Rating: 
Summary: Good counter balance to most pro-China business books.
Review: A solid overview of the difficulties foreigners have faced when trying to make direct investments in China. Some of Mr. Studwell's arguments get stale after frequent repetition, but the points raised are mostly valid and well explained. Recommended reading for people thinking about doing business in China - any prospective business plan should at least include strategies for avoiding the pitfalls in this book.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is DEAD ON!
Review: After living and working in China for years, I heartily endorse a thorough reading of this book to anyone remotely interested in doing business with the next great (HA!) economic power. This read is a must and only scratches the surface of insanity that goes on within China, any misguided, lemming of a CEO looking for business dealings with China should be fired immediately if they do not read this book - particularly Part 2, "The Miracle Deconstructed" and Part 3, "Reaching for Reality".China is the true definition of a paper tiger, have your head examined if you look past other business opportunities in other countries and decide to head into China. If forced to make a business decision about entering China for your company, read this book, make your recommendations, and expect to loose everything if your company does head into China.
Rating:
Summary: "The China Reality"
Review: An excellent book outlining the history of china in relation to its economic structure and trade development, covering the previous few centuries up to the present. Unfortunately it is the same old story inherent in any mania , value goes out of the window and the ability to analyse is crowded out by greed. I love the frank account of the CEO's absurd optimism about china in the face of so much contrary evidence. China will one day be the largest economic power in the world and its domestic market will eventually become highly developed, unfortunately this cannot happen in the present repressive climate. I would like to have been furnished with 1 or 2 maps as being a rather ignorant westerner in relation to china's geography, i found placing the different areas a little difficult. However this does not really detract from this being an excellent book and a must read for those who wish to view some contrary opinion about china. This is very welcome instead of the glowing clap trap we are pushed in the west.
Rating: 
Summary: Demystifying Joe Studwell.
Review: Can it really only be two years since Mr. Studwell wrote this oft-quoted book? Only two years since he bravely confronted and slayed the "myth" of a profitable domestic Chinese market?
Two years ago, we were told about a "long period of slow growth and stagnation" for the domestic Chinese economy. This experienced China-hand, claiming 8 years of personal experience and a wealth of economic insight, assured us that there would only be a few isolated cases of economic success. He mocked GM for its economic investment, and lumped them into the group of so many other misguided CEOs that falsely believed the Chinese could afford to buy anything the West had to sell!
As a previous reviewer pointed out with great self-satisfaction... GM would have to wait until 2025 to meet their target of one million in annual sales! That prediction certainly seems comical when we realize that GM will reach 600k in annual sales this year: 2004. GM, with its over-optimistic and poorly planned investment in China, made an eye-popping profit of $875 million with its Chinese partners from China in the year 2003. That's actually *more* than what GM earned in North America ($811 million for Canada, Mexico, and the US combined). We can only hope Joe Studwell will be contributing a sequel shortly explaining the lack of a consumer market in North America, as well.
Ah, how things have changed. Mr. Studwell wrote for the Financial Times this month (December 2004), and while his melody remains the same, he has certainly changed keys. We're now told that, "while" the Chinese economy is "certainly doing well" (surprising understatement from a man that wasn't shy with rhetorical bombasity a few years ago)... it's not doing *that* well.
How so? Well, it seems, the Chinese domestic market will "only" be returning $8 billion in profits to foreign investors this year... a pathetic sum that's "only" comparable to the returns found in... South Korea and Taiwan? For a man that didn't think much of China's economic prospects 2 years ago, he sure has placed it in hallowed grounds this time around.
Two years ago, Mr. Studwell had a 50/50 shot of getting it right with this book. He found anecdotes and statistics supporting his conclusions at the time, but he conveniently ignored the comparable evidence that just as surely contradicted his point. In a world of conflicting facts when informed experts were unsure about China's future prospects, he decided to trumpet his own truth to the world.
Well, he's been caught with his pants down: he was as wrong as you can possibly be.
Rating: 
Summary: Bull in a China shop
Review: China, the fastest growing economy in recent years is in deep trouble according to this book. Starting with a historical perspective, the author goes on to explain that it has never been easy to make money in a market that otherwise appears so attractive due to its sheer size in terms of its population. Multinationals have made over optimistic estimates of the potential market size for various goods and services and sunk billions of dollars either in the hope of making a quick profit or with a view to stay invested before rivals can enter. In most cases, returns have proved elusive.
China is a land shrouded in mystery and secrecy but yet continues to entice entrepreneurs from around the globe. The mad rush to grab the proverbial pots of gold turns into a frenzy in the early 1990s. China becomes the main destination for the global leaders and captains of multinational companies. Having brought in their money, these investors soon find themselves trapped in a situation of no return. Those with deep pockets manage to survive while many others are not so fortunate. The asset inflation boom - stocks and real estate- also has its fair share of victims. Another area discussed in detail is the weakness of Chinese financial institutions and the proportion of non performing assets that account for nearly half of their lending particularly to state owned enterprises. While exports is a success story appreciated across the world, here again the author is quick to point out the low value addition and low share in global trade.
Page after page, the author misses no opportunity to criticise the Chinese bureaucracy, political system the authoritarian rule of the party depicting china as a land that is on the verge of a great economic meltdown where global corporations will have no escape route to retreat.
It is important to note that global companies have gone to do business in China and it is their love for money and not charity has been the motive. It is said that greed, optimism and herd mentality are the three drivers of capitalism . Need a better example ? Large multinationals, mostly from developed countries boast of employing the best talent from leading business schools who are experts in market research and financial accounting. When things go wrong, why blame it on China?. There is no evidence in the book that suggests that China has misused money from international institutions or indulged in unfair practices to swindle FDIs. Assuming that China overstated her domestic income and growth figures, the two main parameters that have attracted the foreign capital, it cannot be an excuse for not doing enough home work to verify these figures before investing huge amounts.
The book appears to be biased and incomplete in not giving due credit to the rapid progress and achievements of the world's most populous nation.
Rating:
Summary: An elusive China dream
Review: He spent 10 years in Beijing but now has left for Europe. I wonder if his name is a pseudonym. When you read his book, appearing to be well documented from a financial journalist's point of view, you get that sense of futility for multinationals ever being successful in China. Perhaps this is because this is the beginning of a new era, Reform and Opening. However, I find that he really doesn't delve beneath the gloss, bright lights, and high expectations of multinational mgmt. He inundates the reader with all the financial minuate, but in my mind he doesn't impact the reader with the most important conclusions. This book misses the mark. He fails to conclude, write or understand that multinationals will not make it in China (other than the cellular telecom co). That this feeding frenzy of the 1990s is just a sham, like taking candy from a baby. He doesn't say it, but the rise and foundation of the new mainland China will be from the "renegade" Taiwanese companies. He also forgets history of the Opium Wars, where the imperialistic UK and other Europeans forcibly opened China. He doesn't say that this has indelibly embarrassed the Chinese and will not happen again. He doesn't present the conclusion that the new China economics is Socialism with Chinese characteristics done by the Chinese themselves. ... Notes, bibliography, and index total about 1/5 the book. No pictures or maps. --------- ...
Rating:
Summary: Poorly researched
Review: If you only use the 18th and 19th centuries as guide then of course China never made anybody money. I know of NO CEOs today who studied this period. All they now care about is that they get a foot in the door of this huge booming market before their competitors do, and it's a scramble. Many companies have made 100%, 200% or more return on their investment in a couple of years, which must be news to Studwell basking in the Italian sun. Read David Sheff's China Dawn and Cesar Bacani's The China Investor for a look at the future.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly researched
Review: If you only use the 18th and 19th centuries as guide then of course China never made anybody money. I know of NO CEOs today who studied this period. All they now care about is that they get a foot in the door of this huge booming market before their competitors do, and it's a scramble. Many companies have made 100%, 200% or more return on their investment in a couple of years, which must be news to Studwell basking in the Italian sun. Read David Sheff's China Dawn and Cesar Bacani's The China Investor for a look at the future.
Rating:
Summary: China's roaring nineties - the best assessment in print
Review: Joe Studwell, a British freelance journalist who lived in and reported from China from 1991 until 1999, has written one of the best-informed insiders' books about the Chinese economy in the boom years of the 1990s that is on the market. The book is excellently researched, well documented (60 pages of notes accompany 300 pages of text) and profits from a wealth of experience gathered "on the ground." The main thesis of the book is that many big Western companies substitute a blurry, optimistic picture of a vast potential market for a balanced view based on hard data. When it comes to China, wishful thinking replaces critical distance and realistic assessment. One thing that "The China Dream" explains very clearly is the extent to which two economies in China exist parallel to each other. One is the old socialist economy that is protected from change and the market forces. The other is a vibrant, export -oriented economy of manufacturing plants that assemble goods under the management of mostly Taiwanese and Hong Kong companies. The latter is the poster child for China, but the former continues to gobble up the people's savings to churn out the products that the planners want to see. Stripped of the success story of the export-oriented manufacturing companies, China's economy looks like a disaster waiting to happen. Studwell is not a China-basher. He admires the stamina and determination of the small entrepreneurs in China who manage to hold their ground against a rapacious bureaucracy, the lack of credit from state-owned banks and the dumping strategies of pampered state-owned enterprises. Earlier reviewers have criticized "The China Dream" as biased and uninformed (no CEO interviews). Having worked in China for three years, my impression is that Joe Studwell has a very solid grasp of the economic and political realities in the People's Republic of China, and that there is no point in listening to the rosy projections of CEOs and foreign luminaries who were "toured about in government limousines and fed an endless diet of spurious statistics"(255). In a nutshell: This book is absolutely recommended reading for anyone who wishes to work in China or just wants to know what to make of all the praise lavished on a socialist developing country.
Rating:
Summary: A Superb Antidote to the China Hype
Review: There's an incredible amount of hype about China's economic market. Its huge population, high-skilled low-wage work force, and relative political stability for a developing country all act as a powerful lure to multinationals eager to set up shop and begin selling to one-quarter of the world's population. Under tough negotiations from Chinese officials, these companies tend to give away the kitchen sink to ensure they get access to the huge market. But what do they get in return? Joe Studwell does a service to the informed public by clearly demonstrating that almost all the businesses who have gone to China have gotten next to nothing for their technology transfers, special fees, and tremendous time and effort they've dedicated to the market. Almost uniformly, they have high-balled their expected sales and profits from the Middle Kingdom and found immense barriers such as unseen regulations and fees, corrupt officials, unenforced laws, local spin-offs to their products, etc., that should have sent them packing. Yet almost all of them push on, undeterred. As Studwell explains, the reason for this is an old phenomenon among Western businessmen he calls "The China Dream." Despite continual setbacks, these hard-headed businessmen are too attracted to the possibility that they have something to sell that even a small percentage of Chinese may want to buy. Those huge potential numbers are too much of an enticement to businesses to easily let go of their foothold in China. But Studwell's book is more than just about the experience of foreign businessmen in China. It also shows that the China market is becoming a trap for the Chinese people themselves. They work hard and save, and the government confiscates and then destroys their money by trapping it in state-owned banks that are insolvent because they lend to state-owned enterprises that are unproductive. "The China Dream" is well-written and informative. Its thesis is provocative, but well supported. Studwell argues there is no rational basis for much of China's economic success and that most of its market is as closed and overregulated as the Soviet Union's. This book should be required reading for every CEO of a multinational who dreams of selling in China.
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