Mr. China: A Memoir - Book Report/Review Example

Mr. China: A Memoir Mr. China: A Memoir is a book which tells of a story of a young man who travels to china thinkingthat he will bring the Chinese into modernity. His misguided belief is unveiled when he meet the most proficient and resourceful people in his life. Mr. China learns to appreciate the nation he intended to conquer. This book was written by Tim Clissold. He has been working in China for almost two decades as a financial adviser and investment specialist in China. This book is a must read for all interested in investing within the boundaries of the Chinese economy.

Clissold is surprised when he first travels to China. He comes to enjoy the challenge and way of life in China. In his first visit to China, he was told that there were no rice in restaurants and in some instances the bar attendants would pretend that they were out of stock. He becomes more persistent and storms into kitchen in search of food and went upstairs in hotels to look for rooms. He comes to appreciates without a feeling of malice that this culture was more of a habit that no one got over.

Though simple tasks like purchasing grocery were a challenge, he developed mutual understanding and could get smiles from the people he met. It is important to learn that the Chinese culture appreciates persistence from foreigners even in the simplest of tasks let alone making business transactions. Clissold is spellbound by China and unsuccessfully tries to convince his employers to open an investment office in the country. With this, he decides to quit his job to go and study Mandarin. He encounters hardships of which foreign students in Chinese campuses face such due to exclusion by Chinese natives in avoidance of “spiritual pollution”.

His diminishing finances forces him to look for a job. He learns that his former employer in London, Arthur Andersen, needs someone to seek for investment opportunities in China. Clissold gets this job and makes a team of two more; Pat and Ai Jian. Formation of a team that involves locals in China is important for success of any business quest in China. This team derived its strength and success form the contacts Ai Jian had and experience that Pat had as a banker and investment guru in Hong Kong.

After three months of thorough investments research in China, the team manages to convenience several Wall Street money managers who wire $158 million to their chosen partners in China for investments in manufacturing plants. These investments face unexpected difficulties such as money laundering, production of substandard goods, daily loss of millions and poor management which resist extermination attempts. New unauthorized factories which compete with the joint venture also arise. From the above misfortunes, investors in China should learn to probe more on the credibility partners and managers.

China may have seemed to have a stable legal mechanism to that protect shareholders from agency problems which involve managers serving their personal objectives in expense of a business. This assumption plus the belief that incentives given to the managers would make them work hard over long periods of time led to the joint ventures being under the reasonable free management that was required to report to a board of directors which set budgets and appraised business progress. This Wall Street theory did not work in China as indicated with the difficulties facing the joint ventures.

Investors should set up strict restrictions to managers in an attempt to control them to work towards maximizing shareholders’ wealth. In a bid to correct mistakes that Clissold and his team made in initiating the investments, he encounters corrupt anticorruption agents who ask for bribes before handling tasks. He uses all legal mechanisms available, struggles with the bankers and other complicated personalities, disloyal employees in a bid to recover lost and hidden assets. He gains lots of experience in how to protect resources while making investments in china.

Clissold opinion about the complexity of the financial institutions and policies of China is also revealed in the book ‘Red Capitalism’ authored by Carl Walter and Fraser Howie. The two authors view Chinese Banks as extention of the government. Therefore, any situations which may incriminate the banks may receive political influence aimed at protecting this banks or those responsible for the offenses. Such kind of complexities and weakness in the financial sector led to great misery in the investments managed by Clissold.

The author of this book teaches us a lot regarding risks and opportunities in the China. Investors should acquaint themselves with the complex bureaucracies in China or the nations they intend to invest in. they should also cultivate loyalty among their employees in order to safeguard the interests of the investments. It is important to perform a research on the cultural environments in countries they wish to invest to avoid risks associated with assumptions of culture as evidenced in the book Mr. China. Clissold passion for china makes his choose to remain within this rich country even in the heights of his misadventure.

This teaches us the need for aggressiveness in overcoming challenges in business. This book leaves us with a lesson that we should appreciate, respect and understand other nation’s cultures and not aim at conquering them. Works Cited Clissold, Tim. Mr. China: A Memoir. Collins, 2006. Walter, Carl & Howie, Fraser. Red Capitalism: The Fragile Financial Foundation of China's Extraordinary Rise. John Wiley & Sons, 2011