Everyone I meet is afraid. The chief executive of one of China’s largest hotel groups is afraid to complain to the police about the hustlers who sell fake watches outside the lobbies of his hotels. A Buddhist who runs a network of factories is afraid to speak openly about the Chinese occupation of Tibet. A sports marketing official, one of the agents for China’s basketball stars, is afraid to speak out against misguided policies of the national sports system.
What is unusual about these people is not that they are afraid; many people in China are. What is unusual about these people is that they are Americans doing business in China”some even doing business successfully. What they fear, of course, is the same thing that China’s people fear: the arbitrary power of government.
For Americans doing business in China, it is a short step between fear and collaboration, as I recently found during a two-week visit to Shanghai and Beijing, the two leading destinations in China for American “expats.”