BARRON'S Winter 2007
Demystifying Investment in China
Myriad authors try to put this economic powerhouse into sharp focus. Few succeed.
Edited by JAY PALMER
There's a certain pleasure to be had in back-to-basics how-to books, and two similarly named ones fell into the inbox this year. One is Doing Business in China: How to Profit in the World's Fastest Growing Market (Business Plus, $24.99) by Ted Plafker, a writer for the Economist. The second is Doing Business in China for Dummies (For Dummies, $21.99) by Robert Collins and Carson Block.
Plafker's book, which is smaller and thus more portable, tells you how to save face, what not to talk about, and contains a nice "points to remember" section at the end of each chapter. But at times, it leans too hard toward the general, telling you, for example, that China's intellectual property regime is a jungle and there's no guarantee you can protect yourself.
I preferred the Dummies version, which is part travel guide, part introduction to the different legal entities that make up corporate China, and is chock full of helpful details, like how to avoid the pitfall of choosing the wrong site for your factory (don't go for the one dotted with electrical poles, since the grid belongs to the state, and the local government doesn't have the authority to move them).