Google & China: I Love You, You Are Perfect, Now Change.
A US - China commercial romance.
Which China market are you in love with — the wide-eyed young economy with the untouched markets, unbridled enthusiasm for new brands and eagerness to explore kinky new business models? Or is it the other China – the controlling, jealous gerontocracy with trust issues and a nasty temper? Well, it turns out you can’t have one without the other. As Google has taught us, China won’t change just because you want it to or think it should.
Google believed it could help China break its self-destructive patterns, but really ended up acting as an enabler that let China whitewash its problems and present a false image of change and progress. Are you guilty of the same behavior in China? Are you so dazzled by your own fantasies of a perfect market that you are ignoring the reality? Or is your business model mature enough to survive and prosper in the REAL China - warts and all?
So the questions we face in 2010 are — can your business live without China? And just as important - can your global brand & business model survive the changes you’ll have to make to prosper in China?
Here are the issues the way they stand now:
1. In China loyalty goes one way.
You censor, they hack. The new normal is that you give China your love and devotion, and China tolerates your presence. Yeah, I know. It’s terrible, it’s awful, it’s unfair… If you’re looking for justice then you can keep walking. Learn to live with China the way it is or learn to live without China.
2. Affection and admiration by regular Chinese people doesn’t mean much in practical terms.
It’s not a dennocrasee and will never be. Ignore the Chinese apologists and nationalists who tell you that Google was a loser in China. It controlled 1 out of 3 searches from an internet population of over 350 million and had north of 50 million registered accounts (by some estimates). The Chinese people in general really liked and respected Google - and had it not initiated the latest controversy there would not have been any call for the company to end its China operation. At the end of the day, the love of the masses didn’t seem to matter much to Google’s commercial or political viability in China.
3. Your business data is an open book.
From business plans to product specs to finances to personnel records – your operational info is being collected. You’ve never been this naked. Oh, don’t act so shocked — you always knew on some level. All you had to do was ask the locals. If your information isn’t already reaching the wrong people, it’s because it’s not interesting enough or they simply haven’t gotten around to it.
4. Can your business at home survive your China transformation?
Google’s ‘don’t do evil’ was pretty hard to reconcile with its actions in China since ‘’06 – in spite of its genuine efforts to do the right thing. As the G takes on more and more enormous projects that put big chunks of human knowledge under its control, its nasty little compromises in Middle Kingdom were undermining its reputation in places where it had a more serious future. Your business may not be trying to record and organize the history of civilization, but you still have to consider how your actions in Beijing are going to look back home in Omaha. The last thing you want is for your image to be ‘Remade in China’.
5. China may never fundamentally change – but you might.
Just how far are you willing to go to secure your welcome here? Whether its dis-sidens getting disappeared because of data mined from your server, or toxic toys sold on Main Street in your shop or with your brand name, bad things are going to keep on happening. We’re none of us virgins anymore. We’ll never again be able to claim that we didn’t know.
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