Conquering a market, part I – the WTO-column

(later also at Chinabiz)
Once upon a time, not so long ago, three brothers were looking for new market to use their skills in forestry. In their own place, most trees had been cut and the rumor said there was a far away country, called the Middle Kingdom, where there were supposedly many trees waiting for their sharp axes.

The brothers, called Yahoo, Google and Micro, did not tell each other about their plans. Although they were bothers and even working in the same industry, they did not like each other very much and certainly did not want to share the same forest among each other.

Now, the forest of the Middle Kingdom was a bit of a tricky one. In the middle of this huge and dark forest, there was a huge dragon, ruling over the woods. Although that dragon could easily blow away and destroy a person in one blow, it seldom did. Mother dragon was actually too busy to really be bothered with humans coming to the wood.

What was mother dragon business with? Mainly she was breeding new little dragons and trying to keep order among the existing dragons. Those smaller dragons were for visitors the real danger in the forest of the Middle Kingdom. Some of them, like the culture-dragon, looked big and powerful, could make a lot of noise and fire, but that was only to hide that is was really pretty powerless.

Others you could not see, because the operated only in the dark, like the propaganda-dragon. But when he decided to come after you, you were in real trouble.

Some of the little dragons, like the state-security dragon and the public-security dragon thought all those humans where only there to destroy their woods and wanted to keep them out. While other dragons were much friendlier and tried to get at least more presents from foreign visitors, some really powerful dragons did not trust those foreigners a bit.

So, Yahoo, Google and Micro had very different strategies to enter the Middle Kingdom. Micro, the oldest and stronger of the three brothers, was the first to enter the market and very daringly even worked together with some of the smaller dragons, to get a bit of an idea how those dragons were dealing with human activity. For ten year Micro tried, and tried and tried but was not able to cut even one tree.

The little dragons enjoyed themselves very much, since Micro brought along much gold and other presents to keep them happy. Once in a while they actually brought Micro to the big dragon that made some friendly noises in front of the foreign visitor, while at the same time hitting out at some of the unruly dragons. “You are much nicer than these damned little dragons,” said mother. “But then, they are family, I cannot kick them out of the wood, can I?” Micro politely retreated with his little dragon friends before mother dragon could change her mind.

Both Google and Yahoo looked with mixed feelings at what their bigger brother was doing. Micro might then not cut many trees; at least he was much closer to this lucrative looking market than they were. They decided they had to follow Micro.

Yahoo and Google had very different characters. As they grew up and became stronger themselves, Yahoo turned out to be a bit of a nasty character, while Google was actually too good for this world. Yahoo was the first daring enough to follow Micro to the Middle Kingdom.

Yahoo, after entering the woods, even cooperated with the evil public-security dragon, informing him about some other naughty dragons to get free access to the woods. “I have to comply with the local laws,” said Yahoo when especially our do-gooder Google complained about Yahoo’s lack of ethics.

But also Google knew how to use nasty tricks. He successfully bought away some of the very little dragons, that were previously working for Micro. It annoyed the hell out of Micro, but what could he do?

But also among the little dragons there was much fear about Yahoo entering the woods, compared to Google that was seen as much more harmless. One very young dragon, called Hongyi, who was previously insulted by Yahoo, went to the powerful propaganda dragon and told him that Yahoo was part of a word-wide Jewish conspiracy and wanted to overthrow the dragon rule in the wood. He even wanted to kill the mother dragon!

Propaganda, always interested in a decent plot, rose in anger, roared, spat fire and promised to stop this Jewish Yahoo conspiracy and save the big mother dragon. He made so much noise, even the mother dragon got worried. Mother dragon banned the Sina-dragon from cooperating with Yahoo, and Yahoo, in despair, turned to a rogue gang of thieves, called Alibaba.

Our very nice Google was just sitting at a small dinner with some smaller dragon talking about raising bonsai trees, when the roar of the propaganda dragon hit the sky. He then got so afraid and left the table, ran away and is still pondering how to enter the woods without being evil.

So, at the end of part one, the dragons still rule in the woods in the Middle Kingdom. Is there a Jewish plot to kill the mother dragon? And is Yahoo, Micro or even our do-no evil Google part of it? Wait for the next episode, expected says in one year time. Of course, this is a fairy tale and any similarity with existing people, companies, government departments or actual events do only exist in the evil minds of my appreciated readers.

Fairy Tales