Burning your fingers - the WTO column

(Today in Chinabiz)

Shanghai – You know what my problem is? I’m too honest. Alright, I might have more problems, but being honest is really a problem I have to deal with urgently. Real consultants do not have that problem. They screw their clients, their clients know they are being screwed, but that is no problem. They are performing an act that makes the Beijing opera look pale.

Real consultants know how to play the Pavlov effect that hits the markets every now and then when it concerns China. Everybody wants to move in, even though the idea itself might not be that clever. Consultants cannot tell a potential client he is stupid by trying to enter the China market. They would lose good business. They would even lose better follow-up business when their client really gets into trouble. And they would lose even more follow-up business, since they can never advise a client how to withdraw from this market, when they have never entered it.
So, this week I was sitting in the lounge of the Hyatt with a group of private bankers investigating their future in the Chinese market. One of them had unfortunately already read one of these columns where I claimed that Shanghai would never outsource three things: eating, having sex and dealing with their money. He knew I was a skeptic on their business, so I hoped for the China-effect. They belonged to a very renowned bank and could not afford not to burn their fingers.
That is an essential part of the consulting game: even when you agree that entering the market looks rather crazy, you are still going to do it. So, very fast the discussion moved into practical problems: who would be the best to do the job? A local guy or a Hong Kong guy? Someone perhaps a guy from Singapore? Girls did not seem to matter in this part of the game.
I advised them to take a very kind, softhearted American manager, who had very little China-experience. He would get screwed, but that was what they wanted anyway, I suggested.

I came very fast into a cynical mood. Of course no Shanghainese to run the office, because he would screw them. No Hong Kong or Taiwan manager, because they would have a tough job in building up any business among the Shanghainese. And certainly nobody from Singapore, because they do not realize how different they are from the Chinese, although they might be Chinese themselves.
So, actually, nobody is fit for the job, concluded one of the private bankers. He was right. Nobody can do this job that is so much based on trust. Shanghainese will never give their money to a foreign private bank, since unlike Chinese banks foreign banks incidentally go bankrupt. Shanghainese do not trust Taiwanese or Hongkongese. They would trust the naïve American, but would not think he would so a good job, since you want your banker to be a little bit evil when it concerns others. The Shanghainese would certainly not trust another Shanghainese to deal with their money.

So, there you go with a business that is based on trust, I realized. And there I threw my future as a consultant out of the window, well, virtually, since the windows in the Jin Mao building cannot open.

This bank will come to China. They will get a real consultant they will pay a lot of money. They will lose a lot of money, and they will be happy ever after.

Fons Tuinstra

PS: When I wrote this article, I had not yet seen the piece Ben Dolven did for the Far Eastern Economic Review on the new American president of the Jinjiang Group. (Subscription or a hacker needed to read the article).

Update: Just also got some feedback from the bankers, after they saw my column. They enjoyed the conversation, but their take is slightly more positive, they say. That is the spirit!