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Published on November 18, 2007

    If you’re thinking of expanding your business into China, look no further for guidance. Lam is an attorney and business adviser and Graham an internationalbusiness professor at the University of California at Irvine, and their book discusses what American executives can learn from the Chinese way of doing business, especially given the bettereducated, disciplined Chinese workforce.
    This involves quite a lot of boning up, not just on China’s history and culture, but on its laws and regulations and its negotiation system and the regional differences in its business practices.
Of great importance in winning the game is negotiating. The authors lay down ground rules for forging good deals with the public and private sectors. Chinese from the Beijing area can be bureaucratic, they say, from the northeast industrious and competent, and from the south relatively honest and forthright.
    Yet the postnegotiation phase is no less arduous as far as intellectualproperty rights are concerned. The legal system in China, the authors say, isn’t always about resolving disputes either.
    This is a requisite read. – Manote Tripathi