The night before China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in December 2001, Motorola Inc. held its global board meeting in Beijing for the second time and announced an ambitious plan to increase investment, revenue and sourcing by $10 billion each in China over the next five years. Other companies have had similarly grand visions. Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson announced that it would more than double its investment in China to $5.1 billion, also over a five-year period. General Motors Corp.’s plans call for Chinese operations to generate more than $3 billion of revenue by 2008. By that same year, Bayer AG intends to have the second phase of its $3.1 billion production facility up and running to meet forecasted growth in its China sales. These represent just a handful of the thousands of multinationals that have ambitious growth in revenues from China etched into their strategic plans. As China’s accession to the WTO gradually opens new markets and as its growth continues at better than 9% per year, even those that have long resisted China’s temptations are jumping in.
Experienced multinationals are aware of the many challenges they must overcome, summed up by the old adage that in China “everything is possible, but nothing is easy.” Learning from the experience of pioneering companies, savvy investors know they have to contend with a minefield of competing local interests, overloaded infrastructure, difficulties in retaining skilled people, tortuous supply chains, unfamiliar local HR practices and communication barriers.1 But few predicted what is fast becoming the most formidable obstacle to success: the emergence of tough competition from local Chinese players.
A decade ago, the possibility that Chinese companies would pose a serious competitive challenge to multinationals looked improbable. It wasn’t surprising, therefore, that, in 1995, just a few years after China’s personal-computer market opened up to foreigners, The Economist predicted that by 2000, multinationals would have captured an 80% market share from their hapless Chinese competitors.... To read the complete article, login or sign-up using the form below.
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