forced out of work is high.
There are some interesting digressions -- on written Chinese, Macau, floods, crucial historical interactions between China and foreigners, and so on. But at its heart this is a lively and amusing account of some of the dealings in China of one important American investment company. "There were some global giants who had invested more," Clissold writes, "but not many." Furthermore, they had invested in poor areas as well as the eastern coastal region. One Sichuan bank, for instance,
delayed remitting their investment of US$15 million while they double-checked -- "it was the largest transaction they had ever handled and they assumed there had been a clerical error."
China may prove slow to change -- chops are valid even if the person who uses them has no authority, Clissold discovers -- but so is Wall Street. "Cut the pay-roll!" its moguls scream from afar. But this proves impossible -- with no social security, what are those fired supposed to do, the company argues, especially when one targeted employee shows up with dynamite strapped to his waist.
The book's climax concerns a Chinese business partner who tries to open a new factory in competition with their joint
venture. As in the finale of an opera, everyone pitches in -- government, police, striking workers, lawyers, the book's leading figures -- until ... well, it would be wrong to give away too many details of what by this time is a gripping drama.
The book ends with some rather hurried thoughts. The joint ventures of the 1990s have largely been replaced by wholly owned operations, Clissold points out. And by allowing the automobile the same dominance it has in the US, the "seven or eight men and one woman" who constitute the core Chinese leadership could, he considers, threaten the very
sustainability of life on the planet -- a paradoxical conclusion when he has been investing in vehicle components for so long.
Tim Clissold feels like a top-rank writer, but he's clearly a very successful businessman too. In a way it seems a pity that he isn't applying himself full-time to authorship. Maybe he will, but perhaps he needs the source material his other working life provides. Or perhaps he simply can't survive without the high-risk, the immense potential rewards, and the sheer adrenaline rush doing business in China so
obviously gives him.
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