Is there anybody here that has done business in China? I understand that China shows promise for business in the future, but from what I read, there are a lot of problems with doing business over there. Why does the mainstream press present such a rosey picture of business there when so many companies are having problems?
I’ve also heard only the rosy and very little of the bad, although I know that the situation in China is not all that it’s cracked up to be.
Maybe it’s like this:
(1) Those who have not yet gone but are desperate to: they’re enthusiastic, optimistic, talking up the bubble to help sustain it and hoping that they’ll get a piece of that big economic pie. (Remember the internet?)
(2) Those who have gone and succeeded. Ok, they’re allowed to talk.
(3) Those who have gone and failed. Can we say, “misery loves company?”
(4) Those who don’t care. They don’t care.
I imagine it’s not such a black-and-white issue. Of course there are going to be quite a few problems, but for the most part there are so many opportunities on the mainland that I think people in Taiwan are justified in believing it’s possible to make a good deal of money there.
I worked at a couple of shoe factories over there for about a year several years ago, and the Taiwanese businesspeople were always on top of things, mostly due to the fact that they shared the same culture and language as the people they were dealing with, and they had a huge advantage in this respect over foreigners trying to do the same thing.