SHANGHAI - Talk to anyone who conducts business in China, and they say the same thing: Doing business there is different.
A lot is different in China.
The country is beautiful. Its historic and cultural sites are breathtaking; the people are kind, accommodating and engaging. The thought of an American being better off sewing a Canadian flag to his or her backpack is unnecessary there. Tension between our nations' leaders might be immense, but the populace is friendly and eager to talk to an American.
It's obvious why American companies want to do business in China. It's a largely untapped market with a rising upper class that in recent memory didn't even have access to "private cars," as they are referred to. For the first time, they have money to spend.
The country is booming. Cranes pollute the sky visually. Everywhere you go in urban centers, there are ambitious projects underway and slated. Some are mammoth office buildings, and others are entire housing blocks reaching between 20 and 30 stories tall, in clusters of a dozen or more buildings that could seemingly house all of Fayette County.
But some recently completed buildings and developments sit empty while others, occupied or not, prematurely show their age. Massive transportation infrastructure has vegetation growing out of support columns, as do some of the nation's most historic sites, like the emperor's former residence in the Forbidden City, where grass grows on ornate tile roofs.
The skyline in Shanghai boasts 11 of the world's 100 tallest buildings. As amazing as the CCTV Building, known as the "Pants," or the Pangu Plaza, known as the "Dragon Building," in Beijing might be, there is a concern that the same level of thought going into the design is not being applied when erecting the project.
There's a difference in how quickly projects in China get built, and there's a difference in the quality of those projects that have been completed.
Coming in under budget is celebrated and incentivized in the United States. Saving 7 percent and coming in on schedule is quite an achievement on any project, especially a high-rise, but saving 75 percent and opening within a year of the ink drying on the original design - that raises flags to Americans. It is commonplace in China, however.
Costs of materials can vary, and when good materials get expensive, lesser quality is used. What isn't elastic is the price of labor. Migrant workers from the countryside spill into the major cities, wanting to work, and unskilled as they might be, they build.
Members of the Commerce Lexington trip to China took note of access at public places that would not be acceptable in the United States. Some of the restaurants the group dined in would have surely been shuttered in the post-Beverly Hills Supper Club fire era, as one marked stairwell was the only form of egress from a packed third-floor dinner, with the two lower floors also brimming with those dining on Peking duck.
While packing the final night of the trip, I watched as CNN International's coverage of the three women who won the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize went black and silent twice when subject matter turned to the previous year's winner, who is still sitting in a Chinese prison for his defiance of the country's human rights record.
The silence was deafening as memory jogged to the group's second full day in China, a trip to Tiananmen Square. More than 100,000 people had gathered to celebrate the 62nd anniversary of the People's Republic of China during a week-long holiday of their equivalent of the Fourth of July. While there was a murmured mention of the 1989 protests that made Tiananmen a household name in our country, the group's tour guide spoke only of it being the largest public square in the world, not of the brave man who once stood before a military tank rolling into the same square to quell protests.
As the group approached the gate adorned with an image of Chairman Mao leading from Tiananmen into the Imperial City, a woman shouted and threw handwritten leaflets into the air. The papers were scooped up by plain-clothed men standing on either side of a walkway leading to the gate before they all hit the ground. The woman was dragged away in the other direction.
With looks of "don't ask, don't linger, just go," on the faces of the members of the group who witnessed the incident, we entered the Imperial City. The group's tour guide was asked why some of the guards outside the gate had fire extinguishers at their feet. "People immolate," he said.
The blank television screen censoring news about China's Noble Laureate/political prisoner did little to comfort me as I reflected that at least the woman dragged off in Tiananmen Square hadn't lit herself on fire. If the English-speaking people of China and those visiting on business or sightseeing were blocked from being informed about Liu Xiaobo and his wife - who last I heard while in the United States was under house arrest - what hope was there for the woman in Tiananmen?
"Over the past decades, China has achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal," the Norwegian Nobel Committee wrote in explaining why it had selected Liu for its 2010 prize. "The country now has the world's second largest economy; hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. Scope for political participation has also broadened."
According to the tour guide, major cities now enjoy mayoral elections. Citizens are free to choose between two men selected by the Communist Party.
"China's new status must entail increased responsibility," the Nobel Committee continued. "China is in breach of several international agreements to which it is a signatory, as well as of its own provisions concerning political rights. Article 35 of China's constitution lays down that 'Citizens of the People's Republic of China enjoy freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of association, of procession and of demonstration.' In practice, these freedoms have proved to be distinctly curtailed for China's citizens."
The dichotomy raises questions in the human soul. The image and thought of a woman being dragged off by government officials will haunt my remaining days; more so will my failure to do anything but keep calm and carry on. Intervening would have only been foolish. As a result of the incident, my nerves were wracked just sending an e-mail with a scant description of the trip's first few days for publication on BizLex.com that night.
It became clear why doing business in China was different. Some see it as a difference in finishes and pace; some have to struggle to establish quality control or learn to live with differing products. But all have to make peace with the fact that one side of the riverfront in Shanghai that stood as rice patties just 20 years ago now holds a tenth of the world's tallest skyscrapers. Developments are springing up everywhere you look because the government has decreed it will be so, and the people, largely dependent on the government for work, have obliged.
China is a booming economy, second only to the United States, though more than four times as populated. It is to this century what the Wild West was to the end of the 19th century in the United States. Fortunes are ready to be made and lost, but you just have to deal with being unaccustomed to the environment.