Category: China

There is no China Inc

The ADC China forum asked how foreigners view China as a nation.

“There is no China Inc” was the message from the first day of the Australian Davos Connection’s 2013 Future Summit in Melbourne last week.

For 2013, the annual two day ADC Future Summit was themed “China – where to from here?” with both international and Australian speakers discussing the Peoples’ Republic of China’s future and it’s effects on the world, particularly Australia.

Opening the speakers was Martin Jacques, Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Author of ‘When China Rules The World.’

Martin Jacques has been on the wrong side of history before, having been the last editor of Marxism Today before its closure in 1991, giving his overview of China’s development an interesting flavour.

Returning to the historical norm

History has never seen a country so big grow, so fast in Jacques view. The US and British economic revolutions featured lower growth rates and much smaller populations compared to the modern Chinese experience.

Jacques quotes leading Chinese economist Hu Angang’s belief that China is returning to its global position of two hundred years ago where the nation made up a third of the world’s global economy – double today’s share.

The resilience of China’s society in Jacques’ view is driven by four factors; its two thousand year old culture, the legitimacy of its government, the competence of the civil service and its lack of desire to build colonies.

Despite China’s historical reluctance to build overseas empires the nation’s rise is still going to dramatically change regional politics.

Australia’s Challenge

Jacques raises the question of Australia making the jump from being in the US political camp to engaging with China and America on an equal basis.

“Australia has an important role to play in the region but only if it chooses to express its own views and interests,” says Jacques. The nation’s interests are not necessarily those of the United States.

The US is uncomfortable with China’s rise and Jacques believes the Obama administration’s policies in the Pacific are destined to fail because the United State’s Asian Pivot is essentially a military response while the PRC’s rise is due to economic dynamism.

Jacques main point was that the west misunderstands China by viewing the country as a nation-state when in fact it is a civilisation. This was a question that troubled the following panel.

Culture or nation?

Dr John Lee of the University of Sydney thought the idea of China as a civilisation would worry its neighbours were that view taken to the logical end point, “would that mean that China views the region in fundamentally hierarchical terms?”

“Australia is in a strategic holding pattern,” says Lee. “Australia like every other country in the region is hedging closer to America and each other just in case China doesn’t turn out benign.”

For Hugh White, Australian National University Professor of Strategic Studies, this insecurity surrounding China comes down to choices.

“China wants to be healthy and strong,” says White. “To do so, China has to face choices, but so too does America.”

“For Australia the choice is are we prepared to be a spectator in the process.”

Maintaining growth

How China can continue its economic dynamism was the biggest question facing the panel.

Patrick Chovanec, Chief Global Strategist of Silvercrest Asset Management, thinks China cannot sustain its current level of economic growth and points out that prior to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, China’s exports made up 8% of the country’s economy.

With the collapse in international trade following the 2008 crisis, that proportion dropped to 2%.

China made up that drop in demand by stimulating the economy and triggering the investment boom that sent global commodity prices – particularly iron ore and coal – soaring.

This infrastructure splurge is what Chovanec sees as unsustainable, and he challenges the view that Chinese urbanisation will drive the economy and imports.

“If you look around the world,” Chavonec says, “urbanisation has not driven economic growth.”

The problem with China’s infrastructure funded growth model is that building rates have to grow to maintain growth rates – if you build 100 high rises this year, you have to build 108 next year just to maintain the 8% growth rates.

Balancing sectional interests

Shifting from an export to a consumption based economy means a different China. “it creates a different set of winners and losers,” says Chovanec.

Balancing those interests of winners and losers is one of the key tasks for the Chinese leadership, “Various competing interests groups – the Party has to juggle the interests of those groups” says Linda Jackobson of the Lowy Institute for International Policy.

“We shouldn’t talk about China if it’s ‘China Inc.’” Jackobson says, “I don’t think China has a grand strategic plan. It has strategic goals but not a grand strategy.”

Jackobson sees there being three key objectives for the Chinese leadership; political stability, protecting territorial integrity and economic stability.

The role of the Communist Party

That political stability is an important factor when considering China’s leadership as stability is seen as maintaining the power of the Communist Party.

“We tend to assume an identity between the current communist government and the people.” Says Chovanec, “raising this issue is forbidden in many forums.”

Chovanec agrees with Jackobson that thinking about ‘China Inc’ and the assumption, or myth, of long term strategic thinking.

“When we look at Chinese companies going abroad we talk about the long term game plan.” Chovanec points out, “in fact if you look at the haphazard movements of Chinese companies moving abroad it’s been in fits and starts.”

The common factor from the first session’s speakers at the ADC’s China Forum was that the People’s Republic can’t be seen as a monolithic entity.

Should we accept Jacques’ view that China is a civilization and not a nation state, then understanding the relationships that underpin the cultural identity are key to working with the PRC.

On the other hand the panellists see China as a modern nation state with the government, like any other attempting to balance competing interests within society.

Both are more nuanced view of Chinese politics and the nation’s economy than what’s presented by the media and politicians.

Which was fitting as the Prime Minister gave the gala dinner keynote that evening which will be the subject of another post.

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Crying over spilt Chinese milk

Australia’s missteps in the Chinese milk market are part of a far deeper malaise in the Australian business community.

East Asian based expats have many conceits – the greatest being that they understand Asia.

For a high paid executive based in Hong Kong or Singapore sitting in a comfortable air conditioned CausewayBay or Beach Road highrise it’s easy to not to know what you don’t know.

In Bangkok though the drinkers at Bangkok’s Cheap Charlies Bar are under no illusions about the complexity of Asia as every night brings another surprise.

During the 1990s it was a regular drinking haunt of those working on the ground in South East Asia – aid workers from Cambodia, oil explorers from Vietnam. gem traders from Laos or builders in Myanmar all swapped stories about their trials and tribulations.

One of the toughest jobs was setting up a diary industry in tropical Thailand, no trivial task in an environment that isn’t kind to soft, milk producing cattle.

Through the late twentieth century the Australian government spent millions helping build the Thai industry with the intention of it helping the Aussie industry build markets and expertise.

Sometime in the late 1990s, the Australian industry decided programs like these were all too hard and not only withdrew from the Thai and Malaysian markets but also let the Chinese opportunity slip through their fingers.

Today, as Business Spectator reported last week, New Zealand’s Fonterra is not only beating the Aussies in China but also has substantial holdings in Australia as the company’s website describes;

The company has NZ$11.8 billion in total assets and revenues of NZ$13 billion and employs more than 18,000 people worldwide. In Australia, Fonterra has revenues of $1.9 billion, processes 21 per cent of all Australian milk and employs over 2,000 people. This makes Fonterra very much an Australasian company.

Fonterra’s story, both in China and Australia, illustrates how something went amiss in Australia’s business sector in the late 1990s.

The point of Australia’s deregulations and industry consolidations through the 1980s and 90s was to make local businesses and industries more competitive. Instead those Australian conglomerates have been sold to overseas interests as domestic investors find they aren’t interested in investing.

Instead Australian businesses decided that having being allowed to consolidate they could use their market power to clip the tickets of the industries they controlled rather than innovating or expanding internationally.

At the same time, Australia’s compulsory savings scheme poured billions into the local share market leaving boards under no pressure to perform better than the index.

The lazy investing philosophy forced internationally focused businesses to look for overseas investors and has created the steady flow of Australian business, farming and mining assets being sold onto overseas buyers.

In the meantime, the shock jocks and populists whip up xenophobia rather than holding Australian business community to account for its failure to seek and build new markets.

This doesn’t mean bad news for young Australians, there are opportunities for smart, innovative and hard working entrepreneurs to challenge the country’s staid duopolies.

If we choose not to challenge the comfortable duopolies, it may be the next generation of Aussie expats find more opportunities at Cheap Charlies in Bangkok than at home.

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Can Huawei come in from the cold?

Can the Chinese communications technology vendor come in from the cold?

Last Friday the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Broadband Committee met in Sydney, I’ll have a story on this in tomorrow’s Business Spectator.

An interesting exchange during the meeting was  between the committee’s chair Rob Oakeshott and Mike Quigley, the CEO of NBNCo.

Rob Oakeshott: “You have advice that either as a department or a statutory body that says there are certain companies that should not be involved with the National Broadband Network build? If so, is that advice still in place?”

Mike Quigley: “Well chair, we work very closely with the appropriate government agencies in this area, obviously there are things we can and things we can’t say, but we have a very close working relationship with those entities and we obviously take their advice on things we should and shouldn’t do.”

“Their advice is still in place and we’re following it.”

I’m going to be in Melbourne tomorrow attending the Australian Davos Committee’s China Forum where, among other luminaries, the Prime Minister and various key people in the Australian-Chinese relationship will be talking.

The company in question is Chinese communications vendor Huawei and their banning from Australian contracts adds an interesting dimension to the discussion on trade relations between the two countries.

Australia has followed the US lead in blocking the Chinese communication hardware company from key contracts like the NBN on security grounds and it’s hard to see how this doesn’t test the patience of the PRC.

We’ll see how this issue plays out as it’s one that seems to be largely overlooked when we discuss trade ties and relationships with Chinese companies.

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They do it different over here

Microsoft and Apple discover the downside of being multinationals in China

Among expats in Thailand the saying was “the locals can ignore the law, but multinationals can’t.”

Thailand has some pretty strict laws on employee wages, workplace safety and council permits. Pretty well every business ignores them except the multinationals.

Generally Thais don’t complain about businesses not complying with the rules and the authorities are reluctant to take action.

Unless you’re a multinational, in which case the slightest irregularity in pay risks a visit from the police.

A few days in the Bangkok Immigration Gaol while the misunderstanding is sorted out is a good lesson for any sloppy farang country manager who hasn’t been ticking all the boxes.

The recent protests in China against Apple and now Microsoft over warranties illustrate a similar situation in the PRC.

What’s fascinating though is how the complaints against Microsoft and Apple are part of the rising Chinese consumer movement.

It’s a tough life being a consumer advocate in China, leading protests against well connected local companies or their government cronies could be a career limiting move, or much worse.

On the other hand it’s safe to criticise an American corporation and its much more likely to get results.

So managers of foreign companies in China have to be far more responsive to complaints than their local counterparts as Apple and Microsoft have learned.

For multinationals there is an upside to this, foreign companies tend to get better staff as they don’t mess people around with pay and their products are seen as being better because they do honor warranties.

It ends up being swings and roundabouts, but it does emphasise the traps for inexperienced expat managers who can unwittingly get themselves in trouble.

Apple and Microsoft have learned their lesson about customer service in China, you wonder how many others are still to do so.

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Australia and the Chinese Mexican stand off

As China rebalances its economy, a new wave of change is about to sweep global trade.

Twenty years ago visitors to Sanya on the south coast of China’s Hainan Island could find themselves staying at the town’s infectious diseases clinic, converted into a backpackers hostel by a group of enterprising doctors.

The Prime Ministers and Presidents attending of Boao Asia Forum this week won’t get the privilege of staying at the infectious diseases hospital as Sanya’s hotel industry has boomed, bust and boomed again following the island being declared a tourism zone in 1999.

Instead, their focus is on the pecking order of nations and for the Australians the news is not good. As the Australian Financial Review reports, the Aussies have been seated well below the salt by their Chinese hosts.

On the Boao list, Australia is outranked by Brunei, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Zambia, Mexico, and Cambodia – even New Zealand Prime Minister John Key gets higher billing.

Central and South East Asian countries make sense as countries like Myanmar and Kazakhstan are China’s  neighbours with strong trade ties.

That the Kiwis have been given priority over the Aussies by the Chinese government is not surprising in light of this.

An unspoken aspect for the Australian attendees to the Baoa conference is how long Canberra’s political classes can continue their forelock tugging fealty to the US without offending the nation’s most important trading partner.

Mexico’s entry on that list could be one of the most important with consequences for Australia and the world.

During the 1992 US Presidential campaign candidate Ross Perot coined the phrase “the great sucking sound” in his opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and the risk of losing jobs to lower cost Mexico.

As it turned out, the giant sucking sound was China – it turned out China’s admission into the World Trade Organisation had far greater consequences for the United States and Mexico than NAFTA.

Mexican manufacturing was one of the greatest victims of China’s rise as US companies found it easier to subcontract work to Chinese factories rather than setup their own plants in Mexico.

Now China is finding its own costs creeping up and labor shortages developing and Mexico is attractive once again. The Chinese and Mexican governments have been working on their relationships for some time.

As manufacturing moves out of China, the shifts in world trade we’ve seen in the last two decades are going to be repeated, this time with Chinese moving up the value chain the lower level work moving to Mexico and other nations.

The leaders at the Baoa conference have their work cut out for them in dealing with another decade of global change.

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Bringing manufacturing home

How GE is reviving its American manufacturing operations

In the 1980s General Electric, like most US companies, sent most of its appliance manufacturing offshore.

Now its coming home.

The Atlantic Magazine looks at how General Electric is resuscitating manufacturing at Kentucky’s Appliance Park as management finds US workers are more skilled and productive than their equivalents in Mexico or China.

An important part of the article is how critcal supply chains are; manufacturing hubs rely upon having a community of skilled service providers and suppliers around the factories while being close to customers improves and simplifies logistics.

In the latter case, it now take hours or days to deliver products to customers’ stores or warehouses rather than the five weeks it takes from China.

The cost of those goods is lower too, the Kansas made GeoSpring heater sells for $1299 while the Chinese product sells for $1599.

What is most notable though is how designers and managers now have a better understanding of the manufacturing process; where under the oustourced model the difficulties in assembly were none of their business, now they are far more deeper and directly involved.

This really goes to the core of what an organisation does – in the 1980s it was fashionable to talk of the “virtual corportation” where everything the business did was outsourced except for the managers who were employed solely to pocket their bonuses.

In the 1990s and early 2000s that “virtual corporation” became a reality as manufacturing and customer support were offshored and logistics was outsourced.

One of the best examples was customer support where looking after the needs of those who buy the company’s products were secondary to the need to cut costs.

This focus on cost cutting over customer service hurt Dell badly in the 2000s and it continues to hurt many organisations – particularly telcos and banks – today.

The weakness in the “virtual corporation” model was the company ended up adding little more value than the brand name and eventually those offshored manufacturers and call centres took control of the business’ goodwill and intellectual property.

Eventually the hidden costs of offshoring became too obvious for even the most craven, KPI driven manager to ignore and suddenly manufacturing in the Western world became competitive again.

Sadly, the fixation on dirt cheap labour has damaged many industries beyond the point where they can be salvaged with too many skilled workers lost and the ecosystem of capable suppliers destroyed. These are costs where tomorrow’s managers will rue the short sighted actions of yesterday’s corporate leaders.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Three: Australia in Asia

Chapter two of Australia in the Asian Century attempts to predict the development of the region’s economies over the next decade

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report. An initial overview of the report is at Australian Hubris in the Asian Century.

The third Chapter of the Australia in the Asian Century report, “Australia in Asia” attempts to define the role the country currently plays in the region. In some ways this is the most constructive part of the paper in that it describes the lost opportunities of the last 25 years.

Much of the early part of the chapter traces the development of Australia’s engagement with Asia after World War II; Chifley’s post war efforts with the United Nations, Menzies’ engagement with Japan, Whitlam’s going to China, Fraser’s opening to Vietnamese immigration and Hawke’s work on building the APEC agreement are all noted.

Again are the major wars that also formed Australia’s current position in East Asia – World War II, the Malayan Emergency, the Korean and Vietnamese wars – are barely mentioned. This trivialises some of the major influences in today’s complex tapestry of relationships

Of Australia’s closest Asian neighbour, the fall of Sukarno gets a brief nod but Suharto’s removal, the rise of Indonesian democracy and East Timor are all removed from the narrative. There is also no mention of other internal dislocations like the Cultural Revolution or the Indian Partition, all which still have echos today.

In the introduction the Colombo Plan gets a mention and it’s worth reflecting upon its effects.

When I worked in Bangkok in the early 1990s there were a number of business leaders who had been educated in Australia under Colombo Plan scholarships.

That investment by Australia paid dividends through the 1980s and 90s as many of those scholarship students were ardent supporters of Australian businesses and government.

One wonders how today’s students who’ve been treated as milk cows by Australian governments and “seats on bums” to education institutions will feel about the country when they enter business and political leadership positions over the next decade?

The examples of Australian business engagement in Asia are interesting – Blundstone’s is a straight out manufacturing outsourcing story which doesn’t really describe anything not being done by thousands of other businesses while Tangalooma Island Resort is a light of hope in the distressed Australian tourism industry.

A notable omission is how digital media, apps developers and service businesses are faring in Asia. There are many good case studies in those sectors but the writers seem to be, once again, fixated on the trade patterns of the 1980s and 90s rather than success stories in new fields and emerging technologies.

Generally though the description of the Australian economy is again more of the same; a combination of self congratulations on having a government AAA credit rating, hubris over avoiding a GFC induced recession and stating how the services sector has risen to replace the manufacturing that’s been outsourced by companies like Blundstone.

Overall Chapter Three of the Australia in the Asian Century report illustrates the opportunities missed in the last 25 years. Had this report been written twenty years ago it could have forecast a booming relationship in the services and advanced manufacturing sectors. It almost certainly would have included an observation that the days of the Australian economy depending upon minerals exports is over.

What a difference a couple of decades make.

The engagement of Australia with Asia concludes with a look at the changes to the nation’s immigration intakes and demographic composition. This point is, quite rightly, identified as an area of opportunity.

Having Thai restaurants in every suburb and Indian doctors in most country town isn’t really taking advantage of the opportunities presented by having a diverse population and workforce. Chapter Four attempts to look at how these factors, and others, can help Australia’s engagement with the Asian economies.

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