Beijing Jeep A Case Study Of Western Business In China

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Beijing Jeep A Case Study Of Western Business In China

In this updated, paperback version of BEIJING JEEP, journalist Jim Mann traces the history of the stormy relationship between American business and Chinese communism through the experiences of American Motors and its operation in China, Beijing Jeep, a closely watched joint venture often visited by American politicians and Chinese leaders.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars Still Relevant
Read the book when it was first published in 1989. Today it is an interesting historical note on Chinese joint business practices. Things have changed greatly in China in the past 18 years. The Chinese have evolved greatly in their international business practices, but the intent of Chinese business has not changed. Chinese business still intends to use American business technology for the good of China without the interference of US industry. The content of the book is history, but do not take the message as history. A necessary read for anyone interested in Chinese business.

4 Stars Now more of a history book then a business book…
Great book, great story, but not necessarily applicable to today.

4 Stars Must-read for China-bound business execs
This is a very good account of the difficulties AMC encountered in trying to set up the first automobile-manufacturing joint venture in China. In fact, these were the same difficulties many other American businesses ran into in the 1980s, when everyone was eager to get into the Chinese market. I think the same problems remain today. In fact, the Chinese bureaucracy is 10 times more corrupt (in more than one incident the first thing visiting Chinese officials to the U.S. ask of their American hosts is “where is the brothel with blonde girls?”) and the Chinese people more anti-Western than in the 1980s. The BJ Jeep story is not outdated. Every business exec who thinks of doing business in China must read this book, not some sugarcoated account of how great China is. I grew up in China in the 80s and witnessed the economic revolution firsthand. What pained me the most, even as a teenager, was how corrupt the Chinese society and government was becoming. Red envelopes — the venue for bribery — were becoming commonplace, and demanded by every level of bureaucrats with any degree of power. My recent return trips to China confirmed that the situation had not improved at all but worsened. Busisiness negotiations are a nightmare with the mainland Chinese. The book has a very interesting discussion in the beginning about how overseas Chinese are so efficient while the mainlanders are both inefficient, greedy, and inept. Trust me, all these are still true today.

From my point of view, China is not a market every American business should or must enter. Most foreign companies that have joint ventures do *NOT* make money in China and will probably not do so in the foreseeable future. The only ones that made a lot of money were the Japanese, who flooded (as told in the book) the Chinese market in the 80s with cheap, good consumer goods that the mainland Chinese hadn’t seen. Nowadays it’s more difficult as China’s own companies are getting competitive as well as people are no longer held in awe by Western-style products. What this book teaches, then, is how to keep your expectations low if you want to do business in China, as well as how to avoid some of the common mistakes American executives tend to make, such as assuming the efficiency of the Chinese system or presuming the chain of command. This book will serve as an excellent reminder that mainland China is still many, many years behind the West in both management style, operational efficiency, and cultural honesty.

4 Stars Interesting Read
A well writen book. Easy to read. But it is out of date and one has to be careful not to generalize the findings which were based on experiences of the first joint ventures in China some twenty years ago.

5 Stars Involving Story of Globalization Glitches
This book is absolutely required reading for anyone contemplating any business venture or involvement in China. We also recommend it warmly to any student of contemporary Chinese history or global business. Author Jim Mann does an exceptional job of telling the harrowing story of a high-stakes joint venture that developed when American Motors set out to manufacture Jeeps in China. The battle lines were quite clear, and this “joint” venture proved to be quite a skirmish. The partners’ expectations could not have been more different. Far from being a collaboration, Beijing Jeep was a contest in which the parties used deception, subterfuge and obfuscation to wrestle for what they wanted, while giving away as little as possible. The Chinese sought access to modern automotive technology and foreign exchange. The Americans chiefly wanted to sell to China’s vast domestic market and to use low-cost Chinese labor in their supply chain. Beijing Jeep depended upon ongoing Chinese subsidies until Chrysler acquired AMC. This account effectively ends with that acquisition and with the Tiananmen uprising shortly thereafter, although the author added an updated epilogue. This Jeep’s rough road offers critical lessons about driving business in China.

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International MandA Joint Ventures and Beyond

International MandA Joint Ventures and Beyond

• Questions on the Text
• Sample Agreements and Forms
• Real-World Merger and Acquisition Documents
• Supplementary References

International M&A, Joint Ventures, and Beyond provides a graduate- and professional-level course on all aspects and types of international business deals. This accompanying workbook allows you to practice the specialized techniques and strategies associated with becoming a cross-border M&A expert without leaving the comfort of your desk or losing millions of dollars over misunderstood international M&A issues. This workbook–a perfect companion to the actual text–helps familiarize you with the ins and outs of international M&A in todays business environment.

The International M&A, Joint Ventures, and Beyond Workbook offers practical discussion points that will help further your understanding of cross-border deal making. This indispensable, hands-on companion to International M&A, Joint Ventures, and Beyond: Doing the Deal, Second Edition strengthens your grasp of the most critical aspects of international M&A, with such tools as:

• Study questions and answers
• Sample agreements and forms
• Real-world M&A documents
• Case studies
• Supplementary references

Put your knowledge of international M&A to the test first, then enter the markets with confidence and make things happen.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars excellent overview
This is an excellent resource with helpful checklists and quick overviews on points to considering when structuring an international deal. Chapters on legal aspects of international joint ventures (Robert F. Ebin) and International Project Finance (Scott L. Hoffman) are top-notch. I highly recommend this to anyone “doing the deal.”

3 Stars Good summary
The book covers the accounting, legal, tax and financing aspect of international merger and acquisition activities. There are 15 chapters, with each chapter contributed by different author. The continuity is not good. The lack of real world M&A cases is the major drawback of this book. At the graduate level, the book is still useful as a checklist.

5 Stars Very Useful.
A very useful companion to the main text. Provides a substantial amount of additional material, such as Q&A on the text, Q&A on real-life examples of mergers and acquisitions, sample forms, checklists, and an additional reading list. I highly recommend it.

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Stop Selling Start Partnering The New Thinking About Finding and Keeping Customers

Stop Selling Start Partnering The New Thinking About Finding and Keeping Customers

“There’s only one Larry Wilson . . . number one when it comes to the art of selling.” —Warren Bennis, University Professor and Distinguished Professor of Business Administration University of Southern California

“Stop Selling, Start Partnering will help you take a fresh look at your selling activities whether you are in the boardroom, face to face with customers, or anywhere in between.”—Harvey Mackay, Author of Swim with the Sharks

“Regardless of your position within the company, your task in the second half of these unforgiving ’90s will be to help your company learn how to get, how to treat, and how to keep customers. Read Larry’s new book and you will be much better prepared to accomplish this mission.”—Lou Pritchett, Former VP of Sales and Customer Development, Procter & Gamble

Stop Selling, Start Partnering outlines a fresh approach to finding and keeping customers through powerful, long-lasting partnerships. Drawing on his extensive experience with companies such as Kodak, US West, Saturn, and Baxter Healthcare, Larry Wilson shows managers, executives, and salespeople how to design and nurture “customer-keeping” organizations. Filled with smart advice and practical customer partnering guidelines, Stop Selling, Start Partnering redefines the new success factors for every organization that faces the daily challenge of finding and keeping customers.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars EXCELLENT BOOK ON SALES
“Stop Selling, Start Partnering” gets the thumbs up from me … it describes accurately the selling game today. Salespeople would be well advised to get this book and digest its wisdom.

5 Stars Solid Ethical Advice
This book is about the reality of the marketplace of today. It discusses how to apply an ancient principle for marketing success. It describes how to reach your target audience through empathy. In short, Larry Wilson reminds us of the value of relationships. Don’t let the title mislead you, this book is all about sales, about selling your ideas and yourself. Wilson buys the cliche, “Nothing happens in a business until someone sells something.” He’s an advocate of sales, but not “business as usual.” People and their expectations are different now.

Culitivating relationships in business is a way of pursuing lifelong customers. His description of how human nature has changed due to the choices available now helps you to position yourself and your company to tap into these realities of the marketplace.

5 Stars Customers say no to “me company, you customer” mentality
In my e-book “Jumping Out of the Box” I talk about opening relationships. That’s exactly what this book focuses on. For example, the authors advocate taking a major role in helping B2B customers reach their business goals. Through rapid innovation many products quickly become commodities.

Partnership is a whole new game for businesses ingrained in the old push concept of trying to berate customers into submitting to buying whatever the company offers. To be honest, Wilson’s book will certainly be most useful to B2B (Business to Business) companies. However, it’s not too hard to see numerous applications for B2C (Business to Consumer) companies.

Take the authors advice on why you should Put Customers Before the Boss. The customer really is king and companies should be organized around them, not towards always pleasing the boss. Stop Selling, Start Partnering is divided into three parts:

Part I. Permanent White Water

Part II. Imagining the Future

Part III. Incredible Results, More Effective People – The Strategic Abilities of the Future

The bottom line to this book is this: Yes, sales are important. However, it’s high-time that companies recognize that customers are in the driver’s seat – now more than ever. Entrepreneurs everywhere are staring at incredible opportunities as customers no longer put up with the traditional “me company, you customer” mentality.

Michael Davis – Editor, Byvation

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Are you spending the right amount of time on the wrong projects in your business

It’s all about minimum input and maximum output.

When I was first starting out on the Internet and as a business owner, I would sit in front of my computer for hours hitting the refresh button after every promotion, website tweak, or SEO hack I implemented. One day it finally hit me. I was spending so much time on activities that only garnished me a small output that I realized my efforts were taking me a long time. Hours and hours, and sometimes days, yet the output that I got from these activities were minimal at best.

I want you to try this exercise.  Take out a piece of paper and draw two lines on that paper dividing one page into three columns. On the left side put the title on the top of the page and call it  “input”.  In the middle column, on the top of the page, label that “category”. On the right side, on the top of the page, put the heading of “output”. Now, on the right side, start listing some of your activities that you do on a daily basis to build your business.  Use this as a brainstorming session. Just write down whatever you do starting tomorrow morning when you get in the office or when you start working from home. You could break your tasks up into a number of categories such as strategy, tactical, operational. For the sake of argument and keeping this article concise and to the point, we’ll label each one of your tasks on the left side with the three categories that we just described. So, for example, if you put down in the left column “modify my meta tags on my blog”, give this a category of tactical in the middle column. If you put down “split test my landing page offer”, this would fall under the category of strategy.  If another one of your tasks is “prepare media Kit”, this would fall under an operational task. Then on the right column, write down what you got out of doing this task. Was it motivational, a desired result, a sale or maybe that activity resulting in no output at all. Whatever it was, just write it down.

By the end of the day, you should have at least 5-10 tasks that you believe are related to building your business that fall under the strategy, tactical, or operational category.

After you do this for just one day from the time you start work until you finish your work, you’re going to be very surprised at the number of activities that you spend time on that do not yield you a high output.

Usually these are tasks that fall under the tactical and operational category. These are certainly important tasks and need to get done, but more than likely, they are not contributing to increasing your profits, or meeting your income goals.

The point of this exercise is to make you aware of what activity you are spending your time on. This will allow you to determine if your current input (your activity) is equating to a high output (your results). I’m not saying do not do these tasks, since they are clearly important to you and your business. What I am saying is to be aware of the time that you’re spending on tasks that should be delegated to a coworker, employee, or virtual assistant so your time can be freed up to work on the strategies that will produce the most tangible outcome in the shortest amount of time.

How To Be A Joint Venture Matchmaker

A good joint venture marketing partnership creates a type of synergy that benefits both parties in greater ways than going solo. One could say that the sum of a JV is greater than the individual parts. How is this so? Using the right marketing techniques together in a combined effort just makes sense if it saves money on the budget and generates more revenue.

JV Match Maker

Finding the right JV match can be time consuming. When you look for a potential JV partner, you should consider which type of people (direct, aggressive, or creative) you like working with. Sometimes a great JV partnership is gained from sharing different talents in a combined effort. For example, you may be a techno wiz and need a creative person who can help with marketing messages. Together your talents can benefit the other.

You also may want to look at the type of industry or business of your potential JV partner. Sometimes working with someone who does a similar business can create a synergetic partnership, and sometimes a company doing a completely different business can be beneficial. Look for what you want to gain.

Sending the Right Message

A synergetic JV partnership develops the right message to customers. Opening the right market channels through your message helps both parties gain more clients and customers, as well as other potential business partners.

More Money

Of course, one of the main goals of a joint partnership is earning more revenue. Through the synergetic efforts of both parties, a JV partnership can save money on marketing costs, possibly production costs, and generate more revenue with increased sales.

Consider if you had a budget of $10,000 per year on marketing costs. Through a combined joint venture effort, including sharing marketing costs, you’ll find that you can save $2,000 a year on that portion of your budget. That’s $2,000 that could be spent on other efforts such as R & D, or perhaps hiring additional employees for all the extra products you need to produce.

Another way of forming cost savings with a JV partnership is by creating an economy scale. Perhaps by using your special container equipment combined with your JV partner’s ability to efficiently manufacture and package goods, your economies of scale synergy can result in saving of costs of goods sold and increased revenue.

Ultimately a successful JV will produce satisfying profits for both parties. Increased revenue with only half or a portion of the effort is successful synergetic business. With increased revenue, you can help take your company to another level of business.

Your potential joint venture partner can help your business succeed. Consider the possibilities of working with another business owner to develop ways of making new business. It starts with choosing the right partner, and working your synergy to develop the right marketing message that results in extra money in your business account.

Christian Fea is CEO of Synertegic, Inc. A Joint Venture Marketing firm. He exemplifies how to profit from Joint Venture relationships by creating profit centers with minimal risk and maximum profitability.

To discover more Joint Venture Marketing Strategies join his free Joint Venture Marketing Wealth Report

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