Title: Risky Business in Rising China
Author: Mark Atkeson
Publisher: Self-published
Genre: Memoir
First Publication: 2023
Language: English
Book Summary: Risky Business in Rising China by Mark Atkeson
Tech-savvy “bandit” entrepreneurs testing repressive government policies. Corrupt, old-guard executives lining pockets. Highly educated young engineers and managers forging cutting-edge companies. Nouveau riche hiding assets.
“Risky Business in Rising China” is an American businessman’s in-the-trenches chronicle of three decades working in multiple industries in China’s new economy — and a candid account of the conflicting forces that have transformed the world’s most-populous nation into an economic (and military) superpower, yet may doom it to spectacular decline without drastic change in central-government direction.
MARK ATKESON took an early career gamble by eschewing work with Corporate America, unlike his fellow Yale engineering grads in 1986, and landing a job in backward but slowly modernizing China: an impoverished nation then vastly overshadowed by Japan’s dominance in world trade.
Fluent in Chinese, he went on to run companies in fields ranging from aircraft maintenance to electric-vehicle production, mobile internet to venture capital, while he and his wife raised their four children in China. Now living in California, he continues consulting for China-related businesses.
Book Review: Risky Business in Rising China by Mark Atkeson
Mark Atkeson’s illuminating memoir Risky Business in Rising China offers readers an inside look at China’s rapid economic ascendance over the past three decades, as witnessed through the lens of an American businessman navigating its volatile landscape across multiple industries. From his ground-floor view leading Chinese-foreign joint ventures, Atkeson provides trenchant insights into the contradictions defining modern China as both an economic juggernaut and a nation at a crossroads inhibited by authoritarian policies.
The book opens with a vivid preface contrasting the gleaming new realities of upper-class Chinese life with the enduring hardships still facing the urban working class. Atkeson’s morning commute in Beijing symbolically threads through the decades of his work life, encapsulating China’s breakneck evolution from austerity to opulence. Yet the ramshackle building housing his current employer ironically evokes his earliest days in China 25 years prior, hinting that stagnating political reforms may imperil future prosperity.
An overview introduction argues that while market liberalization since the 1980s has lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens out of poverty, generating immense new wealth, these gains may prove fragile. Atkeson sees worrying signs of slowdown as the Communist Party exerts more control over private enterprise, stifling innovation. He believes China has reached a pivotal juncture between continued liberalization or potential decline under re-centralizing policies. Atkeson promises to leverage his own diverse experiences to shed light on where China has come from and where it may head next.
Atkeson’s baptism into China comes in the late 1980s, when he joins a U.S. company to facilitate technology transfers to a struggling state-run Chinese factory. Despite culture clashes, he gains respect for his Chinese colleagues’ intelligence and tenacity. But frustrations grow with rigid bureaucratic mentalities resistant to efficiency improvements. This early stint engrains Atkeson’s sympathy for China’s challenges balancing economic modernization with political control.
In the 1990s, Atkeson assumes a senior role with a Chinese-foreign aircraft maintenance joint venture. But the national aviation market proves essentially closed to foreign players, regardless of quality. Atkeson chafes against heavy-handed regulations stacked to protect domestic firms. Though feeling stymied by political constraints, Atkeson emerges with enhanced understanding of the deep roots of China’s business culture.
Keen for new opportunities, Atkeson helps launch one of China’s earliest internet startups during the open, freewheeling climate of the 1990s tech scene. He revels in this boundary-pushing milieu favoring swagger and rapid growth above all else. But the subsequent dot-com crash underscores that unchecked expansion still requires sound business models, a lesson Atkeson takes to heart.
Seeking new frontiers, Atkeson heads to rural provinces to work for a major U.S. agribusiness corporation. But his proposals to increase productivity through importing American farming expertise gain little traction with the rigidly hierarchical management. Craving more creative scope, Atkeson decides to start his own company.
In the early 2000s Atkeson co-founds a venture capital firm specializing in Chinese technology companies and reaps huge windfalls from betting early on marquee names like Baidu. But conflicts surface between Western profit-maximizing mentalities and the idiosyncratic, intuitive approach of Chinese founders. Despite a painful parting, Atkeson emerges with enhanced respect for China’s distinct entrepreneurial philosophy.
Over the following decade, Atkeson assumes leadership posts at various Chinese state-run enterprises in aerospace and automotive manufacturing. Some initiatives showcase Chinese engineers’ ingenuity, such as a futuristic hybrid spaceplane concept. But crucially, Atkeson grows disillusioned by the endemic mismanagement he witnesses from embedded party cronies and crippling lack of transparency. A low point comes during an avionics supplier role when lax safety standards lead to preventable on-the-job casualties, forcing Atkeson into a crisis of conscience.
In the 2010s, Atkeson’s tenure heading up a Chinese electric vehicle startup stands out as a redemptive coda, despite ultimately ending in disappointment. He movingly depicts his team’s dedication to fulfilling their visionary founder’s dreams of overtaking Tesla as China’s standard-bearer globally in EVs. When politics and personalities torpedo this quest, Atkeson leaves China for good, but with enduring respect for the ingenuity and work ethic of its people.
In a sobering afterword, Atkeson assesses that China shows worrying signs of stagnation as free markets and innovation lose ground to reasserted state dominance. Yet he roots for a course correction, believing China’s best chance for prosperity remains empowering its entrepreneurs. Atkeson concludes with cautious optimism that a more open China committed to clean energy could partner with the U.S. to lead global solutions.
A consistent strength running through Atkeson’s memoir is his even-handed assessments of China’s contradictions. He forcefully criticizes intransigent state sectors and systemic graft but also offers nuanced perspectives on the social/political roots of these problems. Atkeson never paints China’s conditions as monolithically bleak. His textured depictions of visionary yet pragmatic business colleagues showcase the promise of Chinese talent liberated from bureaucratic shackles.
The author’s upbeat tone and colorful interpersonal scenarios help leaven the complex themes, making the book highly accessible. Atkeson excels at dramatizing charged negotiations, awkward workplace dilemmas, and stark moral choices in a straightforward prose style free of business jargon. The specific power dynamics he navigates offer ground-level insights into China’s unique business culture. Yet Atkeson also consistently links micro-events to macro forces, underscoring how systemic issues shape individual experiences.
Atkeson’s chronological account of his own professional evolution in China provides a unique aperture into its breakneck modern history over recent decades. His career trajectory crosses multiple spheres, from stodgy state factories to freewheeling startups to global ventures. Atkeson thus offers readers a richly novelistic insider’s panorama of China’s metamorphosis from austerity to cutthroat capitalism to an uncertain future. His story personalizes the highs and lows of an economic revolution.
The memoir’s shifting scenes fluidly cohere into an overarching mosaic reflecting China’s challenges in transitioning from central planning to market competition. Atkeson returns cyclically to themes like bureaucratic inertia and cronyism thwarting progress, providing analytical cohesion. Whether portraying tense negotiations with provincial officials or debating visionary aircraft designs, Atkeson’s recollections accumulate into shrewd insights on the systemic roadblocks which complicate foreign entry into China’s market.
While each career snapshot proves vividly immersive, Atkeson continually steps back to extract wider lessons. His hard-won wisdom on balancing opportunity with risk in China comes from years on the front lines, lending gravity when he warns of declining prospects under renewed authoritarianism. Yet Atkeson’s obvious affection for China balances his worried outlook with hope it can still evolve toward openness and shared prosperity. His nuanced perspective makes Risky Business in Rising China an essential primer for anyone seeking an authentic on-the-ground feel for China’s past boom and present hangover. Atkeson distills decades of experience into a resonant narrative arc that both enlightens and engages.
