From a distance, Shen Hongye resembles the men who trolled the streets of China's capital a quarter-century ago -- suit and cap of overcast gray, left breast pocket bearing the ubiquitous scarlet pin of his communist work unit.
Look closer, though. Shen's outfit is no Mao jacket; it's a factory worker's jumpsuit. And the red emblem on his chest is really a tiny patch bearing a famous brand name, spelled out in some of the world's most familiar script: Coca-Cola, his employer for the past decade.
"No one considers this an American company anymore," says Shen, 46, a canning supervisor on Coke's Beijing production line. "They consider Coca-Cola a global company with a presence in China."
In the US, an economic recovery completing its first full year has been slow to produce new jobs. Some work lost in the downturn migrated to Asia, and especially to fast-growing China.
Yet the change transcends a simple calculation of jobs lost and jobs gained. A slow-motion revolution is under way as US firms expand in China. Company by company, employee by employee, they are changing the way China does business.
While the number of Chinese employed by American firms remains small -- fewer than 10 million, by some estimates -- many say the American presence has an aggregate effect.
"The effects on standards of living in China will probably not be widespread. But the effects on corporate culture and strategy could be revolutionary," says Usha CV Haley, co-author of the upcoming book Asia's Tao of Business: the Logic of Chinese Business Strategy.
Twenty-five years ago, there was effectively no American business presence in China. The country was reeling from the erratic dictatorship of Mao Zedong (
For 30 years, the footsoldiers of Mao's socialist revolution were organized into work units -- rigid hierarchies that were intertwined with the communist bureaucracy. Not only work but life, leisure and even reproductive practices were governed by the units, known as "danwei."
But within months of Mao's death in 1976, the late Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) launched China's now-famous "reform and opening-up," the economic retooling that pushed the world's most populous country toward development -- via a unique breed of capitalism and, in 2001, membership in the WTO.
As this unfolded, American companies began looking for opportunities in a market whose very size has their executives salivating.
Coca-Cola was one of the earliest, announcing its intentions even before relations between the two countries were officially inaugurated on Jan. 1, 1979. Others followed suit, and today the presence of US and other firms by the thousands is a cornerstone of China's high-gear development.
It is happening as China's old-guard domestic business -- the "state-owned enterprises" that grew fat and laggard without competition -- reform and lay off tens of millions. The new generation of leaders is eager, even desperate, to keep attracting foreign investment to help employ its people, build its promised "well-off society" -- and keep the Communist Party safely in power.
So the government is pushing the country's businesses to develop "advanced corporate culture if they want to compete with their foreign counterparts in the international market."
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