all of the reasons for this emigration to China seems to hinge on the view that there is a lot of entrepreneurial activity and drive in China which I think certainly holds true. For example, Alibaba allegedly closed over 17 billion dollars in sales within 24 hour on the "Chinese Valetines Day". Didi, Wechat, Baidu and so on.
Some hold a much more nationalistic/ethnocentric perspective that the Chinese economy will surpass America any day now and emerge as the new global hegemony.
On the business level, there seems to be more emphasis on relationships and reciprocal (?), you help me I help you kind of deal but with blurring of expectations that you must deliver and demand to maintain that bond. I'm not qualified to speak on this but I'm formulating this from a gathering of anecdotal experiences from people I've spoken to.
I'm biased obviously since I'm unfamiliar with China and Chinese culture & the language. I grew up in Canada all my life and this is all I know. What's that saying? The devil you know is better than the devil you don't.
So basically, it boils down to what I know vs. what I don't know. China is a big unknown to me personally but that shouldn't/doesn't phase those chasing after the dream.
So just taking a look at websites like http://chinalawblog.com http://chinalawblog.com , it raises some important questions about their infrastructure and more importantly what compromises would I need to make as a cost of doing business in China and whether all of this structural down to individual changes is something worth investing all my time in vs. dealing with what I know already.
Also a huge minus is the cultural and language gap. I most certainly cannot do business without a contact or a close partner that is able to close that gap. While that maybe fine for the most part, it does carry over risks as I am tightly coupled to their interpretation.
I am constrained by the unknown and increasingly as I look at what's going on in Hong Kong and rest of South East Asia, I can't help but feel intimidated.
Zuckerberg came to a compromise to be chums with the Communist party in China. I wonder if that will ever pay off especially when you are so invested now and the relationship is dictated completely on the conditions of the foreign government. If this is the beginning then I shudder to think what the next compromise will be that affects their end user. It sets an uneasy precedent for future prospects eager to capture the enormous market in China.
This is strictly my personal opinion and I tried to be as objective as possible to be respectful and neutral as possible. I just don't buy it when somebody just tells me confidently that it's inevitable fate that China will surpass US with the sole basis of their argument being the very thing they assume will hold true in the long run.
I'd love to be corrected. However, if the argument that "China is taking over" holds true, US politicians and the elite should be sending their offsprings to study in the University of Beijing vs Harvard. The would leave in a posh part of Beijing, blowing money on a Chinese supercar which also does not exist. This suggest to me that the Chinese Dreams isn't even good enough for China's elite so how the hell can it be good for people like you and me?