*The following is an excerpt from the One Hour China Book, for which a new 2017 version is available here. “China Vanke is a real estate company that has no equivalent in the West. The company’s revenues are greater than the top four American real estate developers combined. It has built more apartments than any […]
*The following is an excerpt from our new One Hour China Contrarian Book (which is available here.). “Jonathan Woetzel (McKinsey & Co, Peking University) and I have written three speed-read China books together. In this latest one, we have put together a collection of our essays that basically make four main contrarian points. These are: […]
More than a thousand Chinese healthcare apps have been launched in the past five years. These startups, targeting the seemingly super-hot intersection of booming smartphone usage and modernizing healthcare, were supposed to be the next big thing. And many have been backed by top venture capitalists and leading Chinese companies such as Alibaba Group Holding, […]
There have been some interesting China business events this month, including the stepping down of Vanke CEO Wang Shi. He is symbolic of the first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs, many of whom are now starting to retire. This is my monthly recommended China reading list. If you would like to be on this list, you can […]
Yum! China has now been spun off. And being a separate company should naturally fix many of its problems. But going forward, there are three things that still really concern me. #1 – There is no free lunch in the China restaurant business. How well you did in the past just doesn’t count for that […]
I focus on the intersection of rising Chinese consumers and competitive dynamics. Basically, I try to figure out who is going to win (and lose) in the never-ending fight for increasingly wealthy and influential Chinese consumers. However I generally avoid Chinese luxury. It is impacted by too many factors – the value of the RMB, […]
Every couple of months, I hear that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is down the street at Tsinghua University in Beijing (photo above). Usually he is giving a talk to students or meeting with Beijing officials. It seems to happen pretty regularly. And it raises the question: Why is such a busy executive spending so much […]
Chinese ride service Didi Chuxing raised $5.5 billion in May, adding to more than $10 billion it raised last year. Assuming it is no longer burning through $1 billion a year as it did during its fight for Chinese market share with Uber, Didi now has a staggering cash balance for a startup, perhaps as […]
If something hasn’t happened yet in China, there are probably good reasons why. Here are four China businesses that are frequently cited in the news as big opportunities. But I think they all fall into the category of “well, if it’s so great then why hasn’t it happened yet?”. Thus, I think they should be […]
I recently reached 2.9M followers on LinkedIn. And this is crazy. Because not that long ago, I was nowhere as a writer. For years, I had published books, written articles, and so on – but nothing had really worked. I was a failed writer, despite over five years of effort. Looking back, it is clear […]