From the author of the acclaimed Mr China comes another rip-roaring adventure story – part memoir, part history, part business imbroglio – that offers valuable lessons to help Westerners understand China.
In the twenty-first century, as China grows more confident, there’s a hunger in the West to understand what makes this immense country tick. Tim Clissold has lived and worked there for more than two decades, and in Chinese Rules he draws on his experience to reveal secrets that Westerners can use to navigate through its cultural and political maze.
Picking up where the international bestseller Mr China left off, the gripping narrative chronicles Clissold’s adventures with Chinese bureaucrats, factory owners and local bigwigs as he struggles to build a climate change business in China. He soon finds himself caught between the world’s largest carbon emitter and the world’s richest man, and his story is peppered with entertaining and enlightening anecdotes that highlight the absurdities and mysteries, but also the rewards, of doing business in China.
Exploring key episodes in China’s long political, military, and cultural past, Clissold outlines five key Chinese Rules that anyone can deploy on the ground with their modern Chinese counterparts. These Chinese Rules will equip foreigners not just to co-operate better with China but to compete better as well.