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BOOK REVIEW: Entrepreneurship in China, Entrepreneurship in China: The Emergence of Private Sector
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Entrepreneurship in China:
The Emergence of Private Sector
By Andrew Atherton and Alex Newmann
BT 201803 Book 01      中国的商业文化与发展在中国古代的历史发展的进程中,占据了重要的一席之地,在新中国成立后,私营经济的发展也构成了我国国民经济发展的重要动力。考察和了解中国的私营企业的发展历史及现状对了解中国崛起有着关键作用。

      但正如作者Atherton和Newmann在书中提到的那样,商人在古代历史中的地位实际非常之低。在过去,“市农工商”的等级划分使得中国形成了一种侧重于考学为官的文化,而不重视工商业的发展。这导致了过去经济停滞,甚至使得国民积贫积弱。清朝灭亡后,商业与商人的情况有了改观。在新中国成立,尤其是改革开放以后,企业家的精神被逐渐重视,商人的生活地位日益提高,现在的中国市场氛围已经越来越鼓励创业精神,很多年轻人都投入到了创业大军中,中小企业蓬勃发展。根据Atherton和Newmann的考察,中国有几种主要的商业模式:一种以温州和浙江为代表,他们以网络为基础,主要从事劳动密集型的低成本手工业产业。另一种以广东和珠江三角区域的企业为代表,他们利用海外华侨,特别是香港和台湾地区的资本进行发展。还有一种是基于北京、上海等地的经济发展和技术水平来进行创业的模式。不少大城市的企业着眼于融资,例如小额贷款到风险投资和天使投资。本书对企业家和商业行为的考察主要是从创业增长的角度来了解的,虽然没有更多地提及大的社会背景,但即便如此,本书也非常清晰地给了大家一个了解中国的渠道。

China’s entrepreneurial culture is well known, but rarely has it been so precisely dissected and analyzed as in this book. An examination of development, context, form, people, governance and future of Chinese entrepreneurship, it is a highly useful examination of one of the key components underlying China’s rise.
 

Looked at historically, the very notion of an entrepreneurial Chinese is, as Atherton and Newmann suggest, in fact rather an odd one. The emphasis on Confucianism, a rigid hierarchical society and the educational emphasis on the official exam developed a culture focusing on legal and philosophical precepts, rather than the needs of commerce or industry. This led to economic stasis, military weakness, fall of the Qing Dynasty and the 1949 Revolution. After this, private commerce virtually disappeared.
 

Yet, after 30 years of Maoism, entrepreneurship flourished as a result of reform and opening up. The authors are careful to note that success of market reforms and liberalization were not preordained and had to be fought for. Yet once undertaken, entrepreneurship flourished to a degree probably never before seen in history. The precise forms it has taken are discussed with exacting detail and academic rigor, which means this book is less concerned about telling a story or advance a hypothesis than to simply uncover the reality of the situation. But this is the nature of the book - it is more of an exploration than an argument.
 

What do the authors find? They find a great deal. They look at the various models of entrepreneurship, from the Wenzhou/Zhejiang model (network based, labour intensive, low cost) to the Guangdong/Pearl River Delta model (utilizing capital from “the overseas diaspora, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan”) and the innovations based around Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Jiangsu/Zhejiang. They look at financing, from shadow banking to micro-lending to venture capital and angel investors. They look at the business culture, from its key influences (Confucianism, Daoism, communism, globalization) to its key dimensions (individualism/collectivism, uncertainty avoidance) and the masculine culture of Chinese business.
 

The book, however, sometimes neglects the broader context. Entrepreneurial behavior is only ever defined in the business sense, in terms of starting businesses and increasing output. That is fine, but it might have been wise to consider how famine and disasters forced everyone to make the most of what they had, to leverage opportunities, and to maximize their personal benefits - in other words, to behave entrepreneurially. Without it, the authors are left noting the state entirely replacing the market after 1949, and then marveling at the awakening of business drive in 1978. But the nature of their approach is to define qualities and quantities. This gives the book great clarity, though not perhaps the broadest perspective.

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