Managing The Dragon

Food — providing enough of it at acceptable levels of quality and at an affordable cost is shaping up to be one of China’s most challenging problems. Lax quality control, production shortcuts, urbanization and rising consumer spending are all combining to turn the spotlight on China’s food supply chain, creating problems, but also opportunities, for [...]

After respectable — but low for China — growth of 7.7 percent in 2012, car sales surged by 21.6 percent during the first quarter of 2013. Even more surprising was the fact that sales of Chinese brands increased even faster than the overall market. Sales by the local car companies increased by 33.6 percent during [...]

Sometimes, too much success in China can create its own set of challenges. Ironically, the very success that Apple Inc. (NasdaqGS: AAPL) has had selling its products to Chinese consumers may be at least part of the reason why the Cupertino, California company found itself at odds with the powers that be in China in [...]

Will the Chinese buy A Tesla? The management of Tesla Motors, Inc. (NasdaqGS:TSLA) certainly hopes so. At the Detroit Auto Show, Tesla announced its plans to open a dealership in Beijing — its first store in China — this spring. George Blankenship, the company’s vice president of worldwide sales, said the store will house an [...]

Hope springs eternal — and nowhere is it gushing more strongly than with electric vehicle enthusiasts all over the world. In the United States, investors in Tesla Motors, Inc. (NasdaqGS:TSLA), the U.S. maker of electric sports cars, seem to be shrugging off the fact that the company is losing a $100 million a quarter, the [...]

Anticipation grew in advance of Monday’s 85th Academy Awards, “Oscar Fever” spread throughout the world, including China. Even though the country had no films in the competition, the buzz could be heard before, during and after the annual Hollywood event. Just 30 minutes into the ceremonies, “Oscars” was the top trending topic on Sina Weibo, [...]

The timing of Spring Festival must always be taken into account when analyzing vehicle sales in the first two months of the year in China, but by any measure, passenger car sales were very strong in January. In the first month of the Year of the Snake, passenger car sales surged to 1.49 million units, [...]

The ink on the paper with my predictions for China was barely dry when what may become “the” story of 2013 came onto the scene—air quality. If I knew then what I know now, I would have had to have included a discussion about air quality. In the run-up to the Beijing Olympics in 2008, [...]

In December, I had an opportunity to speak about China to audiences in such diverse cities as New York, Philadelphia, Anchorage, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh and Reno. The audiences represented a wide range of occupations—from hedge fund and investment managers to ordinary investors, business men and women, students and government officials. As a result, I received a [...]