The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That Win-Win Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice - Hardcover

by Ken Wilcox (Author)

Revealing account of the struggles and surprises when forming a financial joint venture with China

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice describes former CEO of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Ken Wilcox's firsthand challenges he encountered in four years "on the ground" trying to establish a joint venture between SVB and the Chinese government to fund local innovation design--and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) efforts to systematically sabotage the project and steal SVB's business model. This book provides actionable advice drawn from meticulous notes Wilcox took from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life, including Party and non-Party members, the business elite, and domestic workers.

Describing a China he found fascinating and maddeningly complex, this book explores topics including:

• Difficulties in transplanting SVB's model to China, from misunderstandings about titles and responsibilities to pitched battles over toilet design
• Ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today and why China must be met with realistic expectations
• Wilcox's own honest missteps and the painfully learned lessons that came afterwards

Engrossing, enlightening, and entertaining, The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an essential cautionary tale and guidebook for all Western bankers, C-suite executives, consultants, and entrepreneurs seeking to do business within China.

Front Jacket

In 2011, after a decade as the CEO of a major U.S. bank--Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), at the time the world's largest lender to the technology and venture capital industries--Ken Wilcox moved to China. There he would establish a bank, a joint venture between SVB and the Shanghai government, to lend to technology startups.

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice is an eyewitness account of how that project went awry. But the torturous process of establishing the joint venture bank is just the starting point for this book. Rather than focusing on banking, international relations, or government policy, the book describes the ethics and practices widely adopted by Chinese businesses today, along with the role played by the CCP.

Based on the meticulous notes Wilcox took and from interviews with people from all walks of Chinese life--Party and non-Party members, the business elite and domestic workers alike--this book explores what Western businesses and, more broadly, Westerners who interact with China on any level must grasp to work constructively with China, including their motivations, myths, and beliefs. Wilcox also provides a valuable first-person account of the rise of Xi Jinping and the internal impact of his early strategies.

Despite his frustrations, Wilcox also explains how he found China fascinating, entrancing, alluring, and maddeningly complex, with descriptions of the many delightful individuals he met, from the baijiu-loving history buff to the apartment-hopping Chinese instructor.

The China Business Conundrum: Ensure That "Win-Win" Doesn't Mean Western Companies Lose Twice earns a well-deserved spot on the bookshelves of all international business leaders seeking to understand the potentially harsh reality of doing business with Chinese companies and how to make the right moves at every step of the process.

Back Jacket

Praise for THE CHINA BUSINESS CONUNDRUM

"I couldn't put down this engrossing tale of Chinese government partners manipulating and milking SVB to create local competitors. While most victims of this all-too-common swindle quietly slink away, Ken Wilcox has the humility and moxie to go public with this cautionary tale."
--JAMES McGREGOR, author of One Billion Customers

"This account of establishing a bank for start-ups in China simply gallops along with twists and turns and surprises. It's a salutary tale of how Western assumptions, hopes, and expectations prime companies for failure in the Chinese context. I'm giving copies to all my CEOs, past and present."
--FELDA HARDYMON, MBA Class of 1975 Professor of Management Practice at Harvard Business School, emeritus; Partner emeritus, Bessemer Venture Partners

"The inside story of how Silicon Valley Bank stumbled in China."
-- DAVID BARBOZA, co-founder of The Wire: China, former two-time Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist

"Ken Wilcox is uniquely qualified to offer insights on doing business in China. In particular, his admonitions about the Chinese Communist Party and its ability to control everything it touches are chilling. As the author of The China Business Conundrum, Ken will bring you to understand that you are most at risk when you come to believe that you have a full grasp of your situation. In all probability, You are not even close! Read it once and then read it again!"
-- ALEX W. "PETE" HART, former CEO of Mastercard International and financial services industry veteran, former Chairman of the Board, Silicon Valley Bancshares

"While working in China, banking executive Ken Wilcox kept his eyes open and became deeply skeptical about the CCP's willingness to actually collaborate with foreign businesses. The China Business Conundrum is a much-needed antidote to Party bromides about 'win-win' scenarios."
-- ORVILLE SCHELL, Vice President, Asia Society & Arthur Ross Director, Center on U.S.-China Relations