Special report China s business landscape Special report China s business landscape How corporate China is evolving China s business landscape is changing rapidly So must the way we comprehend it Andrew Grant Years of rapid economic growth and exposure to global competition are redrawing the boundaries of China s business landscape In the past most companies there fell into one of three categories stateowned enterprises joint ventures between Chinese and foreign concerns or wholly owned foreign operations The new world of Chinese business calls for new ways to describe the playing field 1 The McKinsey Quarterly 2008 Number 3 As in the past some giant state owned enterprises protected from competition by a thicket of government regulations continue to dominate their industries But other companies in that category now fully exposed to global competition vie for business against hundreds of domestic and foreign companies targeting the same customers Other categories have emerged in recent years Globalizing companies are stepping beyond China s borders to build substantial businesses overseas organically or through acquisitions The restless adolescents are operating beneath the radar of most global players but quietly and methodically building the capabilities needed to go global And the innovators and entrepreneurs are blazing trails inside China by developing new technologies How Chinese CEOs do business The outlook and career experiences of the CEOs who head many of today s rapidly growing and increasingly confident Chinese companies are markedly different from those of Western executives Understanding these differences can help to explain behavior that otherwise might seem curious to the executives of many multinationals and could also suggest competitive opportunities Nowhere is the contrast with Western corporate leaders starker than it is for the chief executives of state owned Chinese enterprises Most of these CEOs have spent their careers shuffling between the private and public sectors A capable leader might start out as a senior provinciallevel executive in a state owned enterprise then hold a provincial level Communist Party post follow it up with a stint as the CEO of the stateowned enterprise and move back to the party infrastructure to serve as the mayor of a major city or as a provincial governor A final career step might be attaining a senior position in the central government or the party for instance a seat on the State Council or the Politburo Because the career of a typical CEO of a stateowned enterprise usually straddles the corporate and political spheres these chief executives pay careful attention to politics in particular to developments in the Communist Party In fact it s not unusual for such CEOs to link the timing of long term strategic decisions to plans outlined in the annual National People s Congress China s legislature or to other significant political events such as trips to China by foreign leaders or the creation of new government agencies What s more the symbiotic relationship between the enterprise and the state makes such CEOs sympathetic to corporate social and economic goals beyond maximizing shareholder value China Mobile s rural expansion strategy shows how one major state owned enterprise has grown while supporting national development goals Since 2004 the company has extended mobile service to millions of people in the vast countryside to support the government s rural infrastructure program which includes initiatives linking rural areas through a mobile telecommunications network Government objectives such as maintaining social stability by keeping China s huge workforce employed and by redressing economic and social inequities are partly responsible for the importance that many CEOs of state owned companies attach to topline revenues In fact we find that chief executives in both the public and the private sector talk more about revenue growth market leadership and competitive advantage than about shorter term financial objectives such as higher earnings The emphasis on driving top line growth to keep Special report China s business landscape or pioneering new ways of doing business Multinationals should awaken to the existence of and the coming competition from both the restless adolescents and the innovators To be sure the lines demarcating these categories are constantly shifting and some companies belong in more than one many of China s most dynamic competitive companies for example retain vestiges of state ownership Global executives will need a better understanding of Chinese customers competitors suppliers or even business partners regardless of where they fall along the ownership spectrum from wholly private sector to wholly government owned see sidebar How Chinese CEOs do business factories humming and employees on payrolls often means that Chinese companies are generalists playing in several different business areas and markets Foreign players therefore have an opportunity to carve out niches in rapidly growing but underserved segments Some pharma multinationals for example avoid head on competition with Chinese companies in large product categories such as antibiotics which today accounts for as much as 30 percent of the total pharma market but is declining in importance These multinationals are instead targeting smaller faster growing therapeutic areas for instance oncology and hypertension Perhaps not surprisingly in a rapidly expanding market Chinese CEOs rely less on rigorous analysis market research or a detailed understanding of customer preferences than their counterparts in developed markets do Instead many of them make decisions instinctively feel comfortable with rapid and flexible responses to new industry trends and shifts and have a keen interest in holding down costs in order to boost competitiveness and to keep companies growing These tendencies also create opportunities for multinationals The dealer strategies of Chinese automakers for example emphasize low cost facilities in favorable locations that pull in customers Few of these companies have focused on providing a high quality showroom experience GM by contrast applies to each of its dealerships strict customer service standards all the way down to details such as how many seconds should elapse before a dealer greets a customer who enters a showroom and how many times a telephone should ring before a dealer answers it To be sure such strategies aren t a
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